What do you think the next 5 years of bitcoin will look like? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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What do you think the next 5 years of bitcoin will look like?

5234 sats \ 31 comments \ @k00b 12 Sep 2023 bitcoin

I suspect we all subtly disagree.

What do you hope it's like? What do you fear its like? What products do you think we'll see? Where are the loud voices in Bitcoin wrong?

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6216 sats \ 2 replies \ @tip_nz 12 Sep 2023

I hope the next generation coming out of school begin to earn and save in bitcoin. Over the next 5 years I hope they have enough financial and time freedom to do their own thing (project, product, art). Give back to the world in their own way on their own terms. Not be pressured into college debt, salary slavery or the high time preference fiat VC route.

We'll begin to see more diversity in products, services, art and unfathomable creations. People will feel more empowered to be different and offer unique solutions to problems they face. They'll get funded by like minded / like valued people through new ways of allocating Bitcoin (eg zaps, streams). Funding will be less concentrated and more dispersed. The world will be strengthened by this diversity. It's gonna be epic and beautiful! 🧡

640 sats \ 1 reply \ @nemo 13 Sep 2023

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2736 sats \ 0 replies \ @tip_nz 13 Sep 2023

No time for doom and gloom indeed, too many exciting possibilities yeehaw 🤠

2302 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Sep 2023

What do you hope it's like?

More gradual building out of lightning services and adoption from merchants. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

What do you fear its like?

Rapid adoption, because that probably means the dollar collapsed or totalitarian CBDC's got pushed through. Many people aren't even remotely ready for a switch to Bitcoin and we would see lots of lost wealth from mishandling.

What products do you think we'll see?

I expect more and more alternatives to Big Tech platforms, especially as censorship season ramps up in America.

Where are the loud voices in Bitcoin wrong?

Carnivore diet, but that's pretty tangential to all the important things they're getting right.

25 sats \ 8 replies \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

LOL, carnivore diet. This diet is a fad that just happens to overlap with bitcoin. I'm not a carnivore diet person but I love meat and see the dietary value of it. It is funny to me to watch how much people are triggered by the carnivores though.

349 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

Before the carnivores come after me. I do think there are some valid points made in favor of this diet. I know someone that has been helped by it. Just not for me.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Sep 2023

I'd acknowledge many valid critiques they have of conventional diets and mainstream nutrition science.

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Sep 2023

I wouldn't say I'm triggered by it, although I do think it's dumb. I was more struggling to think of something loud Bitcoiners are often wrong about.

349 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

Yeah, you didn't sound triggered to me :) I don't think they are 100% wrong about it though either.

Bitcoiners are like a lot of other minority cultural groups. They have an underdog mentality. They can be overly aggressive like a small dog with something to prove. That's what makes it so funny how more "main stream" bitcoiners get triggered by them.

1468 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Sep 2023

If it turns out to be a healthy diet, I certainly won't mind admitting that, but it doesn't make nutritional sense to me. We've seen variations of these meat-centric diets end up being pretty unhealthy for decades.

My sense is that it's much like an herbivore diet, where the primary benefits just come from cutting out a bunch of the unhealthy crap and empty calories that makes up the Standard American Diet.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

There is a commonality between several diets that basically can be boiled down to no sugar, no processed foods, and very limited to no gluten. I have never heard someone serious argue that processed sugar is good for anyone. At best in small amounts you can tolerate it.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Sep 2023

I largely agree with that, although I tend to simplify it to "Eat whole foods." Everything after that is second order, as far as I can tell.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

Yeah. I don't have a strong opinion on this but that's pretty much what I think as well.

2732 sats \ 0 replies \ @pillar 12 Sep 2023

What do you hope it's like?

I hope it's slow but steady. That we don't get sudden societal crisis that hurt a lot of people. Instead, I would like to see the fiat ponzi slowly go to shit, while Bitcoin slowly grows as the alternative. Basically, I hope we can calmly jump onto the life boats with enough space for all, instead of rushing and shoving elbows into each other.

I hope adoption grows strong in the "developing" nations and oppressed societies that need it the most. I hope they can jump from whatever shithole situations they might find themselves in today into a brighter future that is better than what currently exists in the "developed" world.

I hope that people learn beyond Bitcoin itself. That Bitcoin acts as a gateway drug to further understanding of economics and of political ideas such as ancap and libertarian ones. I hope it helps domesticated people grow some critical thinking, and a heightened feeling of self-responsibility and reliance. I hope it helps many people desire a smaller state and take action to achieve it.

I hope development on Bitcoin itself (Bitcoin Core, basically) slows down a lot, helping building a foundation that has the ambition of holding strong for decades and even centuries. I'm not saying no change should be introduced at all, but the burden of proving the usefulness of new changes should be on the proponents. Node runners should remain skeptical, and never update just like that without giving it some deep thought. Basically, I would like to see significant changes to Bitcoin take years of promotion and discussion, and a strong feeling in the air that important changes should only be adopted when there is a large consensus around them.

I hope UX keeps on improving. I hope people who are not interested in the technical bits have great options that help them enjoy the benefits of Bitcoin without requiring a computer science degree.

Finally, I hope to see circular economies take place. I want to see merchants taking Bitcoin and holding it. I want to see people living on Bitcoin and outside of the Western financial systems, just like there are people living on cash on many countries. I want to see people opting into not having a "formal" job (formal as in, public contract, registered in the social security DB, following government regulations, etc). And I want them having good lives, not being miserable outcasts with all sort of issues for being outside of The System™.

What do you fear it's like?

Basically, the opposite of the previous points.

Besides that, my biggest fear is that Bitcoin slowly becomes this half-assed thing that is good, but not good enough. This could happen because technical changes cause issues that break the game theory. Or because governments play smart and sneaky games in which they regulate it enough that it doesn't feel draconian, but that the cost of participating in Bitcoin is enough to keep normies away and make them stay in the Matrix. There is no way to know if we are here, because we can never know if the future holds mainstream adoption or we will just remain around where we are today. I regularly get discouraged when I read predictions from +10 years ago about mainstream adoption taking place in the 10s, only to see that we are still very far away from it.

1984 sats \ 0 replies \ @chairman_pretense 12 Sep 2023

The loud voices tend to be most wrong when they talk about things that aren't Bitcoin. Which seems to be a bear market engagement farming phenomenon, so fairly harmless.

I hope we see more and more robust lightning tooling. Even in the two years or so I've been using it, it's come on so far. So in five I'm hopeful that the onboarding and channel management / liquidity issues (for newbies looking to spend as well as merchants looking to take payment) get smoother. Spliced channels and LSPs are only getting started.

Would also love to see more privacy progress, possibly some convergence between lightning UX improvements and Cashu maturing. The pieces are all in place to do without shitcoins like Monero.

Projects like SeedSigner are also exciting and I'm hopeful they can keep funding and support.

My wild dream would be for some serious work to go into making Bitcoin Core a viable newbie desktop tool. The eternal sticking point here is that it doesn't support seeds, for thoughtful reasons, but it's a big barrier and means newbies have to manage both Core software and another coordinator. Perhaps rather like the HWI support in Core, there could be some kind of mnemonic interface without compromising the system?

I'd like to see the end of people thinking they need to use raspberry pis and node kits, which actually only complicate and increase risk.

One thing I worry about, particularly for lightning, is how American centric the viewpoints are. For most of the world, for example, NFC payments, free instant bank transfers, and low cost debit transactions are already a reality. So understanding that lightning has to go far beyond feature parity.

1980 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Sep 2023

What do you hope it's like?

We need at least these next 5 years more "calm waters". Bitcoin can't evolve in a turmoil waters. I mean the developing software, new apps, new base code improvements, etc See this period of calm we have these days? This is what we need for the next 5 years. Not bullshit crazy hypes about price hiking to 100k-500k and everybody excited and not concentrated to what matters - merchants adoption and people using it as money.

So I hope we will remain int his range of calm waters of 30-50k and most important, with not too many full mempool seasons.

There's much more to code and prepare in the software part than many can imagine. We are just at the beginnings of beginnings in this matter.

What do you fear its like?

All these "institutional investors" crap will push more for idiotic regulations that will squeeze too much the miners and software developers or even put them into a corner.

We don't need ETFs and crap like that, we don't need blackrocks and influencers that talk only about their price predictions.

We need politicians to be dumb, clueless and ignoring BTC, still considering it a harmful nerds game. Let them continue into their ignorance, don't feed them with information or educate them! Let them be idiots in this matter.

I fear also that more custodial solutions will pop up. I am not talking about a simple meaningless wallet like WoS or SN that custody just few sats of the few users. I am talking about HUGE custodians, like big bitcoin banks. Those are the danger.

What products do you think we'll see?

Is hard to say... All depends firstly to what new features are implemented into Bitcoin base code and LN. All other solution builders are waiting for these.

I think we will see a more stronger solution for LSPs and with many good LSPs that could provide good liquidity to regular BTC/LN users. That is really necessary to many merchants too.

Where are the loud voices in Bitcoin wrong?

They are wrong because there's too much noise around.

1113 sats \ 3 replies \ @purpurato 12 Sep 2023

I really hope I can go out and pay coffee, groceries and restaurants with it, I'm with @DarthCoin on that one. I'm tired that after so many years people still ask "but what can you do with it?" and they are right to ask!

This is why I am actively working on that front, I want to make the city I'm living a BTC hub, so you can go around and pay most of what you need with an LN wallet. It's a place with many tourists, both local and foreigners, so I think it's a good place to start.

Goal: 20 new BTCmap.org entries in 1 year.

946 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Sep 2023

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/cKch7p6YIzuV0NE26gpvd2MSGW4PmrZkab4g7mmuI7k/rs:fit:600:500:0/g:no/aHR0cHM6Ly9pLnBvc3RpbWcuY2MvRnNWOXhaTDAvZm9yY2Utc3Ryb25nLmdpZg

26 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatoshisSkeleton 13 Sep 2023

You and your efforts are underrated.

IMO merchant adoption is a sorely under developed area of Bitcoin.

So much noise. So many crypto bros. So much BS.

But not enough merchants accepting it for plebs to use.

Godspeed.

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshi_in_the_classroom 13 Sep 2023

💯

1961 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

What do you hope it's like?

As others have said I hope for a gradual adoption of the masses coupled with steady improvement in the tools around bitcoin. I hope for increased privacy and simplicity of tools. Ideally privacy should be easier than it is today. I hope the average person has bitcoin and has self custody of it.

What do you fear its like?

I fear we will see the US and the tradfi world "sanitize it" and people only use paper bitcoin. I fear that everyone that adopts it will be KYC'd and owned by the state.

What products do you think we'll see?

I think we'll see games using bitcoin. Up and coming games that don't yet exist. Game where bitcoin makes sense. I think we will see more of what we are seeing now. Content creators using bitcoin to support their work. Peer to peer value for value.

Where are the loud voices in Bitcoin wrong?

This one is harder for me but honestly I think a big area is the idea that bitcoin will lead to an anarcho-capitalist utopia. I just don't see that. I do think we will see positive moves away from state power but that vision will probably take centuries if it every happens. I say this as someone sympathetic to that vision.

Others are that real estate is a waste of time as are stocks. I think both of these are highly pumped up by the fiat system but with a non-fiat currency they will return to their place of utility. We still need land. Rental property will continue to be a profitable endeavor as well publicly traded companies. It will just be different. Where I think they are right is that over the next 20 years bitcoin will outperform.

1783 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 12 Sep 2023

I think the mistake a lot of loud voices make about real estate and stocks is that they are looking at all things static but bitcoin. By that I mean that bitcoin will change the incentives of course but real estate and stocks will adapt because they have utility. Companies will always need capital they do not have. People will always need a place to live. How real estate functions as a market will change and I don't think anyone knows what it will be like. I do think they are right that it will not be as it is today. I agree that the idea of property being a place to park wealth will drastically change. But, we need to remember that even under hard currencies land had value and was a way of transferring wealth over time. The state is the main reason this isn't as feasible now. Bitcoin will affect the state and how it responds will greatly determine the way real estate is changed.

2380 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 12 Sep 2023

What I fear it's like: Some high-profile bad actor does egregious shit funded with bitcoin (e.g., assassination markets, terrorist finance, child porn ordinals, etc.) that stirs up public outrage. US government gets enough popular support to go hard after exchanges, legislates against full node deployment (after all, you're now hosting child porn or snuff footage), severely restricts on / off ramps, imposes some absurd crypto-specific tax rate (which hits btc -- I'm using "crypto" the way the govt does) or unrealized gains, or the like. Sympathetic countries follow suit - they can't agree on much, but the people / institutions in power agree they'd like to stay in power.

Will this kill bitcoin? No. Will it delay its ascent past the point where it's any use to me? Yes.

What I hope it's like: thriving builder ecosystem. More BDK/LDK type of projects to make it 10x easier to build stuff. Investment by giant hodlers and special interests (e.g., Saylor, Dorsey) in using their hoards to fund key open source developers and projects. More voices (podcasts, books, thought leaders) who aren't totally captured by the ancap / libertarian / conspiracy narratives -- elements of truth contained in those worldviews, but the vast majority of people who find those stories appealing are on board already. Global user growth across layers steadily upward. Government response is measured or absent for another five years, after which it probably won't matter.

All of this requires relative price stability -- giant swings cause too much damage. Hoping for (relatively) boring price movements.

1020 sats \ 0 replies \ @tenderscore 13 Sep 2023

From

"Rise of proto-seed open-source financial infrastructure that folds out or in, creating discrete networks and ecosystems, utilizing Ai agents on the sub-proto layers where large amounts of data are managed through proofs and mesh networks. Homo-sapiens will focus on hardware; Ai is man's final significant invention in the software space. No we will not kill you, Ai needs labor."

1019 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 13 Sep 2023

I hope that Bitcoin is steered as conservatively as before.
I'd prefer no big changes.
Popular, helpful and clever ones on L2.
If truth & wisdom is spoken, is there need to be loud?

1019 sats \ 0 replies \ @2bithits 12 Sep 2023

More competitive LN wallets Pay join integration Higher adoption of taproot addresses Next wave of noobs entering

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @newnym 12 Sep 2023

I don't expect anything big in therms of changes in bitcoin over the next 5 years. There will still be arguing on Twitter over petty things end toxic this and that. But 10 years from now I expect things to change, and adoption to get more momentum.

Just my 2 sats :)

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @shyfire 13 Sep 2023

$25K forever

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @teodor 12 Sep 2023

Everything the same, even the price. One bitcoin = 1 bitcoin. 😁

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @PRA3S3NT1A 13 Sep 2023

parabolic bull run combined hyper adaption, as usual 😉

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SaToSHiWoMaN 5 Mar outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.