What do I know, I'm just an 80 IQ pleb. I don't know anything. However here are some logical conclusions, doing as much study as I can.
  1. The next ten years will see one of the greatest wealth transfers in history from general no-coiners... to Bitcoiners as it (Bitcoin) becomes a more mainstream financial asset through ETFs, custody solutions, marketing, press coverage, and education.
  2. Non proof-of-work financial assets like Dollars, Yen, Euros, as well as non-proof-of-work 'cryptos' will continue to bleed out against Bitcoin. The actual percentage of people with Bitcoin in Western countries is small... single digit percentages maybe very low single digit percentages. Yet eventually everyone will want at least a small exposure to Bitcoin through some financial medium (self-custody being the best)... and there is only so much Bitcoin. It really is scarce.
  3. Bitcoin continues to move from 'weaker hands' to 'stronger hands'... as the HODL crowd continues to accumulate and save even during 'price downturns'. Like late 2022/early 2023, nothing fundamentally changed with Bitcoin - but high interest rates and the FTX criminality/crypto scam did a number on public perception for no-coiners and non-Bitcoiners. It was the perfect time to save in Bitcoin if you understood it. I remember reading an article at the time in the NY Times, where a well-known Bitcoiner said "Hey Bitcoin is on sale" and he was right. The NY Times had no idea they didn't understand it (as most people don't now).
3 1/2) This is further evidenced by the buy the rumor/sell the news attitudes of some 'traders' after the ETF approval. They thought BTC was a tradable speculative bubble and they had NO IDEA what they were buying. Sell the ETF approval. Right. How did that work out?
  1. Bitcoin is in fact not a "speculative bubble" but a new economic paradigm that will continue to change, and possibly accelerate change, of economic, social, and governmental norms. Distributed proof-of-work is the apex predator financial asset and ultimate Medium of Exchange for countless people. If it isn't today... then it's logical it will be in the future.
  2. Bitcoin has unique traits and characteristics that make it a much better store of value (SoV) than traditional real estate, gold, bonds, stocks, or "other" commodities. And YET it is really, really small relative to all those other assets. There are lots of estimations and calculations on Bitcoin's total addressable market... however if Bitcoin captures even a small percentage of all the Bonds, Stocks, Real Estate, relative to its current size... holy crap it would be orders of magnitude larger than it currently is. You are NOT LATE to Bitcoin.
4 1/2) Again, logically you are not late to Bitcoin. Think forward ten years. The vast majority of people know nothing about Bitcoin, and those who 'think they do' roll their eyes, laugh, or call it a pet rock. And if you ask them how many Bitcoin transactions they've made, or what they think about the lightning network they will have no idea what you are talking about. Fee market? No idea. Multisignature wallets? No idea. Public/Private key cryptography? Say what again?
  1. Bitcoin is on an unfortunate collision course with government currencies, debt, and inflation. If you want to protect yourself from inflation (which is most of asset/money management anyway) then BUY BITCOIN as it only has so much inflation left, and the inflationary rate is going down over the next 100 years. Disinflationary and 21 million is all you get. AND as more people finally figure this out and allocate to Bitcoin, purchasing power preservation continues but the availability of that Bitcoin isn't necessarily guaranteed. Bitcoin's exchange rate may continue to rise and considerably over the next decade as people realize what Bitcoin is and need it to preserve purchasing power relative to other traditional inferior assets. Stocks, bonds, real estate, CURRENCIES they bleed out relative to Bitcoin over the next decade.
  2. Government, especially in Europe, if they wanted to "stop Bitcoin" should have been serious and dedicated to stopping it about a decade ago. Now it seems like they want to 'stop it' and 'tax it'? Are you kidding? Really for real? Stop it now?
6 1/2) See the Capital Gains tax proposals in Italy (46%) and the "self-hosted" wallet regulations in the EU... you're not supposed to 'custody it yourself'. Or 'buy it peer-2-peer' or really use it to buy things. Unreasonable tax requirements and reporting requirements make it very difficult if not impossible to use this way IE as a MoE. Yet the reason it isn't used as a MoE... is the very reason it should be restricted and taxed heavily. Because it's only for criminals. Right. Well I am not a criminal.
It's circular logic and it's bull****.
  1. It's logical that at some point Bitcoin's use in commerce and trade, even if just online, will increase. Despite taxes and governmental restrictions in the EU, Lightning is generally cheaper, more sovereign, more transparent, and faster to settle than traditional credit cards. Eventually somewhere, somehow businesses will prop up that harness Lightning's low costs for microtransactions... like Stacker News. For podcasts, music, blog articles other online media too. With some imagination you can create all kinds of applications and legitimate businesses that use lightning's lower fees and instant transfer of value... to provide better customer service. A better customer experience. That sounds like a profitable business model to me if it improves on traditional value for value transfer which Lightning does.
Without going on and on... Bitcoin is so incredibly exciting. In 1995 people looked at the internet and it was clunky, slow, hard to use, unreliable, and for complete nerds and tech-people at universities. There were MANY naysayers. Playing games, shopping, banking, email, video-conferences... this was not envisioned by the vast majority of people. The NY Times said the internet would go the way of the Fax Machine. WELL THEY WERE WRONG. 1995's internet was painful and look at where it is today.
Why can't the same thing happen with Bitcoin and Lightning over the next 10-20 years?
41 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 20 Oct
Good article.
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The tax thing and a parade to stop Bitcoin by governments all around shows the desperation of all those money mongers who have been stealing from people from centuries.
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Good one to say...
But in the end you compared it to internet isn't gonna hide the truth that internet didn't find obstacles and wasn't so difficult a thing to adopt. But free and decentralized internet is still not a thing of today.
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I believe that many of the 'adoption' problems we've faced... Are due to crypto scams and confusion. Which has led to excessive governmental attention with regards to banks, custody, and Capital Gains Taxes.
If you confuse the public with 'crypto' and they don't know what to think, and it all just looks like a big scam... it's way harder to educate the public and onboard companies in a transparent way.
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You make some good points but with a very hopium bias, imo. It seems foolhardy to think the extant fiat powers- bankers and governments will simply allow Bitcoin to take over- in fact it seems completely irrational to think they will. Just because Bitcoin does offer superior monetary integrity to you, me and anyone who adopts it, it does not offer superior qualities to the fiat power brokers- it actually undermines their massive power advantage- and thus they have already moved very slyly in most cases ( in western 'liberal democracies') to obstruct its use as a MoE and to redefine it into a much less threatening use as a speculative SoV commodity. They have succeeded in engineering this strategy via KYC, CEXes and ETFs. More and more Bitcoin is locked up into ETFs where quite explicitly it is being used as a speculative commodity held in custody by bankers. As the ratio of institutional custody grows toward 50% the effectiveness of and arguments to justify a ban on private custody increase. An Order 6102B could be rationalised by government based upon AML FUD and even claiming (correctly) that the USD is under threat. For this not to happen it would require a mass uprising/revolution demanding we are able to use Bitcoin as a MoE- do you see this happening? The vast majority of Bitcoin hodlers are already KYCed and most are primarily if not exclusively using BTC as a speculative commodity, not a P2P payments protocol. Sure you and I can still do P2P payments but they have been effectively blocked from mass use via absurd CGT assessment requirements. The Fiat Debt Slavery Bankers Cartel holds power over your elected representative and will not surrender their parasitic rentseeking position without a serious fight...that they have already taken the preparatory steps to close down private custody is evidence of this....evidence you are ignoring. I hope I do not sound like a naysayer- in fact as soon as I learned about Bitcoin I was excited and still am- and hope like you that we can win this struggle to enable a free market in money and provide a competitive choice and alternative to the rentseeking state imposed monopoly that is fiat. If we still have democracy? and if enough of us want it, it can happen- we have already achieved a lot. I just think the bankers have already gained a dangerous hold upon our governments and it will not be easy and is not inevitable.
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I am optimistic. In the 'west' (most western countries) you can still buy Bitcoin and withdraw it. You can still run a node, including with off-the-shelf nodes in a box (umbrel start9 etc) and open-source software is widely available. Bitcoin can still be bought, yes even from KYC exchanges today albeit especially in Europe while jumping through hoops and KYC bs... but you can still buy it and withdraw it to a hardware wallet.
And the more people that buy it and withdraw it the better and harder it is to ban.
In other words, KYC or not the more people who can get Bitcoin into self-custody, of any amount really, the stronger the Bitcoin movement and generally the harder to stop.
What amazes me is how governments, especially in Southern Europe (like Italy) have let it go this long. Because the logical conclusion is that people slowly start dumping their national currencies for Bitcoin.
Dump the Pound, buy Bitcoin. Dump the Euro, buy Bitcoin. Even dump the Dollar (although it's the best of the Fiat) and Buy Bitcoin. This isn't overnight, but little by little gradually slowly slowly it's logical that Bitcoin excels where most Fiat money fails - as better money that protects purchasing power over a long time period.
Any rational person considering all their investment and savings options would have at least a little Bitcoin - some allocation. This means every working adult with a heartbeat and a job in Western Countries at the minimum should stack at least a few sats and give Bitcoin a serious look-over.
Which just makes it all so obvious.
I just think that at the end of the day governments are not all powerful and people vote with their feet and their pocketbooks. A US presidential candidate and former president spoke at Bitcoin 24 in the US (Nashville) and although he doesn't really understand it... I think it's symbolic. Just look at how far things have come.
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KYCed sats are very easily confiscated- most hodlers will surrender when confronted with an offer to buy their sats for current price or become an outlaw and face prosecution. This is how Order 6102 worked- they did not get all the gold but they got enough and from then on trading p2p was outlawed. They can and i think are very likely to try the same if they ever perceive their fiat debt slavery market hegemony is under real threat. The greater the ratio of institutional custody prior to any Order 6102B the more powerful the order is as all institutional sats will comply with the order and probably will be allowed to continue custody of those sats on behalf of the peasants. They will tell you its needed to fight terror or crime or whatever BS FUD and most sheeple will comply because the alternative is to lose your stack and its utility as a speculative commodity because that is how most hodlers already see Bitcoin. The war is not over but as long as people like you deny its real the chances of victory for Bitcoin diminish by the day- these fiat debt bankers are not platschool bullys- they are the most powerful ruthless power brokers on the planet.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 20 Oct
I think most people who currently self custody will not easily surrender when confronted, and anyone who doesn't self custody can't honestly be called a hodler.
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well i'm not selling my bitcoin. they can offer to give me paper or whatever, and whether ideological or stubborn or privileged... i'm not interested.
let me ask you - btc in private custody is functionally banned in your country and the government offers you paper. would you take it?
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Most of my liquid wealth is held in Bitcoin and most of it, unfortunately, is KYCed. It would be a real dilemma if they offered current market price or better and the alternative is to face prosecution and the fact that thereafter any p2p trading of Bitcoin is banned and again can be prosecuted for...because they know the address of most of my stack...they know if I transfer it 'illegally' under their edict banning private trading/custody. It traps most but the most extreme ideologically driven Bitcoiners....just as it did with gold. It traps enough to capture and control the free p2p market. I honestly don't know what I would do- but it would be a very difficult decision and I consider myself far more ideologically driven than the majority of Bitcoiners.
For now I hold because I believe strongly in my right to and the need for some competitive force to be applied to the state imposed fiat monetary monopoly that is de facto debt slavery of citizens. I can say if they ban private custody I would do what I can to fight it, resist and reverse it- because it would be a dangerous turning point for our already compromised 'liberal free market capitalist democracies'.
Let me ask you something- do you think they (governments and bankers) who derive most of the power and wealth from fiat monetary control and issuance will simply surrender that hegemony without taking every measure possible to protect and preserve it?
Do you think the KYCing, CEXing, and ETFs are just innocent and incidental moves or part of a deliberate and sly strategy to capture and control the protocol while still appearing to embrace new technology and open markets?
Because they all prepare the ground perfectly for a potent and probably effective Order 6102B strategy to capture and control the protocol.
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i... don't know. however in my honest opinion the 1602 order part 2 while serious is greatly exaggerated.
some countries, like the us, protect software code with the 1st amendment and any ban of self-custody would face some massive court cases.
not sure where you're from but in the us at least constitutional protections exist and are stronger than they are in most places. the attempts to ban guns, for better or worse, have completely failed and it makes sense that with Bitcoin it would be the same
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I hope you are right although the original Order 6102 was arguably in breach of your precious Constitution and I do not see it stopping them if their USD hegemony is seen as under threat. The Order would have to come from the US as most 'liberal western democracies' are effectively subservient militarily and monetarily to the USA/USD in case you had not noticed. Canada, Australia, S.Korea, Japan, Europe, Britain all would comply with Uncle Sams Order as they are all dependents. That is the vast bulk of the global Bitcoin market...done and dusted.
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it's funny now, looking from outside in, how people figure out bitcoin using the price model. that's one way to understand bitcoin, and there any many ways. the price is fake: how does one price in people's lives running on the bitcoin standard? what is a bitcoiner's life worth?
putting a money (mono-eye, one eye, one god) value on a satoshi is ridiculous, let alone a dollar value or even a gold bar value. without bitcoin, without stacker news, nostr - my world is but a tiny fishbowl.
yes, bitcoin has collided with the fiat system, but it's like saying math has collided with man-made decree. actuaries have put arbitrary mathematical values on people's lives & property... this is temporary. math and btcoin have briefly intersected with man-made rules, and from here on the paths diverge.
some will stay on the path of man-made decrees, and shall die in soul, mind, and body.
other will pick the path of true knowledge: math, geometry, frequency, bitcoin, and they shall live.
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The question is... If an alien civilization got an alien-quarter and flipped heads and tails 256 times... and derived a seed phrase.
Would it have been one ever used by Humans? No? OK then would we know that they (the aliens) ad actually created a seed phrase?
If a billion alien civilizations flipped a billion quarters and generated a billion seed phrases, would we know about it? And would any of those phrases accidentally overlap?
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this must be why normies are looking at bitcoiners like they're some aliens, lol
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Haha I'm not wrong though... That got me thinking about my next post :D
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It's not just the seed it's also the checksum used to derive all the addresses in a 'wallet'
You would need to derive the seed and also use the derivation path to match the addresses
addresses are just public & private signatures
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Yes sir (or ma'am yes Bitcoin is for everyone) of course you are correct. However this is a thought experiment. It's not just coin flips it's a checksum too.
However it's logical that Aliens would have coins and understand Binary... and 256-bit numbers and HOW BIG they are. Some alien somewhere somehow could generate the coin flips (1s and 0s) and it would be UNIQUE. THAT is cool
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Are we out of phase 2 then?
  1. They Ignore You
  2. They Laugh at You
  3. They Attack You
  4. You Win
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We're somewhere between 2 and 3 probably?
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I do think that Bitcoin is at the point that it's use is increasing in commerce and trade (including online) everyday....
And you seem to have overlooked?? Fedi - E-cash - Cashu nuts.... which is going to melt our faces off over the coming months/years in its adoption due to its privacy improvements....
Or did you leave them out intentionally....
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I did leave them out intentionally. I only want to make a post so long!
Having said that Lightning has the best adoption and development right now and it would make sense that it's adopted first.
Many many ideas and tools will logically be built on-top of Bitcoin. Just as things were built on the internet beginning in the mid-90s.
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Keep up the good work...
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Thank you I have so much to say
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.