5 sats \ 8 replies \ @duvel 6 Jul 2023 \ on: What are your expectations for bitcoin in 5-10 years? bitcoin
- Bitcoin and lightning are mainstream.
- Chainanalysis has skyrocketed. Everything is tracked.
- Lightning is highly centralized and regulated, although I hope I'm wrong.
- Creditcard companies have losen massive market share from Bitcoin payments.
- Governments worldwide are accepting Bitcoin worldwide as legal tender, but only with kyc, so they can confiscate it.
- Non-custodial wallets bitcoin/lightning are under attack.
- Open source heavily under attack.
KYC doesn't make bitcoin confiscate-able.
Read the Sovereign Individual. Governments will be competing for Bitcoiners. Any country persecuting their citizens will lose tax revenue when the citizens flee. Countries offering poor tax rates and poor services will lose citizens.
Travel light.
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True, KYC doesn’t make bitcoin confiscatable but it does make the person “confiscatable”. Nobody should delude themselves into believing that they can consent to living in a panopticon and that everything will be fine. What good is unconfiscatable bitcoin if you are not allowed to use it?
I agree with the Sovereign Individual thesis, but even if you move you still should keep your privacy and avoid KYC. Governments will never be our friends; they will simply become more tolerable.
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This argument is ridiculous. Also how does having KYC bitcoin make me unable to use it?
Yes, every hardcore bitcoiner will have a KYC-free stack, but how many normies are you going to on-board with robosats or bisq? They will use cashapp/strike/river.
The point is that once the adoption is sufficiently widespread, we will force unfriendly government to respect individual Liberty again. Or they will lose revenue. End of story, you and I will protect ourselves for all outcomes- but what about the global south? What about everyday people who don’t spend hours per day researching privacy and security online?
It’s a total blackpill to just accept the current government abuse and continue permanently with the Silk Road model.
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This argument is ridiculous.
I don't think so.
Also how does having KYC bitcoin make me unable to use it?
In your KYC paradigm, if you don't have enough social credit it won't matter whether or how many bitcoin you have, because nobody will welcome you as a customer. Social credit will be the new currency (in parallel to the CBDC of your jurisdiction).
Example: during the "pandemic", so-called "covid passports" were enacted in many Western jurisdictions. If you didn't have said "covid passport", you weren't welcomed in restaurants (among many other places), weren't allowed to travel, and so on, no matter how much bitcoin (or fiat, for that matter) you had.
The covid passport was the first iteration of the social credit. For the people who KYC themselves and submit to this paradigm, more advanced versions of social credit will come.
how many normies are you going to on-board with robosats or bisq? They will use cashapp/strike/river.
Yes, normies will do normie things. They will have a fiat job, a mortgage, they will pay their taxes, get their vaccines, be "good citizens", use FB/Insta/Blue-check Twitter, etc... They will eat their bugs, own nothing and be happy. And, yes, they will KYC all the time and buy KYC'd bitcoin, get some "gainz", sell their bitcoin for fiat and pay their capital gains tax.
To be clear, I wasn't talking to normies. I don't think there will be many normies on SN anyway.
The point is that once the adoption is sufficiently widespread, we will force unfriendly government to respect individual Liberty again. Or they will lose revenue.
The question is: how much liberty are you willing to lose before the government gets tired of losing revenue?
what about the global south?
I think they will be mostly fine. When you are at the bottom, you can only go up. When you are at the top, you can only go down. It's the people in Western countries the ones who are going to get screwed, and they will be fed a narrative to convince them it's for their own good. Bitcoiners will be the scapegoat for the West's problems.
It’s a total blackpill to just accept the current government abuse
KYC is not going to free anybody from government abuse; quite the opposite.
I'm not saying use or don't use KYC platforms. What I'm saying, is: be aware of all the implications of KYC. Not just under the current regulations, but also in the near future when governments are tight on money. Remember that the prior step to purges is making lists of people.
and continue permanently with the Silk Road model
I am not sure what you mean by the "Silk Road model". Do you mean black markets or the concept of agorism? I don't have the answers (I wish I had), but my intuition tells me that the way out of the dystopia will be a combination of agorism, jurisdictional arbitrage, getting out of Western countries and avoiding living in big cities.
As you can probably notice, I have very little hope in Western society. I already find the government abuse difficult to tolerate, and I cannot be waiting forever for the people to "wake up". Maybe one day people will wake up and things will take a 180º turn, who knows. But, for now, I have to take care of myself.
Since the "pandemic" I have realized that just buying and hodling bitcoin and waiting for the "magic" to happen is not going to cut it. It's on us to make the magic happen. The "magic" is not going to happen on its own.
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I also find government abuse intolerable. We have different solutions to the problem in mind.
You sound ready to move to El Salvador. Some of us want to remain here (in “the west”) and fight for the average person’s liberty and right to use Bitcoin freely and live their lives the way they choose.
“If you don't have enough social credit….”
-A real community will trade directly with each other using bitcoin, no one cares about our “credit score” or “social score”.
BTW- I don’t think any small business will turn down customers offering to pay with the best money ever made.
The market drives policy- and the market for fiat paper is shrinking by the minute.
Bitcoin is here as perfect money, but it is the bitcoiners who will change the world. Don’t give up on us yet.
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I'm not giving up on bitcoiners 🧡, regardless of where they choose to be. I was talking about the Western society. I don't feel I have been treated well by it throughout my life, but that's independent of bitcoin. It's just that bitcoin is bringing all that to light and has set me on a diverging path from the currently prevailing Western values. I guess that had I been treated well by society, now I would feel threatened by bitcoin and I would be one of those bitcoin haters, who knows. So maybe there is a silver lining to the whole thing.
The community aspect you mention is one of the most important things IMO. Is that related to the "Silk Road model" or do you see it as a different thing?
Not ready to move to El Salvador (don't want to be at the mercy of Bukele, and I'm waiting to see how things develop worldwide), but I'm going to visit the country this year for the first time.
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good vibes brother. Silk road model for me means max anon used for explicit trade. on the run from gov
Community trade would be the opposite, local farmers and workers trading with each other over lightning directly without worry
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possible
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