Yes I can do this. I am not sure what I can do to help bitcoin but helping to spread adoption as a means of payment but also starting to build a BSR within an independent business. If I can help drive this forward and inspire others to do so then I guess that would be enough
Discussion
Bitcoin is sometimes called a Ponzi scheme by uninformed people.
It isn't, but that's not to say it doesn't have a Ponzi element just as all mass adoption processes do.
There are many respected MLM (Multi-level marketing) companies that exist, some are fraudulent, some use pyramid selling to accelerate adoption and growth.
Charles Ponzi gave Ponzi schemes a bad name 😂 😂 😂
If we want Bitcoin to succeed as a currency, we have to encourage and support the world to use it.
What about greater fool theory?
I had to google it, because I'm too foolish to have heard of it 😂
Yes, this as well.
The tulip phenomenon is often cited, but in modern day parlance, we can think of examples like Tesla, very good, but perhaps over valued for the stage it's at.
I think Bitcoin doesn't fall into this category because it's actually in its adoption phase and its price is increasing to reflect that.
It may one day, perhaps as soon as the next halving, over reach its final valuation and become victim to this theory, but not yet, I believe.
To me, I have mixed feelings.
I believe in Bitcoin as a principle of peer to peer cash but as a practice I've had a more consistent experience with other blockchains, and maybe that's because of low network usage perhaps, who knows.
I feel like the older bitcoin culture was about the technology that drives bitcoin but now it seems like modern Bitcoin culture is all about price (speculation).
It's hard to say how much of Bitcoin is driven by fundamentals, and how much is driven by speculation.
However when you talk to some people they seem very defensive about the technological faults, and issues with Bitcoin.
I think a portion of the Bitcoin price is driven by people who think they can dump it at a higher price later, I'd say most people who bought around 2020, or so.
Definitely the NGU phenomenon is the entry point for all Bitcoiners and it is still a factor for me.
But honestly my life has been so expanded by studying Bitcoin, not just the technology, which I had a good grounding from my electronics, computing and Internet expertise, but the lessons it teaches you in everything from economics, banking, politics, psychology, history, mathematics etc.......
What a lot of people think of as faults, are actual choices. The best analogy to this is in the world of photography.
Photographers always have to balance three elements,
ISO (film speed / sensitivity)
Exposure Time
Aperture
If you are photographing sports events, you always sacrifice Aperture and ISO in order to maximise Exposure time.
In portrait photography you are able to sacrifice exposure time to allow plenty of light in through the aperture and you able to choose the best ISO settings for your environment.
Bitcoin chose to sacrifice transaction throughput in order to not sacrifice decentralisation. The third element, encryption, can not be sacrificed in a public blockchain.
Bitcoin doesn't have faults (at least not large ones) it made design choices, both originally from Satoshi, then later with the community through the fork (blocksize) wars.
The correct decisions were made. Bitcoin is a scarce resource that cannot be changed giving it it's value to society.
If it were scalable or had an infinite supply its value would be lost.
This is why gold is more valuable than dirt. It's difficulties to mine and the scarcity of its supply make it valuable.
If there was lots of gold everywhere and easy to obtain it would have no value.
This is why diamonds are becoming rapidly less valuable. We can make produce "lab diamonds" in volume at extremely low cost that, once cut, are indistinguishable from natural diamonds.
We effectively have an unlimited supply of perfect, extremely low cost diamonds.
Perhaps, in my case, I heard about Bitcoin when it was like $200, and still a mysterious online money that no one knew about.
But I will agree that maybe NGU does attract people to Bitcoin in a way.
A fair portion of that stuff I researched outside of Bitcoin but it was kind of overlap, I was researching it slightly around the same time I dabbled with Bitcoin.
Perhaps, I should’ve said trade-offs instead maybe, not faults but Bitcoin can be a little rough around the edges at times in my opinion.
I did not know about the photography stuff 😃.
It’s a fair point, decentralization is important, and that can be forgotten at times.
Personally, I think block size is a non-issue since bigger centralization issues currently plague Bitcoin, and hard drive memory is cheap technically speaking (perhaps, not in practice at scale) but in the short term hard drives with decent sizes are affordable.
Though, I also understand that Bitcoin does have a stronger network effect than its hard forked alternative, so a real comparison can’t be made (yet).
Since that’s true Bitcoin gets utilized more than Bitcoin Cash, and so perhaps in Bitcoin’s case bigger blocks could be problematic since the blockchain would grow more drastically but I’m not here to debate that since it’s already been settled, and people are free to choose their block sizes if they want to.
I feel like some changes could be beneficial to Bitcoin but again there’s multiple blockchains so I can utilize the ones with the trade offs I’m willing to accept.
It’s hard to say how a more scalable or higher throughput layer 1 would impact Bitcoin, personally I think it would benefit Bitcoin as a cash system but like you said Decentralization is a factor that needs to be accounted for.
I won’t comment on the supply trade off since in the short run it hasn’t become a problem yet but in the long run it could become more difficult to transact.
And not saying a higher supply cap, or unfixed supply caps addresses the issues but I think for Bitcoin 21 Million is an acceptable trade off because if it ever becomes unobtainable*, uncirculated, or in low supply then I would utilize other blockchains, or mechanisms (like lightning, etc.) that would help counteract that.
Bitcoin’s supply cap is its least pressing issue, & doesn’t need to be addressed immediately.
Understanding Bitcoin through the lens of photography.
Fascinating!
In all honesty, when you realize the interconnection between things you can apply the thoughts of one field to another.
Bitcoin/Crypto, medicine, farming, music, art, etc.
It’s plug, and play, just puzzle pieces that can snap into something else.
It’s best to understand the layman’s terms so you can relate to someone else’s field of knowledge.
Very True