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Bill Tai Quote Reflects Current Sentiment
389 sats \ 4 comments \ @siggy47 18h bitcoin
I just started reading And Then You Win by George Kikvadze. It's a memoir about the founding of Bitfury. Bill Tai wrote the forward, and this is how he summed up the "progress" that has occurred in the bitcoin ecosystem:
As of the time of this writing, Bitcoin ETFs are so mainstream that anyone with a brokerage account can now buy Bitcoin—the ease of purchase and sale of ETFs through well established stock brokerage channels is so low friction that even I no longer hold any Bitcoin directly (sacrilegious to many of the OG’s in the segment!) as I can have exposure without having to go outside of my normal stock brokerage channels or deal with passwords.
This guy, who I never heard of before, is a very wealthy VC. He discovered bitcoin early on. Guys I have heard of before, like Adam Back, Willy Woo, British Hodl, Saylor, et al, express similar sentiments.
It is infuriating, and probably mostly because bitcoin was created to destroy the system they now embrace. It makes me root for a coinbase hack. Oh well. Bitcoin will survive.
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336 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 15h
Just to play devil's advocate, but isn't this also what Hal Finney envisioned?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5529621.0
Self custody probably was never going to be mainstream, but the option for it matters: #1030571
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51 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 OP 9h
Well, you could look at it that way, but he was speculating about the future back in 2010, when shitcoins and all their faults hadn't been created, and neither had lightning. Also, I have all the respect in the world for Hal, but he had some wacky ideas like all of us. He was heavy into transhumanism (#1276224) and I believe his head is still cryogenically preserved somewhere.
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36 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 9h
On this issue I still think he is right though. The fact is, people don't like to do hard stuff. It's hard enough to get people to focus on one skill, and once many people acquire that skill which earns them money, they are quite happy to outsource everything else to others. That's why we have all sorts of jobs that honestly wouldn't exist if people weren't lazy, like a lot of financial advisors and tax accountants. The truth is some people will look at numbers and technology and say, "F this, I want someone else to handle this for me."
I saw you talking with justin_shocknet here about linux commands to get your wallet working...... like, do you know how rare that is, especially for someone without a technical background? You are probably in the 0.01% of the population -- not trying to glaze you or anything but it's the truth.
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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 9h
OI don't disagree. I just think there's a lot of space between those two extremes, and I do think the main issue is trust, not whether something is complicated to implement or not. It just takes work to create more user friendly trustless products. I think that's what justin is trying to do. There are big improvements with hardware wallets recently. Same with @k00b here. It's hard work. I don't think you need to be a hard core maxi to realize the chance you take trusting coinbase custody, for instance, or BlackRock.
Bitcoin exists because of the 2008 nonsense.
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