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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @fourrules 8 Sep \ parent \ on: Murch and Chris have a conversation - What is Going on Here??? bitcoin
I don't agree with that.
New monetary systems start as collectibles. In that regard bitcoin has already succeeded, everyone agrees.
The next stage can either be MoE or SoV, but it depends upon the reaction of the incumbent system. The incumbent system and entrenched interests will use any technique they can to forestall the adoption of the new system, including sybil attacks that make the general population suspicious or morally opposed to the new system.
In principle Bitcoin should be like gold, in that it can hold out as a SoV for 1000 years without getting corrupted by a sophisticated attacker. It cannot depend upon becoming a MoE in order to succeed, it must succeed to the extent that MoE is inevitable, even if that ultimately takes a very long time.
If it were the case that there were no strong incumbent then Bitcoin would have already succeeded as a MoE, but we would still be having this conversation, because the very permanence of the Blockchain makes it attractive as a data storage and transmission system, although at that point the debate would be more easily resolved because the amount of mainstream investment in Bitcoin as a neutral monetary medium would overwhelm the case for tolerating and facilitating spam.
Bottom line: if bitcoin succeeds as a permanent SoV then it will eventually and inevitably become the dominant MoE even if that is beyond our life times. As the saying goes, society grows strong when men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.
The only two things that I can see that might thwart that are:
- a sudden innovation in quantum computing that drains prominent addresses and with the current block size takes a year for all addresses to migrate to quantum safe addresses
- the evolution at the policy layer of bitcoin from a neutral monetary medium hostile to content rich transactions to a culture that tolerates and facilitates spam, and treats hostility as censorship and all data as equivalent.
My understanding is that Bitcoin cannot sit forever at 1 sat/vbyte, at least not without considerable increases in exchange rate, without starving miners of revenue and ultimately hashrate.
Bitcoin doesn't have a "tail emission". It eventually FWIU needs fees to provide revenue to miners. There are LOTS of sources of fees if people use Bitcoin to transact and embrace it as transactional capital/currency/medium of exchange...
But it was not designed to "just sit." EVENTUALLY I believe it will be a MoE because it is a store of value in a world awash in fiat and debt and people will want it.
However we are not there today and IMO we do ourselves a disservice by 'becoming comfortable' with half-empty blocks it is not OK long term.
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