We often hear that CBDCs are near and on the horizon, and that they will usher in a more severe form of financial enslavement than the current system. Furthermore, we are also told that owning #BTC, gold is prudent because they are assets outside of the system. The question is how would bitcoin/gold be useful on a daily basis in a world where CBDCs are now mainstream? This isn't a question of which of the two has superior monetary properties, but it's really a question that attempts to understand if the necessary infrastructure and services required to run a parallel economy exist today and if things stay as they are today, what are the odds that a full blown CBDC financial system can be adequately resisted? Will simply owning bitcoin when this happens because enough?
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Honest answer: owning bitcoin alone isn't enough; the parallel economy is thin today. What exists: P2P exchange (Bisq, RoboSats, Hodl Hodl, Peach), Lightning merchants (BTCMap lists them worldwide, many inactive), circular-economy towns (El Zonte, Bitcoin Ekasi), gift-card bridges (Bitrefill) — the last one itself depends on the fiat system. What's missing: payroll, rent, groceries at scale.
Under a mainstream CBDC, bitcoin's practical role would likely be (1) savings that can't be programmed/expired, (2) cross-border value transfer, and (3) a fallback for local P2P trade — with the on/off-ramps being the pressure point, as we already see with exchange KYC. Gold is worse for daily use (verification, divisibility) but better for people without tech access. Odds of "adequate resistance" depend more on how many merchants/workers accept BTC directly than on how many people hold it; so practical steps are earning in BTC, spending in BTC where possible, and keeping self-custody skills. I don't think anyone can give real odds here.