Given that El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, and that central banks are trying to make CBDCs, it means that we're not wrong.

Even BIS ("Central bank of Central Banks") recently allowed central banks around the world to have up to 2% of their reserves in Bitcoin from 2025.

Valid worries.

I share your doubts, for one main reason: adoption. After almost 15 years, less than 200M Bitcoin users, which is terribly low. And I consider that the majority of them are not really "users", but mostly day-traders who don't give a dam about Bitcoin.

That's a very bad result. We, bitcoiners, failed to convince the people of this planet of the benefits of Bitcoin. And considering how much energy is used to make Bitcoin fail (by those who have much power and control), we have reasons to be worried.

I would say that Bitcoin has a 50% chance to succeed (if we define success as 1B real users, making it a de facto global currency, in the next 2-3 years).

No problem. Give me all your corn. I will take care of it. No worry. I will be the last man on Earth holding BTC. You can wait for "the next big thing" all you want.

"But what if we're wrong on bitcoin? ...gets banned or co-opted," - that would make me right, cos I fully expect this to happen on the "west". "people just get lazy and stop caring" - have you talked to Argentinian or Russian abroad, or Turk, or Nigerian? They care.

"What is "beyond" bitcoin?" - something new, but wont be money. AGI perhaps.

Get comfortable with the idea majority wont make it. Majority of your friends even are not gonna make it. You cant change someones mind, you can at most inspire them by example. Save your closest family and people who ask, but dont expect hyperbitcoinisation and happitimes for all. Its gonna get way worse before it gets better.

you can't ban bitcoin, the same way china can't stop users to access facebook if they really want to.

Your government can say it's illegal, what prevents you to cross the border?

If you study enough and know how to manage your private keys, Bitcoin is the only asset that you can really own, no one can take it from you, no one can prevent you send it to someone else, or receive from someone else, even if some gov want to have their piece of cake when you sell it, you may take your own decision to do the best for you.

You can acquire bitcoin without kyc on bisq, robosats, and other options, and slowly but surely, more and more shops/coffee/bar accept bitcoin as mean of payment (at least here in EU)

A worldwide ban is virtually impossible, and I don't see it getting co-opted, but you never can overestimate the capacity of humans to get complacent and lazy.

If we're wrong, we're wrong. Since you're on SN though, I'd assume you've done your research and made the educated prediction that Bitcoin will pay out in terms of adoption. So, if we're wrong and this crashes and burns, you made the rational decision and a million to one event played out.

Bitcoin is more like TCP/IP rather than a Western Union that should be supplanted by a Venmo or whatever. At this point I think the only thing that could "kill" Bitcoin is ignoring it. I find it very telling that the most convincing bear scenarios are from bitcoiners. In any case, I'm aligned with the principles within Bitcoin, and if we're wrong, at least we tried to change the money. That's more than what most other people can say for themselves who instead choose to succumb to fatalism

We might be wrong about bitcoin succeeding but we aren’t wrong about money needing to be fixed.

This is a very good question and something worth asking yourself if you are an inquisitive and critical thinker, "how could I wrong in this situation?" And if so, what could be our blind spot?"

Don't listen to those blindly accusing you of FUD of shitposting. It's worthwhile to seek the truth. We all have our path of self-education.

If we are to spend so much of our time, dollars, and personal attention, isn't this a worthwhile question to ask ourselves?

While severe failures of the network or outright ban's have been handled before - what if due to other forces we just see a plateau of price action? What if Bitcoin plateau's for 20 years? Would a potential 'failure' be sudden? Or gradual, and if so, would be able to identify it ahead of time?

There are some things that I would just point out to help you come to your own conclusion on this.

While the Bitcoin price can drop 80% over the course of several months, and sentiment along with it, the structural changes underlying the bitcoin thesis don't change as quickly. Bitcoin protocol adoption, network security, the macro and monetary environments, and investments in bitcoin ecosystem are larger generational "waves" influencing the (creation of) and adoption of BTC. And over the past 5 years, we've only seen an increase in all of these areas: greater news coverage, greater mining investment, network security, network adoption, government support, and so forth. For your own research, I would try to understand and stay abreast of these themes to know for yourself. Bitcoin adoption metrics are a simple place to start.

This is the premise of A Brave New World! One of the finest sci-fi books of all-time. Could our populace sleepwalk into a blissful existence and not care about the values Bitcoin stands for? Is Instagram the new Soma? I find a few issues with this (so did Huxley)

First, one thing that will not change is human behavior, which is that humans desire to be free, self-express, and act in their self-interests. Policies which censor, ban, or in generally impinge on human rights will find opponents, just look throughout history. I have faith in humanity in this regard. This is why we are here.

Two, math. Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources. While there are scarce resources there are unmet human needs. My belief is that governments, through the printing of money, are unable to provide this perfect utopian society resulting in a subservient populace. In fact, any policy or ideology attempting this only seem to make things worse. While we in the West could possibly imagine this scenario, plugged into our VR sets, just ask our compatriots in the global south, who's living standard erodes at each new printing of a peso or a lira. Unless we unleash unimaginable wealth creation through AI or free energy, we'd still need a neutral reserve asset to ensure the the productivity gains hit society. If not, more printing, more inequality, more strife, more upset people looking for a way out.

I believe, just as others have pointed out, that Bitcoin isn't "the app". Bitcoin is the technology and the protocol that enables people to build those shiny new things. It's worthwhile to revisit the first principles of Bitcoin and imagine not just the implications for society, but the applications we can build were we to fully scale Bitcoin through scaling applications like Lightning!

These "shiny new things" which you consider bearish for Bitcoin are the exact things that make everyone so bullish. I'd try to pick a few sources of information (podcasts, twitter) and stay updated on the absolute rad things being built with Bitcoin (this site!). I personally feel we are approaching an inflection point of embedding lightning into the web, which unlocks an embedded user experience missing for widespread bitcoin adoption. Your mom won't own a hardware wallet. But she might 'zap' her nephews post on nostr using her 'internet wallet'.

Also, I'd think about all the varied areas of expertise continually being sucked into the Bitcoin universe: not just tech bros and zerohedgers, but humanitarians, energy experts, the defense industry, public policy makers and so forth.

Lastly, I'd find it acceptable to challenge your assertion that we haven't already succeeded. Is it actually true we are still in the "who knows" phase and waiting for some magical moment to arrive that indicates Bitcoin has 'won'? It's considered a commodity by the SEC, it has Senators and Congressmen stating they are "HODLing", it is legal tender in several countries, it's being mined by Bhutan (and possibly more), generally accepted by the institutional finance, and has recently decoupled from growth stocks. How do you know we haven't won?

I hope this helps and have fun stacking!

On one hand, I find your concerns valid. I guess there is a point on reflecting about these kind of doubts and it helps us somehow do a better job at being Bitcoiners. The only bit where I would challenge you is that life isn't black or white. It's not either conquer the world and the universe or disappear completely. We will probably land somewhere in between.

Now, in practical terms: be stoic. Care about you can do. Be the Bitcoiner you think is right to be. And then, let the rest of the world do whatever it has to. If the world hyperbitcoinizes, that's nice. If not: you did the right thing.

At some point you realize that a happy life is achieved by simply living in accordance to your principles. It's the journey, not the destination.

Here's how I see it playing out. If we're wrong, it just means that new forms of currency can't gain enough momentum to out-compete large, hegemonic currencies. The bright side is that those large, hegemonic fiat currencies will inevitably collapse. I believe this will happen even if they become CDBCs. The fiat collapse will be like a forest fire. The large trees get cleared out and the ashes provide ample ground for something new to flourish. Unfortunately, just like a forest fire, it will destroy and it will be extremely painful. In this scenario, we were wrong about Bitcoin being a tree or even a sapling. It was a seed whole time.

However, not every seed will become an ancient, full grown tree. I think it has a very good chance with little competition, but its not a guarantee. If it fails even after the forest fire, then MAYBE it will be just like HashCash or B-Money and serve as the foundation for another Satoshi Nakamoto. Don't hold your breath for this "new Bitcoin" or bet on it. I think we should stick to this as far as it will go and resist our cultural urge for immediate novelty.

Bitcoin is money / a store of value, people are not going to abandon their wealth only to jump onto a hypothetical better money / SoV just because a better technology has come along. If there are technological innovations that allow for a better money, they will be implemented as a layer on top of Bitcoin rather than creating a new unit of account from scratch.

Bitcoin may be a 'dinosaur', but it's a bit like wine, the older the better. It has stood the test of time, it's decentralized etc. The base layer's sluggishness is its advantage. Also, decentralization is a process, you may create a better technology but to make it decentralized takes time. And the network effect comes into play.

Look at TCP/IP. It's not the best protocol we could possibly come up with for the purpose it serves, but the entire internet runs on it and no one is proposing to move away from it; we just build on top of it, because "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". And it's not even a fair comparison, because it's easier to switch to a different network protocol than it is to switch to a new SoV, as there is no generational wealth at stake. It would be very difficult to replace Bitcoin, much harder than it is for Bitcoin to replace fiat, because Bitcoin is a huge milestone that solves many problems in a grand, monumental way; something slightly better than Bitcoin wouldn't be a huge milestone and yet you'd still have the hurdles of initial insufficient centralization, lack of adoption, lack of battle-testedness etc. to overcome. Bitcoin has gone through hacks, blocksize wars, splits within the community, regulatory attacks etc. and withstood them, which makes it stronger. Any successor of it would have to do the same; so it would have to be better not only as a technology, but also as a network, which is hard to achieve, because generally a better technology is more complex, but Bitcoin's strength also comes from its simplicity.

IF…. A 50/50 thought about bitcoin, not so sure of the future. But the thing is we are doing it now, using bitcoin, talking about bitcoin, learning about bitcoin, yet it still surpises me rather wonder how it works. It is beyond my imagination how the developers or founders of bitcoin had conceived to make bitcoin out of no where. And here we are, just like a Satoshi… a denomination.

Well, it is like gambling. You bet on a horse and hope it is the fastest, but you do not bet all your wealth on one horse, do you? Some people bet only for fun, some people research and make more sophisticated bets with more wealth, but at the end of the day, it is a gamble.

We are very early in the cycle of Bitcoin and adoption takes time, so this is more of a one of a lifetime type of gamble. Lose or win, you are a part of something that has the potential to be great.

The more governments implement policies that make peoples lives worse off, the more incentive to adopt Bitcoin. The way things are going it seems the incentive is only going to increase over the years.

Even if BTC doesn't reach some sort of critical mass, it will be there when it's needed.

This growing number of people using Bitcoin to maintain the value of their hardwork wouldn't just up and leave it alone.

The answer is simple: if we’re wrong, we will lose money.

Don’t get yourself in a position where the loss of that money could ruin your life.

You can probably write this off to bear market burn out but of course there is a non zero chance that bitcoin fails, gets banned, co-opted, usurped by an inferior better promoted or politically favoured competitor.

I also get frustrated at times at how little attention "normies" are paying to what is going in the world. The obscene debt levels, the manipulation of money and information. Most people don't want to think about this stuff but they will have to think about this stuff when something breaks, which it will.

All we can do is put one foot in front of the other and try to enlighten as many people as possible. Slowly then all at once.

For sure it will be banned in some slow countries, but by the time they notice their economies are going away to those others states which are more friendly, they would have to step back. One thing sure at all is that bitcoin will be attacked soon, if not already started, by those who aren't interest of its adoption. Our mision is to make it reachable to everyone, delete from their minds that this is for tradding. Btc is the new standard and what comes behind has to take its value reference of it. We should take care of our developers, help eachother and teach.

Nostr is what will bring bitcoin to the masses and not only for its twitter-like applications. Massively underestimated.

The only thing you can be wrong about is the timeline. You could theoretically have a 1000 year CCP regime that manages to suppress adoption until they are finally overthrown. Most of the people who bring up thermodynamics (e.g. Saylor) spout gibberish, but it is thermodynamically certain. Your question is akin to asking "what if we are wrong and the sun doesn't rise tomorrow?"

I don't see these as being major concerns. There's a lot of real use right now and it's overcome those types of challenges.

The idea that something will displace Bitcoin is the more likely concern, to me. However, if someone develops a superior technology it will be because we've created enough value in Bitcoin to make that worthwhile. Also, this community would likely be early adopters of any new superior money technology, so I wouldn't be too worried about losing everything because you went all in on Bitcoin.

If you feel you're doing wrong using bitcoin, just go back to fiat and g'luck with that. No one force you to use bitcoin

Svetski's perspective, as outlined in the article "Bitcoiners Are the Remnant" (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoiners-are-the-remnant), deeply resonates with me. It suggests that those who are willing to invest the time and effort to understand Bitcoin are likely to be better prepared to navigate potential future financial crises. I wholeheartedly agree that education and awareness are key to safeguarding oneself in such circumstances. However, it is important to acknowledge that not everyone will take the initiative to educate themselves about Bitcoin, which poses a challenge to its widespread adoption.

While the lack of understanding among individuals is concerning, I believe the most significant threat lies in the possibility of governments successfully averting hyperinflation of fiat currencies. If governments manage to maintain stability and prevent excessive inflation, it could potentially delay the sense of urgency for mass adoption of Bitcoin as a viable alternative. Nonetheless, history has shown that pain often serves as a powerful catalyst for change, and if inflation reaches levels experienced in the global south, more people in the West may awaken to the importance of financial autonomy.

The growing acceptance of surveillance and digital currencies is indeed disheartening. Many individuals prioritize convenience over privacy, which often leads to a loss of financial autonomy. The allure of streaming services and government stimulus checks tends to divert attention away from crucial matters such as the integrity of financial systems and the significance of personal financial responsibility.

While Bitcoin's fundamental principles, including fairness and decentralization, make it a strong contender in the digital currency space, it is essential to remain open-minded and consider the possibility of being wrong. The continuous evaluation and critical analysis of our own beliefs and perspectives are crucial. If we cannot adequately defend our own arguments and consider alternative viewpoints, it indicates a need for further research and understanding.

As long a dystopia comes closer and closer to be real at a large scale I don't really worry for Bitcoins use cases and the constant growth of new Bitcoiners and freedom lovers among our ranks. Honestly, as Margaret says "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money". So as long as the fiat system still exists Bitcoin will be a big thing IMO Once "other people money" will be spent and turned into ashes, and that lots of people will hold their wealth in Bitcoin, then the hardest fight will begin as "easy times will come and with them weak men/women.

We are not wrong mate,no body can control bitcoin, HODL or regret later, you see BTC trading at $1M in coming years, possible in 5 years, STACK SATS.

I'm also annoyed by those people. They don't see the difference between propaganda and valid concerns. To some extent I understand it, since the two can have similar effect on BTC adoption and value, but they are not the same thing. I think it's often a matter of the classic "it's hard to understand something when your job [or future value of your BTC holdings] depends on you not understanding it".

One important difference between the two is also that some concerns can be mitigated technically, such as what has happened with Lightning solving the tx/sec problem of the chain. That wouldn't have happened if everyone just yelled FUD when they heard it. Listening to concerns is important.

Banning, in my opinion, is a highly valid concern, especially for all the people who owns KYC bitcoin, and doubly so for those who can't move to different jurisdictions. It is being addressed, both with lobbying and with privacy enhancing technology, but we're far from out of the woods. I don't believe the network would be killed, even by a global ban, due to its decentralized nature and there always being a few technical wizards who can manage to keep their nodes and miners hidden and online, but mass adoption could be delayed indefinitely, with a much lower value per BTC than today.

If what they say about BTC being the only truly decentralized coin is true, I don't think a "next thing" is very likely, unless it gets massive media support, which would probably unfortunately mean it's a surveillance theftcoin such as a CBDC or Worldcoin, which wouldn't kill BTC either, but delay it from growing faster, maybe even drag it down from current adoption, at least until the "thing" in question hyperinflates.

And for anyone looking to make some snarky comment, no, I will not sell my BTC to you or anyone else. I have mined BTC, bought stuff for some of it, more than covering the costs of said mining, and have some BTC left. If it goes to zero, I have already won, if it goes to the moon, I will win much more. I have decided on a level of BTC holding that I do not want to get below, at least not before retirement.

For the nocoiners, I'm with the people who say "get off zero". Get a little bit of BTC, preferably KYC-free, but not for more than your willing to lose, and hold on to it for at least one halving, preferably at least two. If it goes to the moon, that little will be a lot, if it crashes to zero, you have only lost what you put in. If you buy lottery tickets or bet on sports, maybe buy BTC for that money instead, or at least some of it - in my estimate a much higher chance of "winning" even if it's not guaranteed, and you don't support a zero sum game, but something that at least has the potential to be of extreme benefit to humanity.

People getting comfortable with big techs dystopia is not bitcoin's fault. However I think btc should focus more in ease of use. People tend to use what is more comfortable even if it violates their privacy/rights.

If we're right, we'll be richer and freer. If we're wrong, we'll be poorer and freer. As long as we're freer, that's good enough for me.

In short, bitcoin is designed to open answers. it should not work or not work! it opens doors with the oldest key to a new space! but slowly and gradually! it may seem strange, but if you do a mental experiment, then in the end, bitcoin will become that picklock in your subconscious, and will show you the possibilities. you just have to choose the direction.

This was one of my concerns. Over the years however, I've come to think of Bitcoin as a scoreboard. There is no other scoreboard that is as global, fair, and impartial; from who can transact on the network, to who gets the units in the first place. This makes the scoreboard a discovery, not an invention because this scoreboard can only be created once. As more and more people realise this fact, they will move from whatever scoreboard they are using, be it fiat, cbdc, or even gold, and onto the Bitcoin standard. It's just a question of time.

Its possible

But I don't think we are wrong

From a game theory point of view, I can't understand why we are "early" 14 years after the public release of the project. The fact that a lot of smart people are not partially or fully invested in Bitcoin, just for the hedging alone, worries me. That's probably the only thing that worries me about Bitcoin, the fear of the unknown, something that I don't know about and that other economic actors have and that doesn't make them jump on the Bitcoin wave.

Anyway, I'm going to follow my brain my heart and my guts because I deeply know that we are in the right place. Stack sats or die

There is nothing wrong with humans always experimenting with money systems. All I know is that the current fiat currency system has failed, and we need a whole new system, and maybe a newer system in the future. But we can only focus on the present.

The only thing that I can personally see being "beyond" bitcoin would be some type of device that allows us to have whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it.

If we could all just have whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it, I don't know if we would need money to trade with each other.

Something tells me we're a ways away from this coming to be lol

I think we are not entirely wrong as CBDC are coming around the corner. But I would say Bitcoin maxis are wrong, Bitcoin is not the only solution, neither Lighting.

legitimate question ..... if we are wrong....ill lead the troops to fork it into the real BTCmv (Maxi Vision)

:)

Until the relentless momentum of Bitcoin's advance in securing solid bulwarks in the economy lets up I'd hope that being wrong means being pessimistic.

Beyond Bitcoin lies Artificial Intelligence