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100 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 8 Feb \ on: Can Bitcoin succeed without widespread adoption? bitcoin
Bitcoin's success is in the eye of the beholder, much to the dismay of many there's no consensus as to what Bitcoin is or what its goals are. Those are personal projection and nothing more, what you're really asking yourself is, "am I being realistic?"
For example, your entire framing can be undone with one different assumption. Assume a faction within government created it, what does that mean for it's success and the implied role in the world for it?
The definition of adoption is another assumption altogether, as it's mere existence has impacts beyond its immediate users. Do nuclear weapons prevent war if they're never used?
The definition of adoption is another assumption altogether, as it's mere existence has impacts beyond its immediate users. Do nuclear weapons prevent war if they're never used?
I hadn't considered this way of thinking about it, but it seems useful. To continue the analogy, the deterrence power of nukes was achieved after 150k-250k people were killed, and two cities were obliterated; followed by various other extreme demonstrations of power even more terrible as technology advanced over the years.
What would constitute a similarly compelling show of force, wrt btc? Has it been achieved already?
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Yea important to remember the nukes in japan weren't to win a hot war against japan, but to start a cold war with the soviet union. Bitcoin has that kind of chilling effect, in that it's so asymmetrically powerful that capital controls become off limits because they'd just boomerang.
Trump for example has already spoken to how he considers its price to be a proxy for peoples savings power. He wants it up like he wants the stock market up, so its already influencing policy from that standpoint. Everybody is subject to the game theory whether they think they're playing or not.
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I think BTC is already working as a deterrent to some degree.
The system knows that if it messes with people too much (through inflation, bank account closures, bail-ins, CBDCs etc.), they have an escape valve, but probably not one everyone would be savvy enough to use.
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The purpose of Bitcoin was set out very clearly in the White Paper- perhaps you have not read it.
It was created to provision a censorship resistant P2P payments protocol- ie an alternative to the state imposed banker operated monopolies that are fiat money.
The bankers and governments have via very sly means succeeded in obstructing use of Bitcoin as a P2P payments protocol and diverted its narrative, perception and majority use into that of a speculative commodity- one that is increasingly held in the custody of bankers where its use as a P2P payments protocol is expressly prevented.
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It's been long established you have to outsource your thinking. so this may come as a shock, but I don't care what the whitepaper says its purpose was.
The purpose of a thing is what it does, not what someone stated.
It's also pretty obvious by now that Satoshi was an intelligence agency with a higher level agenda, not the fairy-tale you comfort yourself with.
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