107 sats \ 4 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 19 Aug \ on: People don't have bitcoins to spend bitcoin
The legacy custodians of the fiat debt based monetary system have slyly engineered things to make it very unlikely most people will ever use Bitcoin as a MoE.
Why? Because Fiats monopoly position over MoE is the basis of its power.
Look at how SWIFT works.
Look at how any monopoly works.
They have made sure that MoE use of Bitcoin is obstructed.
How?
Because in nearly all jurisdictions the use of Bitcoin as a MoE creates a tax reporting nightmare that very few people would ever want to impose upon themselves.
Thus most people who do stack Sats do so as a speculative commodity SoV investment.
Thus Satoshis original intention of creating a revolutionary decentralised P2P payments protocol alternative to the fiat MoE monopoly has largely, subtly been diverted.
In addition to the near universal KYC mass data surveillance of Bitcoin ownership has been achieved by only allowing a small number of CEXes banking access and thereby preventing substantial growth of KYC free DEXes.
The ETFs further subtly entrench this narrative of Bitcoin being a speculative SoV commodity rather than a MoE.
The legacy fiat debt slavery power brokers - bankers and governments - are well on their way to capturing and controlling the protocol...they have certainly successfully and slyly managed it away from its original revolutionary purpose.
"They have made sure that MoE use of Bitcoin is obstructed."
It's just the fiat system doing it's thing, I don't see a 'they' who are trying to do something, althought to many people this is a very attractive idea. It's a very complicated system with a lot of people in it with very different intentions and agendas. You could very easily make the same case that 'they' are trying to obstruct bitcoin from being a SoV by regulating exchanges.
At this point, the best thing is to just move out of the west for a few years, it's selfdestructing and history teaches us that people in power tend to do crazy things when that happens. I made that decision a few years ago and never regretted. I even sometimes use bitcoin as MoE for fun. Nobody bothers me about SoV or MoE.
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I mean... the protocol only means what the node-runners say it means. the protocol is based on the running on nodes. As long as you can run a node, hold your own keys, use a coinjoin when you wish... it's not really 'captured'. The etf people can't do anything except buy and sell shares they cannot make a bitcoin transaction with the etfs.
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Captured in terms of the ETFs tying up an ever growing proportion of the total amount of Bitcoin available and by continuing to change the narrative and perception and actual use of Bitcoin by most.
Sure a small minority might still be able to use Sats as a Moe but the majority are using it as a SoV speculative commodity and not as an alternative to fiat MoE.
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in my opinion in the long run it doesn't matter. hodling is still using... and people are holding (even if its the etf) as opposed to other things. holding and saving is using... and eventually imo people want to use and spend directly because it's more efficient
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