Perhaps we should move this conversation elsewhere because I'm very interested in continuing it.

I feel the same way you do, however, I don't feel there are any alternatives to stacking Sats. Bitcoin has issues, but everything else has MORE issues. Real estate, equities, gold.... all awful, and fiat is even worse than those.

I think where you and I may have an interesting conversation is in the following concept: I believe my time/labor should never be used to support unethical or evil things. I believe fiat to be incredibly evil and deliberately nefarious. As such, I won't save in it, even if I believe it could be a better short term place for my capital.

Equities, real estate, gold..... all have ethical issues, in my opinion. Bitcoin is the most pure asset, from an ethical point of view. It's the Bitcoiners, the people, I have a HUGE problem with in recent years. Not the asset itself.

But I'm very interested in your response to this.

I think NGU narratives alone are not enough to end fiat.

I want to see Bitcoiners pissing off politicians for attempting to live outside fiat with local Bitcoin economies and a general boycotting of trad-fi. That's when we see real NGU tech.

Instead, Bitcoiners think they can just hodl and everything will be fine. It's pissing me the fuck off. Where's our revolution???

My entire net worth is in Bitcoin, and I'm sure @denlillaapan is stacking as well. So, we are mostly just giving you a hard time..... joking around....

But jokes aside, I am pissed at this community. Our continued tolerance of fiat is the number one thing holding back Bitcoin's NGU potential.

built-in NGU system

lol. How's that been working out for ya?

Lightning is getting rekt.

I wonder how the USAF crowd would have done things differently in 2016 if they could see this comment today......

What if, instead, you set up your life so that you didn't need as much "cash"?

Find local people to barter with who will accept Bitcoin. Use BTCmap.org and go to local meetups. Start using Bitcoin for what it was originally intended for.

Downsize. Get off grid as much as possible. Become less dependent on their Ponzi system.

Stop thinking of "cash" as an acceptable medium-of-exchange and start seeing it for what it really is: evil, violent, polluting, disgusting, oppressive.

Bitcoin has never been expensive.

We actually have to do stuff

God forbid we decide to boycott fiat and begin transacting in Bitcoin amongst ourselves. That's just too hard.

I think we just need another tool, another wallet, another fork, another conference, another podcast, or another political hero to follow. This is how we pretend we're winning, without having to do any hard stuff.

for those who have used Mostro, RoboSats or other P2P tools: what's the biggest obstacle for you?

RoboSats is amazing. The biggest obstacle is the waiting period... waiting for an order to be taken.... waiting for the other peer to communicate, post invoices, etc. I can understand why people would rather just buy on CashApp with a single click.

But RoboSats provides so many benefits over centralized exchanges. I can't fathom why it isn't being used more aggressively in the Bitcoin community. The more people using it, the less waiting we all experience. It's a volume problem.

The fiat system is at the heart of all the problems these politicians complain about.... ON BOTH SIDES.

Until I see a candidate talking about ending fiat, I refuse to vote. The first candidate talking about ending fiat is the first one to get my vote, and I DO NOT care which party they are from.

And no, "have fun playing with your bitcoins or whatever" is not what a fiat-ending candidate talks like.

... Hurrah hurrah.... is that your hat?!??!

It's the taste.

Nothing beats a tannin-rich, oak barrel aged, heavy red wine.

Or a clean, crisp, dry, 100+ IBU beer packed as many tasty hop molecules they could possibly squeeze into the liquid.

Or a Japanese whiskey.... a long-aged masterpiece, with a 50/50 sherry and American oak marriage and notes of dark chocolate, dried fig, and Mizunara sandalwood.

I wish I could drink this stuff without the alcohol and get the same rich flavors..... but alcohol is the glue that brings the flavors together. What butter is to food, alcohol is to drink.

Good thing "the internet" comes with a bunch of redundancy.

I dunno...

Starlink's pretty cool.

They are enthusiastic to learn how to accept Bitcoin, yes.

They are not enthusiastic about paying for that knowledge.

Bitcoiners could incentivize them to learn, by boycotting fiat-based businesses.

ALL of those models can accept Bitcoin.

But I think only the top-left version accepts it without the merchant having to change anything on their end.

And even for those on the top-left, the merchant has to update to the latest version of Square!!! Many don't update very often. A PoS system is not like your iPhone. The merchant sets it, and forgets it. People need to update!

Bitcoin already is better, in the most important ways. It already is better money. Yet, it's barely being used.

It will never be better as a MoE, payment system. Referring to user experience, centralized systems will always be better than decentralized ones. We can't compete on that metric.

So, we can't wait, because the day you envision will never come. We start using the money that we know is better, and show the world that it's worth the UX tradeoff in order to be free, wealthy, and sovereign. We set an example, and start doing everything we can to stop using fiat.

I think it's too important of a subject. If the trends are going in the wrong direction, and public opinion is still the same 2 decades later.... it's not doomerism, it's table-pounding. I'm trying to sound the alarm.

We simply are dropping the ball in this war against fiat.

This all started with a war on fiat.
The first shot: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

Now, Bitcoiners are okay with fiat sticking around. They're okay with Store-of-Value being 99% of the narrative, ignoring and even demeaning the importance of Medium-of-Exchange.

Yes it is.

I'm not here to build and support a "parallel monetary network" to go alongside fiat. I'm here to put an end to fiat.

But I appear to be alone. Bitcoiners today think a parallel system is the way to go, because it allows them to conveniently continue using fiat, guilt-free. They don't have to change anything in their lives, or be controversial in public, with their chosen path.

Bitcoin's incentives, on their own, can only get us about as far as gold. Store of value... hardly worth having over stocks or real estate. Not a fiat killer, just another investment option for the wealthy to allocate 3% of their fiat into.

We're gonna need to see Bitcoiners get angry at fiat. Otherwise, I fear we've reached peak MoE adoption.... peak Lightning adoption. It's all on the downtrend now. Even self-custody appears to be on the downtrend.

Healthy NGU will come from more people spending (while boycotting fiat), not from more rich institutions hodling.

Have you read Alex Gladstein's work? How about "The Creature from Jekyll Island"?

You're on SN, so I assume you must know a little about how nefarious the fiat system is.

Every time we spend a fiat unit, we strengthen and support that system. Period. No way around that fact. Bitcoiners run mental gymnastics all day trying to get around that fact, but they can't. You're supporting fiat by spending fiat.

Ah, if only they could see us today.

Node counts decreasing. Channel counts decreasing. Overall channel capacity decreasing. Percentage of Bitcoiners still using fiat, flat to up.

I share your frustration.

But I have a hypothesis. I would bet that the average Square merchant does not upgrade their app very often. They have to go to Apple's App Store and manually update.

I haven't seen the stats, but I bet most merchants simply don't have the latest version of the software.