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Successful to me means I can buy many things with it, without relying on Fiat rails.
At the moment, in Texas, I still have to buy gift cards or use conversion services to buy things with Bitcoin. I don't think it is successful yet.
It's true I can send Bitcoin to any address I like and this is a huge success. Maybe it is enough and I need to change my expectations, but if we can get to a world where I can buy my energy and food with bitcoin and pay for lodging in most places, I will be very excited.
At the moment, in Texas, I still have to buy gift cards or use conversion services
I've always likened this to not being able to pay with USD in Europe, or not with EUR in the US and not with either in the UK. My physical wallet is always full of foreign currency, right now there's notes in 7 different currencies in there, but not lots... like no more than 200k sats worth each, most of them less.
I recently orange pilled an existing business. It was hard to convince them and they were rather scared. So instead of accepting Bitcoin, they isolated it and started anew in a separate business, and now they have to see if they can build it out. I've done this orange pilling maybe 10 times in 5 years and results vary, most often because the business owners don't start out as bitcoiners.
So I think the question is: how do Bitcoiners enable more Bitcoining? Are we willing to do non-luxury, non-premium businesses? Run a non-sexy grocery store? A repair shop? A gas station? Are we willing to literally wash old people's butts for sats instead of renting out lambos?
As k00b said the trust trustless etc
"The internet" is more awesome today than it was back then....
I was a young adult when I first heard about this thing called "the internet" in 1989...and I agree with your assessment.
The thing I do miss from 90s internet was the culture. I don't even really like reading HN comments too much these days because it makes it too clear that the entire cyberpunk ethos is dead. Bootlicking pro-regulation pro-biggov compliant slaves replaced the edgy, cool, you-cant-stop-us 90s tech crowd.
Yet, in spite of that, I can still use encryption, I can still setup my own website, I can still communicate securely, etc....
I think there is probably a workable analogy of what will happen with Bitcoin. As the masses (and that includes Wall St) pours in, the culture will shift and the pro-bootlicker crowd will become ever more vocal, yet as long as the protocol nicely ossifies, you will still be able to use bitcoin in a "2013 approved way"
That's a very optimistic view and I for one believe you
There is light at the end of the block subsidy.....
Actually that's a whole other problem 🤣🤣🤣
I hate the term bootlickers which is a euphemism for COCK SUCKERS
Guess what?! That makes me a feature!
Love your responses Optimism....I've been waiting for your response and you didn't disappoint 👏 👌
I much prefer the world of today to the world of my childhood -- I mean all I did back then was run around I'm the woods and build forts. Now, I'm working on developing my internet niche microcelebrity.
I'm glad Scoresby clarified that he was being sarcastic because for a minute..... 🤣🤣
You can still send packets anywhere you want, with the note that sometimes you have to do some work to evade the censors, and there are much better protocols/facilities for security and privacy now. "The internet" is more awesome today than it was back then. In fact, the early internet protocols were maybe more decentralized than the websites and apps that are popular today, but most were definitely not p2p: much was client-server, from email to irc to usenet. p2p became reasonable only in the 90s, when it became affordable for consumers to have private broadband. Before that, it would have been cool to have for example a torrent-like p2p technology, but then, the cost of seeding some zipfile for a year would have been rather expensive: you'd pay by the minute for your dialup. Much more cost-efficient to put a file in a
ftp://<youruni.edu|yourisp.com>/~yournamefolder that was always online.So although I sometimes miss the charm of the early internet, and I definitely am of the opinion that what the internet is used for right now by normies is a candidate for infinite head-shaking and incomprehension, the nice thing about the internet is that you don't need to use any of these awful platforms. You can do whatever the fuck you want.
And I feel that that is the same with Bitcoin. I frowned at:
What do you mean with "in the world where it is successful"? It's not successful for you right now? It is to me. Maybe that means that I am that dead weight sitting between the commies that wanna take over and the scammers that want to take over. Guess what?! That makes me a feature!