I came to Bitcoin for proof-of-work, the idea that one man's labor could not be stolen and should not be stolen from another and that Bitcoin was both a technological innovation...
And also an innovation for the Human Rights. Something that betters society.
A mining machine (a CPU) on one side of the planet... could create coins that could be bought or purchased, traded or sent to the other side without a 3rd party or intermediary all based on the Distribution of Energy. That's what got me into Bitcoin and kept me up late these last few years.
How did it work?
How would it scale?
How would the users interact with it, and how exactly would people ultimately be drawn to Bitcoin? In other words what were the things that made people use Bitcoin when nothing else worked?
And could (or would) the government stop it?
I'm not a Bip-110er, I'm not and never have been a forker (bcash etc) and I'm not a pessimist yet I feel somehow we have lost our way.
The number of people I deal with in daily life that have exposure to "crypto" is very small, low single digits tops and Bitcoin specifically an even smaller subset of that group.
THEN take the number of people who actually self-custody any kind of cryptocurrency (a much smaller number) THEN take into account the people who have spent cryptocurrency on anything and the number drops further. Then take the percent of people who have ever spent Bitcoin on anything... and we're talking about a VERY small subset of people a small percentage of even 1%.
And that's exactly what I don't understand.
Where are the spenders?
Where are the merchants?
Where are the stores and vendors who accept Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency?)
Where is the heart and soul of non-state money, the thrill and desire to separate Money and State?
Bitcoin cannot scale on "Layer One" no blockchain can... so that's why we have Lightning.
And despite what the 'critics' say Lightning actually works pretty well - just go to Steak n Shake or use Stacker News the technical demonstration as to what Lightning is and how it can work is actually very good.
Yet the world, the media, the financial press all of them are pretty much tone deaf... 'spending' Bitcoin is something they never mention under any circumstances... except to vaguely associate it with "crime" without explaining how Bitcoin works in any form or fashion. It's like the get-away robbery with no get-away driver... it literally doesn't make any sense and no-one explains it.
HAHA sucks for them I thought. Look at what they're missing! The reason they haven't 'joined us' (Team B) is because they just aren't ready yet. Any day now they'll join 'our team' Team Bitcoin because our team is clearly better.
But is it really? Is it REALLY them at fault?
What happens when the business blames the customer?
What happens when the business won't acknowledge their product isn't that good... or at least as good as it should be.
How long does the business last?
Perhaps Bitcoin just isn't what we thought - at least not in any reasonable time-frame and that's a big problem.
The government has done a damn fine job KYCing anything that flies, floats or fucks and Bitcoin has gotten extra special scrutiny. All the exchanges in the (allegedly) "free world" are heavily-KYCed, non-KYC is available but inconvenient in the best of times and between the disinformation and the relative sophistication that Bitcoin requires to use anyway...
The network isn't growing the number of users.
Not to mention hacks like the ColdCard hack aren't helping things to make a massive fucking understatement.
Then there have been the major pressures on all Bitcoin privacy tools, to include CoinJoins and everything else plus the privacy-focused developers themselves and now the Lightning infrastructure and tooling (Boltz for example that is recently and suddenly "offline.")
Lightning is a major 'upgrade' to Bitcoin privacy and usability... and I think it is no coincidence it is now being targeted or at least drawing 'extra special' scrutiny from governments even the ones masquerading as 'pro-crypto' while spending money they cannot possibly repay.
The same nation states that heavily restrict knife ownership, much less basic firearms (gasp guns!) in the hands of law-abiding people... were they so quickly going to acknowledge the existence of private money, separate from the state, that competes with their own which they fucking print up for free?
We were so naive so easily led and it shows.
Very, very few journalists' publications accept Bitcoin for donation.
Very few press groups accept it for donation even the ones with a tor address (a surprising number actually) and even those Human Rights groups that do accept 'crypto' for donation...
Will only accept Bitcoin from a "Coinbase" wallet which is a glorified bank account it isn't on chain anyway and then it is completely permissioned/surveilled. Then there are the 'minority groups', refugees' groups, civil society groups, advocacy groups for displaced persons etc... in the Middle East, North Africa, South America, the Caucasus, the Balkans...
Plus the anti-censorship groups (like the EFF or others) or who advocate for internet freedom...
Why don't they generally accept Bitcoin? Because today they rarely do despite it being "more accessible" than ever so is it really their fault?
Are they just the 'lousy customers' (of the Bitcoin ecosystem)? Or should we stop blaming the customer?
Despite all the nice words on Reddit and Twatter and Nostr (which is virtually unknown) the blocks are mostly empty and are either 1) inherently of low value due to design or 2) of low value to the world because they are inaccesible which they aren't.
So what happened? And where do we go from here?
I don't quite understand the situation but something feels fundamentally wrong.
Last week I re-watched some of the pseudo-historical drama the man in the high castle, a show about what the world could have become had Japan and Germany won the war.
The show is terrifying and humbling, as it should be. One scene really stuck with me -
Colonel Bolden: I just came from the handover at West Point. Patton shook hands with Goering. It's all settled. First men to sign on will get food and good positions within the Reich. The holdouts will get nothing - or death. We report for duty tomorrow, at 0600. It's up to you. [leaves Nazi swastika armbands]
If Bitcoin isn't used in the easiest of times, in other words if it cannot protect people as a Store of Value and isn't used as a Medium of Exchange when times are good... then how well will it really function when the times are bad?
At the end of the day, the computer should empower and protect people it shouldn't be for control and right now Bitcoin isn't doing either one (empowering or protecting) the way it should.
Either we improve it or we find something else that will - the world will eventually whether we want it to or not.
Understand the reasons why the customer doesn't want to buy.
On a fiat standard, it's fun to make money. You make friends by telling people what they want to hear, you send those people to go rob from your enemies, and you get a cut for doing basically nothing.
A traditional retirement account is effortless because it's uncontroversial. To earn Bitcoin you have to work. Even if you're coming from a position of fiat privilege that you can leverage, you still have to think for at least a few hours about what money is and make an executive decision that will cost you in the short term.
Bitcoin is stored labor. Making money through peaceful trade is hard. You don't become the 1% without an isolating painful slog. That's why the whole concept of taxing the people who endure it is so destructive.
You reason you feel that desire and they don't is because you are morally and intellectually superior to them. There are no easy answers as to what must be done about this disparity, other than to keep stacking.
Kudos.
That is the most succinct and entertaining description of what politicians do that I have heard in a long time. Thank you.
Thank you. Tips are much appreciated for anything you find helpful in
robbingresisting robbery frommyour enemies.You are outta Interceptors and cannot make more unless Xi gives the nod.
https://m.stacker.news/152511
My hope is that this is where the flaw in your reasoning is: Bitcoin is foreign to most people and difficult to use for many. They aren't going to adopt it just to play around with it. Most people adopt new tools when they can't get what they want any other way. If the thing Bitcoin offers is censorship resistance, why would anyone use it unless the current financial system really didn't work for them?
I'm more optimistic about Bitcoin than you. It may feel like most of the people are here for NGU and nobody really uses it, but there are little cracks here and there into which it goes and finds a foothold and begins to grow like some ugly weed.
I don't mean to be complacent. There certainly is a world where Bitcoin fails, but I don't think we are at all locked in to such an outcome.
I feel the exact same way.
The comfortable (maybe even sane?) path is to only seek permissionless options when you ran out of permission to use the easier, socially accepted option.
In a similar vein, social acceptance of an investment choice (or any choice that is measured in some fiat score) is massively underrated.
My wife had years & years of hangups with wanting to invest in real estate. It made no sense for our lifestyle.
She's a frikkin' accountant (a brilliant one, too, mind you), but even showing her the cold hard math that it doesn't work as well as other, better diversified options barely kept her instincts at bay but couldn't get her to shake that.
It was only then that I even began to understand how her closest social relations (aka. family) were infested with real estate agents who truly believed in the cool-aid they drank and served.
Yet, and here is the kicker, I still underestimate that factor today.
Social acceptance of money matters is a much stronger force than I could have ever imagined. I think those of us who are able to shake off those shackles are rare and have an exceptional edge.
the spenders didn't vanish because people got soft, the rails that kept spending private got strangled. boltz goes dark, coinjoins get hunted, every onramp's KYC, and a coldcard bug just burned a hundred million of trust. hard to sell money nobody can turn off when the state still watches every sat you move and the tools that blind it keep disappearing
This
the world doesn't want to have to be responsible for their lives - having to make a conscious choice and act on it outside of the state is beyond them - except for some enterprising people.
Interesting post... couldn't have put it better myself, and your concerns are valid. We’re part of the 1% using Bitcoin; we’re privileged to have financial freedom. When I talk about Bitcoin to a relative or friend, it’s like I’m speaking a foreign language or talking about rocket science—they give me such strange looks. That’s why I’ve stopped bringing it up with just anyone; now I only talk to those who are interested, and I take it step-by-step so I don't scare them off... hahahaha.
All official businesses have to follow government regulations. And as you said, bitcoin got choked out for control and taxation. The world is going full distopia mode due to AI pushing earnings disparity to an absolute maximum. The only way to control hungry crowds will be by police states. We will remain the freedom-seeking underground minority.
We have an incredibly far way to go. People need to see proof of concept before they jump on board.
I'd say that happened with store of value, but only fairly recently, such that people don't immediately think you're nuts for having bitcoin savings. All that took was being the best performing asset in recorded history for 15 years.
Clearly, it's hard to sell people on a foreign concept. I'm not sure what the proof of concept will need to be for medium of exchange. The direct pain-point of fiat for most people is that it loses value, not that it's difficult to transact with. That's why there's so much hope for adoption in places where the money doesn't work well for daily transactions.
I think these memes explain it all:
You choose to use CC shitcoins instead of sats here on SNs because CCs are easier and more convenient for you.
You are a fucking lazy virtue signalling HYPOCRITE.
Lazy virtue signalling sheep do not deserve to be free and never will be.
(I'm the OP) Good products don't need marketing, they don't need a 'sales department' and they don't need memes. Really good products sell themselves and the disconnect between what Bitcoin is today and what it could be is very large.
All the "events" and all the "influencers" all the "educators" failed to check the entropy on an "airgapped" device and users paid a heavy price. The whole thing could be so much better and it looks like a BIG LARP.
Bitcoin has to compete on its merits and if it were the users would be showing up... they aren't.
I'm not even sure I would recommend Bitcoin today for people needing financial freedom and sound money people talk the talk but we have lost focus on the fundamentals. It's apparent to anyone being objective.
Most people will eagerly trade freedom for a Big Mac and coke.
Most people are sheep and will never be free.
That does not mean Bitcoin has lost all its utility, although it does mean that a lot of the touting hype and virtue signalling is hot air.
You are incapable of responding in a reasoned manner to the facts and issues raised.
You are a troll a fake and a fraud.
You are a Big Talk No Walk Hypocrite.
I still think a big factor here is the tax treatment, at least here in the US. Spending any BTC triggers cap gains. I think that affects the entire btc-as-payment ecosystem.
As for the rest, I don't worry about it too much. We're playing a long game. The blockchain isn't going anywhere and as we continue building it will be ready when people realize they need it.
All those things you yearn for are out there and more are coming online all the time. Most are hyper-local or underground. We are still relatively early and most won't show up on google's front page for reasons of self-preservation.
You claim and posture to be freedom fighters but you remain dead SILENT as your government assassinates and attacks other nations in its mission to sustain and maintain its petrodollar hegemony over the rest of the world.
You wank on about freedom (for yourself) while ignoring that you and your governments wealth and power is built upon imperialist fiat money thuggery.
The Zionist bankers who have owned the US government for over 100 years have captured and controlled Bitcoin by designating it as a speculative commodity to be taxed and tracked and traced never ever providing an alternative to their fiat debt slavery hegemony.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/13/the-us-is-now-using-the-terrorist-label-to-interfere-in-brazils-election