190 sats \ 18 replies \ @phygit 25 Jul 2023 \ on: What is the WORST case scenario for Bitcoin? bitcoin
Don't want to seem more pessimistic than I am, but I'm close to think that the worst possible scenario IS happening right now.
After nearly 15 years, Bitcoin has barely 100M users. It means that 99% of the people on this planet don't use Bitcoin.
And out of the 100M, the vast majority are day-traders, who actually don't give a damn about Bitcoin, as long as it's a volatile asset that bring them profit.
If this path doesn't evolve quickly, Bitcoin will remain an "oddity", only used by a tiny community of people. Its value will probably never be 0, but it will have failed and changed nothing to this world.
This seems overly pessimistic. 100M users in 15 years may not seem like a lot if you're talking about a tech company (even though it actually is a lot)... but Bitcoin is money which has probably the strongest network effect of any technology out there, so you can't really judge things in the same way.
When I look at Bitcoin I see a real technological and social achievement. A public decentralized ledger has been running for 15 years with almost zero downtime and miraculously everyone in the world agrees on the state of the ledger. Not only that, peoples' willingness to pay for the asset traded on this ledger has gone from <$1 to $30,000.
Sounds like a success so far to me.
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I am missing retail adoption. This would be driving btc like crazy.
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You don't need to convince me of the benefits of Bitcoin ;-).
The question you should ask yourself is why so few people in the world see these benefits. After so much energy spent to advocate/explain Bitcoin (and its obvious advantages for citizens), the vast majority is not using it. This really is the only question to ask.
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Because most of the benefits are not immediate and are public, rather than private in nature.
Most people don't really care about, or even think much of, how their choice of money affects the public sphere--they're just interested in getting through life, and Bitcoin just doesn't really help with that right now. Unless you count the potential for "number go up", but we know that's not reliable on any predictable timescale.
Combine that with how most people are quite allergic to technical jargon... and there isn't yet a user-friendly app that lets you start earning and spending bitcoin right away... and many merchants don't accept it anyway... and it's easy to see why more people aren't using it.
But even in the face of such challenges, many people have become educated about Bitcoin over time and many people are slowly coming to see its advantages. Adoption is increasingly, slowly but surely. I really have a hard time viewing the state of things today as anything other than a success. I think we need to have more patience... people don't just suddenly adopt new monetary conventions over night.
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it can be very difficult for people to see the importance of some things beyond what's right in front of them currently
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You have to factor in the amount of destruction "crypto" has caused. The majority of people laugh and mock "crypto" and rightfully think it is all a scam or ponzi. Although it might be unfair they lump bitcoin in with crypto, actually they conflate it as one and the same because bitcoin is the only crypto asset many people know. So this has done great damage to the Bitcoin brand. I think people are slowing coming around to the idea that bitcoin and crypto should be treated differently.
Sure crypto has been a gateway drug for some to touch the stove and then become bitcoiners but overall it has done more damage than good.
If you factor in the level of trust one must have to convert to a different money to save in (it's not like switching from twitter to threads or blockbuster to netflix- we are talking people's life savings here and breaking their worldview of what money is) and the damage crypto has caused it is going to take some time or a major tipping point to get to mass adoption.
There will be some increased bitcoin usage in jurisdictions with failing currencies (which there will be many more to come) but most will first run to the dollar, when that fails they will say let's try gold that worked in the past, when that fails and they see more and more people have been successful preserving wealth with bitcoin they will begin to consider it.
If we could be at a billion users in 10 years that would be amazing but it might take 20.
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I'm still as convinced as ever about Bitcoin, but the longer it takes for adoption, the more likely it seems touching the hot stove might unfortunately be what it takes for the majority of the world
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The hodlers are hoping for a doomsday scenario and hyperinflation, as a driver for the ultimate mass adoption.
I see this as quite plausible, but far from certain.
As a currency, BTC is too slow and not compelling. Lightning is way to complex, over-engineered by committee, does not work when the recipient is offline, I doubt it will gain much more mass adoption than PGP email signatures from the 1990s.
The valid use cases for layer 2 are micropayments, lack of chargebacks and lack of benevolent payment processors that decide which transactions are appropriate. But Lightning as a tech just does not cut it IMO.
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Oh and in lighting you need a balance to initiate a custodial channel, or trust some rando provider online. This kills onboarding and interest from ux perspective with an y real amount of money.
From the over engineering point you make and the UX perspective Monero is great.
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This does seem discouraging, but take heart that governments all over the world will continue to debase fiat at ever increasing rates making Bitcoin an increasingly attractive alternative over time.
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I remember the time back in 1992 when a friend of mine said hey i’m typing all these ip addresses ans I’m chatting with somebody at the other side of the world.
He had a list of 50 ip addresses which he needed to type to get to a chatbox.
No netscape, no chrome, no videos, no stacker.news, no whatsapp, no web forms, nothing.
Ans look at us now: we talk to an artificial intelligence chatgpt at the other side of the world in just 30 years. 1 generation. That’s how much it could take to change the whole world!!!
In 15 years you could have people asking themselves: what is fiat paper money? Mom: what are they talking about? Can you tell me what a dollar bill means mom?
That kid would be born in a world where the native internet money is the sat. Stack sats.
I did not see the Internet coming like this in 1992. I couldn’t.
But now I believe in some way or another sats will be embedded in the fabric of the internet. You will be able to stream sats just like you stream sats like “words”. 5 sats. I just streamed 5 sats w o r d s. One sat per letter!!
Imagine if stacker.news could pay and spend sats per letter. Or per paragraph instead of per post. Imagine if every second watched on youtube would be 1 or 2 sats. If you watch 30 seconds you pay 30 sats!!
That is what I think would be possible in a generation or maybe earlier.
Information = sats. 1 second of video is one sat. 1 letter is one sat!!
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This is an opportunity. When less then 1% of the world - eg 8 million people and 88-100 M accounts has a precious asset like bitcoin I see opportunity.
Why? It means that 99% of the world is still sleeping. They don’t know what is happening with fiat money.
You and I know, otherwise you would not be stacking sats.
I believe that, when, not if, they wake up, the sats will be worth more fiat money than ever!!!
They will all be running through one door 99 of them. And you will be sitting in the other room and they all woukd want your sats. Because their fiat money is losing value fast.
You would be able to buy their houses, cars, businesses for free.
It would not be great to see these people awakening and begging for sats. It would be quite a bloody film to see. But that’s what normally happens during great wealth transfers.
Bitcoin is an exponential network. It doesn’t grow like linear. It grows exponential.
When the shit hits the fan with a bank run, or when a Bitcoin ETF of Blackrock, Fidelity etc gets approved it could go in days, weeks months.
Just try an exercise to double 1 dollar to get to a million dollars. Keep doubling and see how fast you get there. Or check the story of the rice of the Chinese person who created the chess board and you see the power of exponential growth.
The 88-100 million of accounts/people could double suddenly to 200, 400, 800, 1,6 bil, 3,2 bill, and then we are there.
Ask yourself this: there was a time when only 100 million people had access to the internet. And look at us now.
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"Bitcoin is an exponential network."
Please expound on this idea.
Agree. Along similar lines, I'm also surprised that only 1 million addresses hold 1 or more btc. Blows my mind less than 1 million people would be invested "significantly" by now. Thats like less than 0.3% of the US population has been willing to invest between $200 and $69k to have an entire bitcoin over the last 14 years, depending on when they bought. I'd expect this to be much higher, even if all whole coiners bought the top.
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Because people follow good opsec and don't reuse addresses. And withdraw from exchanges way before they reach 1 BTC.
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what does Bitcoin's needed evolution look like to you?
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Simply put:
. Replace "trading" and "investing" by "using". As long as most people see Bitcoin as a martingale to get rich, Bitcoin will fail. Omnipresent charts and price analysis in cryptomedia is pure madness. Bitcoiners (and the media) need to get rid of the price obsession and focus on usage and benefits (only Bitcoin Magazine understood that so far).
. Get rid of the "hodl" narrative. You will never convince billions of people of the utility of something by telling them to buy this thing and keep it locked in a safe (and for how long?).
. Convince more merchants to adopt and promote Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency and a payment solution above anything else. Success will come from users spending BTC as they do with fiat. We need more merchants accepting BTC and developing incentives (ie "10% discount if paid in BTC", etc.).
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I agree, in general we need to be leading by example - using BTC as currency just like anything else.
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