Retail stores will be among the very last to accept bitcoin. Because this depends on masses of people adopting it. Masses won't adopt it if they cannot use it in retail, and retail won't adopt if the masses aren't using it. Chicken and egg.

What we are seeing is Bitcoin adoption as a store of value and slowly it is being accepted and deployed as an important treasury technology for businesses, governments, institutions, and various kinds of organizations. These organizations can allocate the resources to navigate the technological hurdles required to securely manage keys.

On the retail-ish side, I look at @sn as the example of a radical shift in how bitcoin will be used. And that is for micro-transactions on Layer 2 networks. Zapping pennies or fractions of a penny is something Visa/Mastercard and fiat simply can't do. The Bitcoin, NOSTR, Lighting, eCash stack "the stack" is looking more and more compelling as each layer of the stack reinforces the other in profound ways.

The IoT, Internet of Things, will also use the stack for payments because devices don't require KYC and Bitcoin requires no KYC for creating an account. KYC is absurd in the IoT universe. And Bitcoin as a digital payment network was built for IoT.

It feels like just a matter of time before a Facebook/Reddit/LinkedIn/Twitter killer emerges replacing likes with zaps and heralds a new social media renaissance. The quality of messaging will go up and spam and bots will diminish (because of the zapping incentives) and people will be drawn to quality. As this scales, we will see the chicken and egg adoption curve moving in the right direction and the laggards, retail stores will then finally start accepting Bitcoin.