True.

But this confirms a trend which is now decidedly negative since July.

Single data points don't mean much. Trends are far more meaningful.

Not dying either.....

but been waiting for it for so long it's starting to feel painful. Going to feel the relief when they roll this out.

Gifts to the Bilderbergs is another purpose.

I'd argue that a central bank supporting government isn't the worst thing about them. It's the secret funding of the richest families on Earth that I find so atrocious. It's also mostly why I think fiat is worse than taxes.

Yea, don't you recognize Barktoshi Wagamoto? Bro's a legend.

As always, people tend to binary thinkers.

There are the people who dismiss Q-Day as being physically impossible or too far away to care. Which seems to be the majority in the comments here.

Then there are the people whose last remaining reason to not buy Bitcoin is the imminent quantum threat.

Lots of stubborn ignorance on both sides, the way I see it.

Usually, the truth is somewhere in the middle of the extremes.

This is the part I think people on both sides of this debate are missing.

A QC powerful enough to crack 256-EDCSA will probably take something the size of the moon. Due to the amount of error correction and cooling infrastructure to keep that many qubits at absolute zero (which is required for them to remain entangled).

So, yea, the quantum apocalypse is probably not near.

HOWEVER. This viewpoint ignores the possibility of future breakthroughs. It only took a few breakthroughs to go from computers the size of a garage to computers the size of a wallet. And IF a few small breakthroughs happen in Quantum, the path toward a Billion qubit (logical) QC may be trivial.

Good luck with that.

Even Bitcoiners don't really use Bitcoin (for payments). Gonna be hard to convince the normies to do it when we aren't even doing it.

Exactly.

It's funny, though, because Bitcoin upending the fiat system would be the largest single catalyst for NGU. Store-of-value narratives alone won't take Bitcoin to the numbers Mow and Saylor espouse.

In other words, if Bitcoiners want to be incredibly wealthy, stop using fiat for fuck's sake!

This is my beef with the Bitcoin community as a whole.

I have no problem with trad-fi "adopting" Bitcoin. As the Bitcoiners say, it is an inevitable part of Bitcoin's eventual success story.

But what I can't understand is, why those same Bitcoiners are so comfortable using dollars. There isn't any effort from the community to end fiat. On the contrary, they talk about how Bitcoin can be a way to "save the dollar" from collapsing.

What the fuck happened here?

OP, yes, this is what adoption looks like when the Medium-of-Exchange element is suppressed. This is what adoption looks like when Bitcoin is just a Store-of-Value. Look how well that's worked out for gold the past hundred years.

Yet, it's market cap is still 18 Billion Sats, for some incomprehensible reason.

Doesn't matter if the world still views dollars as being the best, most stable, currency to hold and use for trade.

The USA can export its paper, and its inflation, and pretty much win any war via printing the money. Doesn't have to be China; we can buy rare earths elsewhere with our fancy money printer!

I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheeck, because I know that such a war would destroy America. They might be strong for a while, with nothing but money printing to back itself up... and trust in the currency would break down eventually.

The only question I have is: Why isn't trust in the dollar already breaking down? (or rather, breaking down so slowly). Even Bitcoiners seem to like dollars more than Sats, when the music stops playing. It's weird.

I want to get to a world where we use a better measuring stick than fiat to measure our life's time/labor.

My dream will never come to fruition until enough of us agree to stop using the old measuring tool, and start using the new one. Obviously, it's really hard to do currently, because there is no market for Real Estate (or anything really) using Sats.

But the reason there are no markets denominated in Sats is because the people with the Sats are still using, and thinking, in dollars (for some wild, and completely illogical reason that I cannot figure out). We have a chicken and egg problem that can/will only be solved by individuals with strong enough will to force a major change.

How do you measure net worth?

"Jack Dorsey stated that Bitcoin could fail if it isn't used as a medium of exchange. Do you agree?"

John's answer to this was good, but I think he and I take Jack's statement from completely different perspectives.

I think Satoshi was quite clear that Bitcoin's goal is about ending fiat. I think that was his/her/them's greatest motivation. I think that should be the number one goal of any self-respecting Bitcoiner today. If Bitcoin is not threatening the dollar (after becoming nothing more than "digital gold") then Bitcoin HAS failed. Hard stop.

I think that's probably what Jack meant, also. He was channeling Satoshi when he said that.

If "digital gold" is Bitcoin's future, then I may as well just trade all my Bitcoin for physical gold right now.

For me, it was Eckhart Tolle's books. "The Power of Now", and "A New Earth".

And the book "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das.

But nothing builds humility more than science. Learning how the universe works, and how small you are in the grand scheme of things, is powerful. Thus, the books from Richard Dawkins, such as "The God Delusion" can be incredibly humbling. Nothing can be less humble than a belief in the supernatural.... especially a god belief.

I tried hard for a few hours trying to get my node connected for spending on SN. Nothing worked.

It wasn't for lack of trying. I've successfully connected my node to dozens of apps in the past.

I run my node on StartOS, which is natively over Tor. I frequently have issues connecting mobile apps to my node at home. Tor is probably one of the major reasons.

I tried using NWC, but then was told it was deprecated. I used Zues with the Lightning Terminal app on my node, which usually worked, but not reliably. Alby Hub was one of the best solutions, for a while, until it also stopped working.

My LN connections always stop working right when I need them, too. I go to pay at a merchant, and something fails connecting to my node. It's absolutely infuriating.

The only thing that's been absolutely reliable is to connect to my node from my laptop over Tor, then launch one of the LN wallet apps there. I can do this from anywhere in the world, and it always works. But it's not a mobile solution. I need something for my phone.

Mobile connections always have issues. These app connections are never reliable for very long.

I gave up trying to get SN to work with my Start9 node. It's been a year since I tried, but honestly, I've grown sick of trying to make LN work on my node.

It's strange because I think there's a direct parallel with the way we interact with the fiat system.

I'm on SN regularly preaching about how we are supporting the dollar system every time we spend a dollar, so we should stop on principle. We should stop using Fold, and other CC's (pun intended). We should work our asses off building Bitcoin circular economies so we can truly escape fiat.

Yet, my instinct is to cheer on @DarthCoin for his CC protest here on SN.

Why do I support one, and oppose the other, when they are fundamentally the same thing?

I feel like a total hypocrite right now. Satoshi is frowning on me from his sky-throne :(

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for him...

... but I'm pretty sure he's doing it as a protest. He would prefer to see CCs disappear entirely. But if the developers insist on fiat-izing SN, then he's not going to give any real Sats to them, or this ecosystem. And he's going to abuse the shit out of it whenever he can.

Yup. I wonder what it's going to take for Bitcoiners to start taking this seriously.

Maybe after they're old and tired after streaming on YouTube about "freedom money" for 50 years.... maybe then they will look back and ask themselves, "Did we actually have freedom money?? Or did I just do it for the YouTube slave money?"

Starcraft.