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102 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 23h \ parent \ on: What Do You Guys See As the Best Metric of Bitcoin Adoption? bitcoin
I don't see that intention has much to do with it at this point. The network is live and permissionless -- whatever can be done will be done. If we cannot stop someone from using it a certain way, isn't that one of the ways we have to accept it will be used?
Yes, I agree with this, from a reality perspective, but:
The conversation began with the OP's question: what is our proxy for bitcoin winning?
I think that what I'm arguing here is that the key success factor for Bitcoin, since the start of the network in 2009 isn't the fullness of blocks, but the intended usage as p2p electronic cash. Bitcoin can still be successful for other purposes than its intended purpose, which is fine. But I think that if we are to assess "is Bitcoin winning?" then we would do well to not move the goal posts during the game.
The first sentence of the whitepaper imho is indicating the key thing to measure:
A purely peer-to-peer (1) version of electronic cash (2) would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. (3)
By this text I'd argue that the only transactions we ought to measure are those that:
  1. Are peer-to-peer, not to-self: inscriptions, swaps, LN channel opens/closes and coinjoins are out.
  2. Aren't a form of debt or IOUs: all wrappers, alt-chains and current L2s except Lightning are out.
  3. No middlemen: all txs to exchanges and payment providers are out. Technically zaps on SN are out too.
Now, since we cannot measure LN transactions nor can we identify all the middlemen, we need a proxy. However, what I find unreasonable, is to bring back all the out-of-scope transactions back in.
These are the consensus rules we have.
By that logic we could also say that since empty blocks that are fully filtered are consensus valid, total censoring would still make Bitcoin successful. But is the blockchain the goal, or the means?
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 15h
I can't argue with that quote from the white paper: that is what I want bitcoin to be. That's how I want to use it. You make a good point. Sorry it took me so long to get it.
Clearly the blockchain is the means. This also makes sense to me. I still struggle to see a world where bitcoin succeeds without full blocks, but I see that this is not the same as "full blocks are a proxy for bitcoin winning." Thanks for taking the time to help me work through it.
I am partial to the metric you proposed to the OP was people saying "pay me in sats" if I recall correctly.
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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 14h
No worries! I woke up early and fresh and it was much easier to clarify my point - so, my bad: shouldn't try to argue when exhausted haha.
I think it's what most of us that are in fact using Bitcoin - and arguably most stackers are doing that - want it to be an MoE, at least to some degree. That's also logical because that's how we use it and - at least to my early class of Bitcoiners - all it ever was anyway.
All the shitcoinery, from early "colored coins" to mastercoin (omni, which birthed Tether) to counterparty, was moved out, to Ethereum, which offers a solution to that. This was awesome, because no one that cared about the money-properties of BTC really wanted the crap on the bitcoin chain.
Bitcoin, not blockchain?
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