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54 sats \ 27 replies \ @fiatbad 14h \ on: Bitcoin has a Brand Problem bitcoin
As you say, the author admits they don't have a solution.
I have a proposal for a solution: Take a few lessons from the big-blockers. Listen to what they have to say, and find a middle ground. They are correct that there was more momentum toward adoption in 2015 than there is now. They are correct that using Bitcoin as a medium-of-exchange is what it will take for it to "succeed" the way Satoshi intended. They are in-correct in their technical implementations. They misunderstand a lot and have a lot of blind-spots. But for fuck's sake, as the author of this article articulates, BTC maxis also have some serious blind spots and bias. I agree.
The solution to the author's dilemma is to push harder toward scaling Bitcoin as a MoE. Stop pushing for ossification!!!. Bitcoin is NOT ready to ossify. A few more scaling-focused upgrades need to happen.
I really enjoyed this article. It articulates what has been swirling around in my mind for the past few months. I'm starting to get very worried about the future of Bitcoin. The louder the NGU maxis get, the more worried I become. To me, the problem is starting to get dire. Not "increase the block-size" level of dire.... but way more fucking dire than the average Bitcoiner seems to think.
Lightning Network is now at a point where its easy to use by most people with a minimum of technical know how...but a few years ago it was not.
Many potential users may have been put off by the early difficulty of using LN- I nearly was but SN helped me get past that...but still the vast majority of people are not going to be easily adopting LN use.
The fact that using it is in most cases/jurisdictions technically breaching tax code compliance doesn't help either!
There are huge obstacles to greater MoE use and I agree MoE use is the key to realising Satoshis vision of what Bitcoin can be, but instead the speculative commodity plaything narrative of Micro-strategy and co is now predominant.
NGU hopium is a trap.
ETFs and Microstrategy type use is concentrating custody that excludes MoE use and diminishing MoE scope.
Bitcoiners who deny these are problems have sold out to a NGU sell out narrative.
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I don't think that 'speculative commodity' and 'medium of exchange' have to be mutually exclusive.
Some people can have their speculative commodity... and others their medium of exchange right?
Let's say that Bitcoin achieved its maximum 'store of value' value - it's maxed out 'store of value' threshold realistically... how much would it be worth?
Until it realistically achieves that, it's reasonable that the number will 'go up' and if people think it's 'going up' they won't spend it not in any reasonable quantities.
No fulfilled store of value... too early for medium of exchange at least for most people.
Comparing Bitcoin with Gold, or Real Estate or Stocks even (just as a store of value) has it fulfilled its potential???
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'I don't think that 'speculative commodity' and 'medium of exchange' have to be mutually exclusive.'
Agree. Good money is ideally both a SoV and MoE.
But imo the narrative casting of Bitcoin as a primarily or even exclusively speculative commodity (SoV hyper-charged) as voiced by Saylor etc, undermines its use as a MoE as you describe as people hodl and not spend, and this narrative is being used to both support and increase institutional custody where it cannot be used as a P2P payments protocol.
This combined with the sly but very effective obstruction of use as a MoE via tax obligations (and especially for businesses the threat of debanking) which effectively make everyday MoE use impractical unless you break the law, plus comprehensive MSM FUD has succeeded in almost completely preventing the use of Bitcoin as a P2P payments protocol with sufficient adoption to be any real threat to the state-banker fiat hegemony...and that is the point.
If Bitcoin fails to provide a viable and popular alternative to the fiat MoE monopoly it has imo failed.
And so far 'they' have largely succeeded in preventing Bitcoin from being, in practice, a viable MoE alternative.
Where its not outlawed for MoE it is quasi outlawed via tax obligations.
The inertia in a monetary system makes regime change difficult, unlikely and usually only taking place during or after a revolution or war.
The digital gold narrative has succeeded in achieving capture and control of the protocol preventing MoE use and satisfying the peasants with another KYCed, taxed and tracked and traced speculative commodity packaged, promoted, custodied and largely controlled by the bankers...avoiding any real threat to their precious fiat MoE hegemony.
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Bitcoin as a P2P payments protocol with sufficient adoption to be any real threat to the state-banker fiat hegemony...and that is the point. If Bitcoin fails to provide a viable and popular alternative to the fiat MoE monopoly it has imo failed.
Music to my ears. Glad to see someone else voicing this opinion.
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What... is the alternative? A different crypto?
A new one?
Any and all crypto should it become 'big enough' would run into the same kinds of issues, no?
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Bitcoin is the only truly decentralised protocol that treats all participants equally without fear or favour.
There is no obvious alternative- if Bitcoin participants allow themselves to be lured into the digital gold narrative and the P2P payments potential of Bitcoin is lost then that is due to our lack of ability to comprehend, appreciate and ultimately fight for the freedom that Bitcoin makes possible.
The freedom of P2P payments.
The classic strategy of a cartel faced with a new competitor, if it cannot be outlawed, is to capture and control it- ETFs and the KYCed, tracked and traced, taxed speculative commodity narrative are that capture and control strategy in operation, in plain sight, Bitcoiners are only blind to it from of short sighted greed, naivety or laziness.
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I don't think the narrative of 'digital gold' is necessarily limiting... Gold is really valuable.
And just because it's gold does not mean it can't or shouldn't be traded or exchanged. Don't take this the wrong way, but I want to focus on the positive. We've identified the challenges, now is time for us to focus on the solutions.
Thank you.
I would agree with you except......
... The problem I'm seeing is that medium-of-exchange is simply not possible without extreme centralization. I'm willing to wait for a future where it comes, if it's technically possible. But I'm starting to disbelieve that it is possible. Roger Ver's "Hijacking Bitcoin" points might actually hold some water. A nefarious group has worked hard to ensure that BTC can never, ever become a MoE.
I say this as someone who has fought hard for layer 2's. I've been running my own LN node for years, and I have used it to spend Bitcoin at hundreds of locations around the world, using Zues connected to my own node.
But I am rare. I've realized that we need to build a digital currency for the masses.... not for nerds like me. For example, I set my bother up recently with his own LN node. But every time he tries to connect Zues when he's away from home, he gets an RPC connection error! Even on my node, I get the same error often, and have to restart Lightning Terminal on my node. It's unreliable, mostly. It's semi-reliable... IF you're already super tech savvy. But for those who aren't, it's just never going to work.
So that leaves centralized, custodial Lightning. Which is worse than Fedimints, and yet, people here like @justin_shocknet are massively against the public using Fedimints (which I happen to view as the only serious scaling option available and we should be figuring out more ways to make it work instead of demonizing it). I can't believe we're going to funnel people into custodial Lightning instead of supporting Fedimint. I also can't believe we're going to refuse to upgrade the base layer with obvious things like CTV. We're going to ossify, and simultaneously demonize Fedimints. This is the end of Bitcoin.
We're shooting ourselves in the foot. Centralization/custodians are everything we are against. But without some centralization/custodians, Bitcoin will never, EVER be anything more than SoV.
There were dozens of attempts to create digital currency before Bitcoin, and they all failed because they lacked some key elements. Bitcoin solves so many of the issues they were dealing with. But I'm starting to think that we still need one or two more breakthroughs. Bitcoin is not going to cut it. And Bitcoiners have grown arrogant and complacent. The ground is starting to look shaky to me.
I'm not a big-blocker. I believe Bitcoin's goal should be to replace base money, not necessarily replace coffee money. But in its current form, it won't even be able to support 2% of the world using it as SoV, savings tech! We can handle a few more upgrades before ossifying, and we should.
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Bitcoin is nowhere near being the 'base money' of the world... in my opinion because people aren't interested enough in it.
The technology exists, in my opinion and Lightning is 'good enough'... it's the laziness of crowds and the lack of intellectual curiosity, the willingness to 'do the work', and put in 'just a little more' effort to discover something and imagine something new.
In my opinion we are nowhere near the limits of 'throughput' for people to open Lightning channels, self-custody their UTXOs, and ultimately transact when and where they want to. We are at 2 sats/vb... and for a cup of coffee, or a beer much less dinner out, the channels can be opened.
In my opinion it's an educational, human interest, motivational, and if nothing else 'reputational' problem.
Too many voices have been centralized to Twitter/X... which frankly doesn't have a great reputation. And some of the most 'toxic' people, who you wouldn't want advertising your 'lemonade stand', are the absolute loudest on Twitter with their pro-Trump or alt-right or political BS.
Bitcoin isn't political... and the voices that 'make it so' on Twitter don't help things.
Like I posted earlier, I'm a liberal democrat and I still believe that Bitcoin is the best tool for individual empowerment - it's not about politics or what some "eat meat" a$$hole says on Twitter. It's your node and transparent rules that if the recent arguments have demonstrated are very difficult to change.
But you can't 'explain' that to someone in five minutes, much less on twitter in few characters next to crypto-bots or pro-trump Memecoin advertisements.
I'm not on Twitter, but obviously I care about Stacker News and its foward-looking incentives. Those in my opinion are worth fighting for.
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Fedimint are still centralized custodial lightning, but with scam added in
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Lots of things are scams. Fedimint is a protocol. It can be used to scam, but it's not inherently a scam.
If setup properly, it can be 1000x less of a scam than local banks are today. It can be done in a manner that brings the risk to users down to nearly zero. Better than most fiat systems we have today.
Sure, it's not base-layer Bitcoin level of security. But for fuck's sake, if you people aren't going to allow SOME centralization in the L2's and L3's, then I guess Roger Ver was right and it's time to start talking about scaling the block-size. Something's gotta give.
edit: (I consider Fedimint an L3 and LN an L2.). We're talking about scaling to the people who would never run their own nodes, even if their lives depend on it. We're talking about making Bitcoin a MoE without all the control and centralization the fiat system has today. It's not going to be perfect or pretty. You're going to have to allow some room for "rug-pulls", even if the risk is low. It's still 1000x better than what 99% of people have today and you're actively working against it.
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Even if we had 'bigger blocks' would people use them?
Would 'cheaper transactions' incentive 'more transacting'?
You're moving the goal posts. You contrasted it to centralized custodial lightning, that's what it is.
The scam is it pretends to be otherwise.
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Because of the lack of MoE and the presence of ETFs?
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Honestly, because the revolutionary spirit that created Bitcoin seems to have died out.
The end of fiat is and must be the goal. Is that what you see Bitcoiners working toward today? Or are they too busy using Visa debit cards that give Bitcoin rewards, and developing fiat loan businesses using Bitcoin as collateral, and developing ETF's. How many Bitcoiners have used BTCmap.org? How many are actually running their own nodes, including managing their own LN channels? How many are actively working to support local businesses accepting Bitcoin instead of ones that don't? How many are willing to take up arms against their government for attempting to tax Bitcoin transactions? There's no revolution anymore..... peaceful, or otherwise.
"The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonies to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war."
- Benjamin Franklin's autobiography
Maybe the next generation will have the guts to STOP using fiat and take up arms if need be. But this one doesn't.
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How many Bitcoiners have used BTCmap.org? How many are actually running their own nodes, including managing their own LN channels? How many are actively working to support local businesses accepting Bitcoin instead of ones that don't?
Dude I have done all of these things. I have traveled long distances to 'try Lightning out' and it worked. Was it absolutely perfect? No.
It felt like internet in 1998 or something. But it fundamentally did what it was supposed to do, all my transactions went through, and imo it's way better than fiat money, paper money that is printed up at no cost.
I too am concerned about blockspace 'utilization' and the demand for blockspace long term... but this is year 16 of 130.
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I instantly love you. And that's an awesome writeup about Lugano. I hope to go there soon.
I have a similar setup as you. Start9, not Umbrel. And I'm using Zues. I have successfully used it in multiple countries, even though my node is running in the US.
I used to get an RPC failed connection error on Zues, ALL the time. But it has greatly improved.
However, my brother's new node is the exact same as mine, with the same software versions running. His Zues fails to connect whenever he's not at home. Their home internet SUCKS compared to mine. But slower latency shouldn't completely stop it from working.
Another anecdote: When I went to Roatan last year to spend Sats, my node at home had a small issue. It was brand new, and needed a manufacturer update immediately when I got it to prevent it from shutting itself down every 10 hours. I wasn't aware of this, and left for my trip. Once I got there, I was in the dark. I couldn't use my Lightning wallet, and was forced to purchase some on Strike to use wherever I went. It was a huge bummer.... and a huge lesson. Nothing beats Layer 1 for ease of use and reliability.
Also.... LN will be centralized for 99% of people because they will choose reliability and ease over sovereignty. This goes for merchants and individuals.
LN is amazing, I love it. But it's not (yet) the scaling solution we were promised.
I'm not on Twitter... I don't have a Twitter account and think the signal/noise ratio there is... low so that's why.
However I do live in meatspace and I don't think Bitcoin has a 'scaling' problem.
It has an educational problem.
Everyone has heard of email. Everyone has heard of gold. Everyone has heard of inflation...
Bitcoin is like combining all three (sort of) and there are enough wallets and apps available right?
How much does it cost to open a Lightning channel?
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