With an attitude like this, I trust you're exclusively using RoboSats anytime you need to sell dollars. And I salute your for it.

The complacency and general acceptance of KYC laws among Bitcoiners really boils my blood. The OG Cypherpunks are rolling in their graves.

I think a lot of the value proposition for Bitcoin comes from its ability to repel myriad attacks which no other blockchains would be able to repel.

This fact is completely lost on the altcoin communities who view Bitcoin as old tech.... "boomer coin". It's lost on them because their chains are never seriously attacked. Usually, market caps for them are too small, so the honey pot is too small to attract attackers.

They don't seem to understand that "it's the settlement assurances, stupid."

So, how do we get them to understand?

Simple. Attack everything. Like a white-hat hacker, or a pen-tester.... attack and subvert as much as possible.

People are putting too much emphasis on scalability (i.e. B-cashers), or privacy (Monero), and not enough emphasis on the settlement assurances!! Attacking the shit out of them is how we educate.

Why would Bitcoiners ever "demand services to be paid in Sats"?

If they haven't yet done so in the first 2 decades of Bitcoin's existence, what catalyst can you envision that would bring such a thing to fruition?

Personally, I never use the word "lightning" unless I know I'm dealing with someone who is already well versed with Bitcoin. Average people cannot be expected to parse technical jargon, which is what Lighting is.

Similar to how average people use the word "the internet" to refer to one very large, very technical, multi-layered monolith. We should be using the word "Bitcoin" and only that word.

Similar to my comment here about how we should approach L3's like Fedimint: #769472

Let's not confuse people. There's already too much noise and confusion in the "crypto" world, which is what they view Bitcoin as being a part of. They will think "Lightning" is a new cryptocurrency, and roll their eyes.

Yup.

I know, there is more friction right now to spend Bitcoin than fiat.

But damn.... the USA had to fight for its independence from England because of "taxation without representation" (i.e. FIAT MONEY). They coordinated and died for it. And most of the population of the colonies were against independence. A small 10-20% were enough to make the change happen without the help of the majority.

Bitcoiners today are even greater in number.... but seem to be un-willing to fight a similar war. To me, it's shameful.

I completely agree. And I think Ver is wrong.

The issue I have is more a cultural one than a technical one.

Take the Simply Bitcoin company as an example. I have been to multiple events with those dudes. They talk such shit about fiat, but they quickly pull out their fiat debit card when it comes time to pay the tab at the bar. They don't flinch, they don't actually care about not using slave money..... even though that's the talking point that is paying their bills.

Contrast that to what @btcisla is doing with her YouTube channel where she did a 21-day Bitcoin ONLY challenge. Sure, that was just a stunt for views/likes. But she clearly has a real passion to use Bitcoin for more than SoV and to stop using fiat as much as possible. She'll spend fiat, but she cringes when she has to.

Imagine if EVERY Bitcoiner in the USA did a 21-day Bitcoin ONLY challenge. It would change everything. It would have a huge impact on the economy for those 21 days, and merchants would adapt quick. Politicians would have to change their approach to things like capital-gains taxes on Bitcoin or they'd be voted out in no time.

There are A LOT of Bitcoiners in the USA.... enough to make a serious impact if they actually coordinated an attack on fiat, instead of simping for the Fed and JPMorgan.

Same here, brother.

My Bitcoin transaction history is more robust than my fiat one. But we can't do this forever alone. We need Bitcoiners to start caring about the end of the dollar.... we need a network effect for medium-of-exchange. If there are only 2 of us for every 2 Million fiat-brains, then we won't survive. We will die out.

Eh.... I hang out with a ton of intelligent "Bitcoiners" who really understand this from a multidisciplinary vantage point. They are Bitcoiners.

They are usually the first ones to tell me,

At meetups/conferences, their conversation centers around fiat-minded macro-economics and fiat price catalysts for Bitcoin. Few are interested in building new Bitcoin circular economies or escaping the fiat system in a meaningful way.

Even here on SN, my rants about this topic are usually viewed as annoying and whiny.

Where are the Bitcoiners?

Eh... I said that in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

Banks/governments are worried about Bitcoin being used as money. But they are not worried about it being "digital gold". If it doesn't threaten their money-printing monopoly, then they don't care.

So, they made sure it would remain "an investment", not a currency. Roger Ver attempts to lay it all out in his book here:

But his book is full of misunderstandings, conjectures, non sequiturs, and conspiracy theories. I don't think he even knows exactly how Bitcoin was "hijacked". But I agree with him that it probably was....

I just can't put my finger on how. But I can see the signs that it did happen:

Naw, they already accomplished what they wanted during the Blocksize War. Now, they ain't worried a bit.

I love this. It's my favorite cocktail conversation topic (which is why I have no friends).

First off: Yes I spend Bitcoin A LOT. But I purposely seek out merchants who accept it, and I order a lot online. I choose to vacation only in countries with high adoption, and use BTCMap.org to find local merchants when traveling.

A few thoughts:

The internet is also highly restricted in China, is it not? Yet, the internet is far too big of idea and has far too much global network-effect that the Chinese government can't stop it. I would bet that China contains a lot of people who know how to use VPN's, Tor, etc, in order to get around their government's attempt to control. The technology is more powerful than the government, and the people outnumber the government also.

Bitcoin is just as big of idea as the internet. It is built in a similar, decentralized manner. It has a massive global network effect. I'm tired of hearing Bitcoiners citing regulatory reasons for why Bitcoin adoption isn't happening. The real reason is because we've allowed Bitcoin to become a mostly KYC'd asset that can't technically scale to be a currency, even with the current L2's. Bitcoiners happily use fiat in their daily lives, and aren't prioritizing scaling solutions.

Governments can't regulate and suppress something like Bitcoin, or the internet. Unless the people allow them to. Which is exactly what's happening.

That's why I keep all of mine locked in a safe.

Yes, that's the way things should go.

But many of us were hoping Bitcoin would be a catalyst to free the world from the enslavement of fiat-money.

"Bitcoin isn't being used" is what OP's point was. It's just a shame that we have this amazing freedom technology, and all people want to do it use it for jpegs and other garbage. Hardly anyone is using it the way it was intended to be used.

It reminds me of something the great Hank Moody once said:

".... people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English." - Hank Moody

I've made a lot of big-blocker arguments on SN in the past. I always have to preface by saying, I am NOT a big-blocker and I own zero B-cash or crypto of any kind outside of Bitcoin.

But goddamm if Roger Ver didn't make some good points. His book "Hijacking Bitcoin" changed my view on a lot of things. Not enough to join his cause.... but enough to question the honey-badger kinds of narratives pushed around here.

I can't help but think that Core was hijacked, exactly how he describes, in order to ensure that Bitcoin can only be used as a SoV, and never as a MoE. The "Freedom Money" ethos has slowly died out, and been replaced by bullshit narratives about how MoE will "happen eventually, just not now".

I'm still not a big-blocker, because I also understand the reasons why Roger is wrong. But dammit, I'm incredibly disappointed at the current state of Bitcoin... especially the human element of it...

OP, your post is really good. Thanks for making it.

"Naw bro, you don't understand. NGU happens first, then MoE can happen. It costs too much taxes to spend mah Bitcoin... just use dollars. Also, spend the weak money first." /s

(I completely agree with you)

Exactly.

What's bothering me so much is that Bitcoiners don't seem to be trying very hard to take down the fiat system. They are fine just using Bitcoin as savings tech, and have no desire to use it as a medium-of-exchange. This is NOT what Satoshi envisioned, and it's not what I'm here for.

We have to actively make a stand against fiat.... not bend over for it and continue to let it rape our civilization and our future generations.

Yes, easier said than done. But so are most things in life which are worth doing.

I don't expect it to be an overnight change. I just expect to see more effort from Bitcoiners who constantly preach the evils of fiat. They don't seem to be trying very hard to create local, circular economies. When you listen to them talk, NGU is the dominant theme.

It's the lack of trying to use Bitcoin as a medium-of-exchange that is bothering me so much.

If Bitcoin isn't directly threatening the fiat system, then it (and we) have failed.

Seems far-fetched, considering even the most hard-core "Bitcoiners" I know are unwilling to inconvenience themselves enough to do this today. Which means normies won't even do it even when pushed to the extremes as @teemupleb suggested in his comment here.

I agree with Lyn Alden when she talks about how MoE cannot happen as a charity. But I think can happen as a revolution.

This is the result of pushing the NGU narrative, and downplaying the importance of utility and MoE narratives.

I think Bitcoin decouples from speculative markets when it starts being used for commerce, and not only for "investing" or "savings" use-cases.

This would happen sooner if Bitcoiners who own companies either stop accepting fiat or at least charge a "fiat premium". Start pricing products in Sats, natively, where the fiat value is the variable instead of the Sats.

Or.... merchant adoption? If the local grocery store only accepts freedom money, it's kinda hard for people to call it "useless".

NGU is powerful. But it's just a parlor trick. MoE is 10x more powerful, and has staying power.