If bitcoin were to fail, what would be the reason?
Ban on "unhosted wallets"? Ban on mining? Quantum Computing? Coersion of miners to not accept certain transactions? Block reward diminishing coupled with L2 reducing transaction fees? A bitcoin 6102? As adoption increases, percentage of bitcoiners running nodes decreasing? Taxes on unrealized capital gains? An altcoin flippening bitcoin?
I've always found "hyperbitcoinization is inevitable" a dangerous idea. They haven't banned bitcoin because they know they can't. I'm worried they can nueter it though. Bitcoiners sticking to their values are an important part of why bitcoin is still what it is. As it becomes more mainstream will the masses still hold these values?
What do you guys think?
If bitcoin were to fail, what would be the reason?
Stupidity.
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hahaha I kinda agree...
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Haha, not malice? I think that if bitcoiners play their cards right, we could defeat anyone that tries to take it down. But hopefully we don't get stupid.
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No no. Hah. I meant, stupidity of those who don't adopt it.
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It's funny, I never worried about that part. I feel that fiat is dying, and would die even if bitcoin never happened. Alot will get in later than they should. I'm more worried that they somehow change it to be more CBDCish.
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I have a feeling in 4-5 years time it will be a bitcoin vs CBDC battle. Governments will not want us to use / transact / hodl bitcoin, they will want us to use their digital money trackers lmao. No way we are going to give in.
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Why so glum. A scenario where Bitcoin could fail is humanity becomes multiplanetary. Block time it too fast, light can't make it to Mars and back in 10 minutes.
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For me, I'm worried that BTC will not be well distributed enough during our lifetime to be achieve it's ultimate goals.
Obviously most people keep their net worth secret, but some of the OGs could be worth billions of dollars and are still saying "we're still so early."
I am not someone who cares much about the wealth gap metric between rich and poor, but the reality is, a lot of people do.
I understand this is unconfiscatable, pseudonymous money, but the looming specter of making the richest people in the world more rich, by buying into our system will surely dissuade a ton of people.
My cynical side believes bitcoin will be a counter-culture currency for a very long time or bitcoiners will be persecuted for being too well off.
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I have similar concerns over bitcoin distribution. I think of layer 1 as defense and lighting layer 2 as offense: layer 1 -- lindy effect: "life expectancy is proportionate to age" layer 2 -- gini coefficient: "a measure of the distribution of wealth within a group"
I can't speed up time and accelerate lindy, but we all can impact gini. Helping people earn sats over lightning is the best way I can think of to impact distribution.
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It's true. Lightning really helps the idea that bitcoin is a rock you engrave into steel, bury in your backyard and never touch again. At the moment, it is still seen largely as an investment. Not everyone invests. But everyone buys and sells stuff. As bitcoinization increases, more circular economies will grow, especially in developing nations. This will get more sats more evenly distributed. Many people who have HODL in their twitter handles are super-pumped to buy a hat or a t-shirt with Lightning. Bitcoin evangelism is definitley alive and well, i've seen many tweets about people orangepilling their uber driver or waiter and tipping them in sats on a newly downloaded Blue or Muun Wallet
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That's a good argument. I will say most metrics for coin distribution are flawed, since they include exchange wallets, which may have coins owned by tens of thousands of customers.
I once heard someone talking about "the halving" say, the price would be a lot less volitile if instead of halving every 4 years, it had a smaller decrease every year. The thing is the volitility has done a great job of keeping institutions and nation states out thus far.
Fiat is pretty unequally distributed also. It's easier to get a head if you are already ahead, that won't change with bitcoin. However, in fiat, they get to change the rules. They can benefit by making riskier gambles, and socialize the losses by tax funded bailouts paid through inflation.
Austin Hill, who was a founder and former CEO of blockstream spoke on Peter McCormack's What Bitcoin Did about some things he said bitcoin doesn't fix. He was talking about the "Vulnerable World Theory," in which as technology increases, ie, someone can easily bioengineer a virus and fly it over someone's citadel walls with a drone they built in their basement, the world becomes increasingly fragile. This causes wealth inequality to be a larger and larger issue. He also said something to the effect of "technology aside, when in history has 'the haves' ever been able to build a wall big enough to keep out the 'havenots.'"
I am also reminded of Pete Rizzo, editor at Bitcoin Magazine, who is a self-proclaimed "Bitcoin Historian." He said that part of the reason he does what he does is because in the future, after hyperbitcoinization, there will be winners and losers, and many confused and upset people, and we all will have some explaining to do.
Bitcoin doesn't solve everything, but it levels the playing fields alot. It works through people acting in their own best economic interests to create a beautiful network of value. Still, there are some things that Bitcoin doesn't solve, and Bitcoiners may have to make decisions beyond their economic interests to ensure the continuity of the human species.
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I've heard a couple good arguments concerning this that we could use to counter the wealth gap narrative.
  1. Money/wealth gets you power. That's true for any system, no matter what you do. The difference with a Bitcoin standard is that power doesn't get you more money. In a fiat system, the feedback loop of power and money is what causes the wealth gap to increase so much.
  2. There are no bailouts in Bitcoin. The reason why the rich stay rich and get richer is because they have the cushion of monetary inflation in case they fall. With Bitcoin everyone is grounded. If you fall, you will skin your knees. Doesn't matter how rich you are. They will have to get up and try again like the rest of us. Because the ground is solid though, it gives us all a chance to rise.
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First one has to define "fail".
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This is a good point. If bitcoin becomes the world's money, but is nuetered into becoming basically a CBDC, I would probably call that a failure.
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I'm going to have to agree with @DarthCoin and @theshanergy here and say that the biggest (human) risk to Bitcoin is custody. Any custodial sats are vulnerable to fractional reserve, rehypothecation, censorship, and seizure.
The only ways I can think of four ways to combat this:
  1. Make getting non-KYC bitcoin as easy as possible. For example, a mobile wallet with a built in p2p exchange. Making at home mining easy and affordable is another way to do this.
  2. Continue to encourage 1st party custody and 2nd party custody. Memes like "not your keys, not your coins", volunteer to custody family and friends Bitcoin as an Uncle Jim, etc.
  3. Make self-custody as unintimidating and easy as possible. Lots of backup options, sane backup defaults, good UI/UX, etc.
  4. Combat laws and policies (private and public) that make self-custody more difficult. I'm no fan of the state, but I think that using voting, lobbying, and campaigning in self-defense is justified.
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#3 is SO incredibly important, and such a complicated problem to solve. It will be interesting to see what types of security solutions (custodied storage of seed phrases, like a safety-deposit box or vault?) and insurance offerings will become popular in the coming years.
I think I’m a pretty responsible person, and still self-custody makes me a little uncomfortable at times (though more comfortable than keeping on exchanges).
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The biggest non-human risk I think is a Carrington event-like solar flare. I don't think that it will kill Bitcoin though. It will set back the network for a few years though.
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Lack of fungibility, coin taint, whitelisting, source of funds & KYC requirements, impossible tax reporting requirements etc. They can make it so difficult to use Bitcoin proper that everyone just uses regulated exchanges and then we're back to square one with fractional reserve banks again. At that point it becomes easy to bypass the 21M limit because most bitcoin will be paper IOUs anyway. Sound money goes out the window.
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Lack of fungibility seems to be a double-edged sword. The transparent ledger means it's not a safe harbor for criminals, which would be a much easier argument to make of something like Monero if it was threatening the dollar. On the other hand, I think it's reasonable that even non-custodial bitcoin, despite its sound money qualities, could be co-opted by a surveillance state. From my research, Whirlpool and lightning aren't really enough to guarantee privacy unless you really know what you're doing and are exceedingly careful.
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Yep, this is the way I expect them to fight Bitcoin. The first things you mentioned really only affects the regulated exchanges; the on and off ramps in and out of fiat. The fact that it can be easily converted into and out of fiat is alot of bitcoin's value, and therefore, such a thing would negatively affect the price. Tax reporting requirements is highly reducing bitcoin as a medium of exchange in the US and many other jurisdictions. But i guess thats only if they are KYC sats. But most probably are. As far as the fractional reserving, I remember back when Max Keiser, before he was a bitcoin guy, was encouraging people to request physical delivery of their gold and silver. Luckily, it's more practical to withdraw bitcoin. At least at the moment. I'd like to think that people would try to withdraw at the first sine of funny buisiness. But yeah, what you mentioned is what I think will be the government's strategy for fighting bitcoin moving forward.
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I feel like the global adoption of bitcoin in recent years will make it hard to fail.
With that, maybe an asteroid hitting the earth at astronomical speeds could cause bitcoin to fail. But if there are any survivors, would they create a system that resembles bitcoin (proof of work)?
Interesting question though. I'm looking forward to what plebs on here respond.
cheers
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Bitcoin's reason for existence is for censorship-resistance. Decentralized proof-of-work was the innovation that enabled this censorship-resistance. PoW is not cheap. It is not convenient (not instant).
Eliminate the censorship (and risk of censorship) and the reason for bitcoin existing goes away.
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Interesting, like if bitcoin ends the nation state, we don't need it anymore?
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I am in Bitcoinlandia from 2012 and I saw a lot of shit going on...
The biggest threat to Bitcoin is: CUSTODY. Nothing else.
In the moment the user give up his control over his keys to a 3rd party, is over. For more "custodians" exist... less resistance will have Bitcoin... If the banksters will control BTC, by monitoring all txs from custodial wallets, then the mission of Bitcoin is failed. Is over, it doesn't make any sense using it.
That's why as OG bitcoiners we have a duty: DO NOT LET THE FUCKING NOOBS WITH BTC ON EXCHANGES and teach them how take control of their BTC, how to use BTC in the right way.
All the rest is just NOISE, to make the same noobs to be scared shit and sell their BTC for the worthless fiat.
It's all about CONTROL.
I don't give a shit about taxation. I don't pay taxes at all. I am not a slave. Only slaves pay taxes. I don't give a shit about govs and laws they enact. I do not consent to be a shitizen, that means they do not have any jurisdiction over me, my money and my work and property.
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In the last centuries the world only got better: we got democracy, we beat the nazis, communism failed, global wealth rising and rising, production output rising and rising, less and less children don't learn to read, write and maths - even world hunger is on the retreat.
However, this is not a law of nature. The world improving is not like gravity - the nazis could have won, democratization could have failed and Bitcoin could stay a niche internet money. Would be a pitty but it's theoretically possible.
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