Everyone keeps saying we’re early.
But Bitcoin has:
- ETFs
- institutional money
- global awareness
At what point do we stop calling it “early” and accept we’re just… not late?
Or is “early” more about mindset than timing?
Curious how people here really see it.
When I hear people say "we're early", it usually sounds something like an explanation for why Bitcoin isn't more widely used. "We are early in the adoption curve."
But usually when I hear the term "late" in this context, it is describing an individual who feels like they should have gotten into Bitcoin years before they actually did.
It's interesting to think about whether or not we are late in the adoption curve. Probably not. But the lack of adoption (despite the ETFs and institutions) does make me wonder if we have overestimated the appeal of censorship resistance.
It's not only about the broad appeal of censorship resistance. What matters is how much more the people who care about censorship resistance care about it compared to how much everyone else cares about the advantages of their money.
If we care about using bitcoin and everyone else is indifferent about which money to use, then bitcoin wins eventually, regardless of how few we are.
Fair point. I think most people don’t value censorship resistance until they personally need it ; which is exactly why adoption feels slow until suddenly it doesn’t.
Or most people are sheep, including Bitcoiners.
imo that's a charitable interpretation of people who say "we're so early"
I think a lot of it is also price cope. reassuring oneself that the price is still gonna go up and they're still gonna come out ahead having bought bitcoin
Financial advice- Stacker News is a circle jerking echo chamber.
Was I early in 2017? Not really.
It was simply the first time I'd heard about it.
Everyone has heard about it now- so its not early anymore.
Will Bitcoin ever being used widely as a P2P payments protocol?
Unlikely, its been captured and controlled as a KYCed and taxed speculative commodity.
That’s the part most people don’t want to admit.
A lot of us weren’t “early” , we were just introduced at different times.
And yeah, Bitcoin becoming a regulated speculative asset definitely changed the original vision.
But I also think censorship resistance only matters after people need it. Most people optimise for convenience first… principles later.
Early is a mindset until Bitcoin is the global reserve asset. Right now it’s still <1% of global wealth
Exactly. Until Bitcoin becomes the default savings layer for the world, we’re not late; we’re just early with better information.
when we think about people becoming fiat millionaires from free bitcoins from faucets, we feel late, but probably in the grand scheme of things, we are early.
People in 20-30 years will look back at the zaps we were getting here and think it was crazy, much like i think about the facuet sucking days
We’re either very early or very wrong
I think we are early
You are saying what serves your own hopes, SN peer group pressure and self interest.
Exactly. I used to feel late too, then I realized future people might see today’s sats the same way we see faucet BTC; obvious only in hindsight.
We went from magic internet money to nation-state adoption in 15 years.
Yeah, we’re still ridiculously early.
Feels crazy when you zoom out. I used to think “early” was cope, but watching countries stack and build around it makes it feel very real.