281 sats \ 6 replies \ @SimpleStacker 25 Jul 2023 \ parent \ on: What is the WORST case scenario for Bitcoin? bitcoin
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.
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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