Bitcoin has appreciated enormously the last 10 years, even the last 5 but I think that is only part of its story.
Eventually sooner or later the education as to what the network is and its qualities has to improve, otherwise Bitcoin becomes nothing more than “JP Morgan Coin”.
JP Morgan Coin has no network, you can’t make transactions, there is no censorship resistance, there are no ‘private keys’ (except for which JP holds) and you can’t hold them anyway…
You can’t send ‘the coins’ to anyone else, there is no mining or energy consumption, there is no censorship resistance you have no confiscation resistance… because there are only shares no private keys and no network at all.
There is no lightning network, no equivalent of stacker news, no sats to send around, no nostr no thing.
This is the future we face if the education among “Bitcoin investors” doesn’t eventually improve.
Without a network there is no cashflow, no censorship resistance, no private ownership, no network fees no economic incentives… no ‘code to run’ no nothing.
This might as well be ‘JP Morgan’ coin or ‘BlackRock coin’ where the bank ‘promises’ to only make a certain number of coins and no more… so ‘get them while you can’. But there’s no network no cashflow no energy no apps no lightning no nothing meaning that any bank could create their own ‘21 million’ and sell them/restrict them whenever they want.
This is our future even if “Bitcoiners” don’t want to admit it… if the existence of the network isn’t better acknowledged. The absence of the network, its ‘non existence’ to critics is the source of the majority of the criticism (some legitimate) among those who don’t even know the network exists meaning Bitcoin has little to no value.
As a matter of fact the critics, from their point of view, have a point. An empty ledger that is never used nor transacted with that is infinitely reproducible… is near worthless.
That is our future without education as to what ‘Bitcoin’ which is a network is.
Bitcoin will remain a small niche, nerdy network and there will still probably be a ‘stacker news’ but its impact on the world will be limited. And eventually the miners will turn off, their machines will shut down, and the heart and soul of the network - energy - will go silent. This is the future even if ‘bitcoiners’ don’t want to admit it.
Maybe there will be ‘another Bitcoin’ or something will take its place… but it won’t be this network. “Bitcoiners” only have themselves to blame choosing short term NGU over long term network health and incentives.
I look at bitcoin’s success in part in terms of demand for blockspace, which has to be its long-term incentive.
Blockspace is a whopping .5 sat/vbyte. At night that’s 500$ a block in fees or 3k usd per hour. 3k per hour is all there is, in the entire world, in terms of demand for blockspace and ultimately miner rewards.
How much hashrate will 3k per hour pay for? Or 72k per day?
That is not a success that tells me the network itself is on life support.
What’s going to change? More people ‘buying in’? Why should they? They don’t know anything about the network, they don’t hold their own keys, they don’t know Lightning exists, they have never heard of “cashu” or an “lsp”…
They just look at the exchange rate… and they might as well buy JPMorgan coin there is only ‘21 million’ of those and they’re ’backed’ by a bank (except you can never spend them or custody them yourself).
This is an open source project, developed by the first Bitcoiner on a Windows PC, who at the time was uncertain it would have a true monetary valuation or see any usage at all. It is a wild success and a big deal.
Well honestly we will find out if it survives.
If the vast majority of the network usage… is just people zapping each other pennys on a niche, obscure website I don’t know what future that has.
My wife and I pay for around 40-60% of our monthly expenses via lightning or bitcoin.
That number goes up and down depending on how many places offer a way to pay with bitcoin.
There are many others like us, in many other locations too. We're not on X or reddit. Heck, most of us aren't on here, either.
All to say, be aware of the limitations of what you can see from your specific location, sources of information, and social circles.
Quick check of my Zeus Wallet the last two weeks shows many recent purchases of coffee for myself and the missus, a moisturizer for her, some minor groceries...
Is that a "big deal?" No, and I don't even think twice about it ordinarily; it's a normal part of daily life. But just like there's me, and there's you, there are certainly also several fuckloads more using L2 the same way, and we are elevating the network by doing these small actions.
Which is to say... onward 👍
Maybe you guys are… and if you are that’s great. However people like you guys or like me (I use lightning on stacker and when I can) is an incredibly small number of people.
Using lightning to transact is still somehow an incredibly niche thing, it’s a niche within a niche.
Imo there won’t be enough demand for zapping to sustain the network, especially considering that 1-2 lightning channels don’t need to be closed for weeks or months at a time and can just be… refilled.
My experience with non-custodial lightning is so good that a channel can be ‘borrowed’ or opened and kept open for months… you don’t touch on-chain that much. Great for scaling… oddly perverse to demand.
A few very technical people using lightning isn’t enough to sustain the network, at least not at a high enough hashrate without more users.
As good as lightning is, as few as people use it, it makes me question the whole concept of ‘transactional capital’ when there’s so little demand to actually use it.
One thing to remember about hashrate, it is artificially boosted by tax policy (ie. bonus depreciation). Investors are buying miners because they can depreciate 100% of the cost immediately, effectively reducing (or in some cases eliminating) their tax bill.
Imagine I said to you, you can either pay a $50K tax bill to the gov and get nothing in return, or you can spend $100k and have no tax but own 10 miners which may earn you $65k over next 3 years....from your perspective its a pretty easy choice: Spent 50K or spend 35k...
This is the crucial thing that most miss: Because of this new depreciation scheme, miners don't care about net profit of their mining equipment. They only care about the offset to their tax bill....meaning its not spending 100K and hoping to earn some percentage over that. Its spending a 100k and earning just enough back to offset their tax bill, so maybe only earning back 65% is still "profitable" from a net tax perspective.
Bitcoin is more than a store of value. We do need to be careful in both directions. Don't be impatient and set unrealistic expectations but also don't think it will just magically be adopted by the masses.
Wrote about this a few years ago. Honestly long time bitcoiners seem to get this in my experience and for sure most Stackers.
#179556
What happened to the userbase of Stacker News? There is a narrower, smaller userbase now than there was a year ago. Granted the users now are more 'hard-core' and more dedicated... but there are fewer of them.
The fees are 1 sat/vbyte and the 'next block' is usually 20-30% actual 'transactions'... the rest of the block being repetitive op_return runes-things at (.2) sat/vbyte. Basically 2 pennies a transaction.
Bitcoin has no educational institute, no onboarding process, no easy adoption of merchants, no 'new-hire' process and so the education is all-over the place. Bitcoin "twatter" is a total disaster it's all buy-my-shitcoin shills and people promoting disinformation/misinformation.
In other words... "Lightning doesn't work" "buy my coin" nonsense over and over so new people have no idea where to even start, assuming that 'newbies' go to Twatter to 'learn about Bitcoin'.
On top of that you legally can't buy a coffee without declaring your 'capital gains' taxes on 1% appreciation from the day before... the current situation is untenable.
We recently had 2 'privacy wallet' developers literally go to jail for unlicensed money transmitting... on top of a non-custodial wallet which doesn't make any sense.
Yeah that all sucks. All I can do is do what I believe and keep it up.
Also, it could be much worse.
We will see what happens
I agree, a good money should lubricate the flow of commerce and the acceptance network must be large enough.
But plenty of merchants already take it although limited to the small merchants. The barrier to larger adoption is the capital gains tax and accounting complexity imposed by the political class.
In certain areas in a few countries... but it's not widespread and in North America it's extremely rare.
That and the extremely limited education. The way to transact and actually onboard more people is through Lightning... the whole world can't use L1. But there is no shortage of people who should know better saying 'Lightning doesn't work use my coin instead' and it only confuses people
yup
Well, there is some truth in it.
Even when I meet people who use "multicoin" wallets which may be simply custodial services, I think that Bitcoin properties as p2p protocol and self sovereign tool becomes somehow diluted by the amount of coins that simply can't be run on a client locally.
It's perfectly natural as a human to have this feeling, what do the old wall st hacks say? The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay rational
It's been bumping along at 88K for years now or at least feels like it
The conviction must be tested! We can look back at the previous times it died, when it was at the 2017/8 high and it fell off a cliff, imagine fomo'ing all in to see it go to 3K
Those poor souls would have been feeling so fearful and angry that this thing they'd piled all their life savings into has collapsed
But if you'd told them it was going to a 125K they would've been selling all the chairs obviously
What you dont know you dont know
But i have to say, seeing that whale a few months ago, so you're telling me they bought like eighty grand's worth back in 2010 when it was like a buck each, and then they sold it all just before this all time high for nine billion dollars!
Hmm even I'm uncertain and doubtful on that one, the chances of them timing the market like that must be trillions to one
And it depends like that whale when you got in, if you bought like a thousand in 2013/4, you don't care if it goes to 30K now, because the value it provides you and your family is enough at 30K, if it goes to a Million that's just like winning the lottery multiple times territory
But a drop to 30K is fine, you can focus on the network, and denigrate anyone that keeps banging on about ngu, stop looking at the price man! Its all about the network
It's like your topic revolves around infinity! It's a great post you have created. But I think BTC will exists and not going anywhere. Depending on how people adopts it, as well I see lots of potential in Lighting. Bitcoin adoption is just one step away from education.
Share it with your loved one to join today. Stacker news has been a great place from me personally to educate myself regarding Bitcoin technology.
If you look at the long arc of Bitcoin’s history one truth keeps reasserting itself. Bitcoin is not just a price chart. It is not just a speculative asset. It is a functioning decentralized network with properties that are extremely rare in human systems. The price rise over the past decade is a reflection of people slowly discovering those properties but that discovery is incomplete.
When education fails to highlight the fact that Bitcoin is a live permissionless network, people naturally begin to see it as nothing more than a token with a fixed supply. At that point the comparison to something like a bank issued coin becomes justified because in their minds there is no distinction between the two. If the network itself is ignored or goes underutilized Bitcoin loses the very qualities that make it extraordinary.
I couldn't agree more. We need to teach people that bitcoin is a new, peer-to-peer economic system, not a casino chip for a fiat gambling system.
You see this question ‘what is Bitcoin doing’ and the financial press usually means this in relation to the exchange rate, the price the amount in dollars etc…
They don’t mean the fees, they don’t mean the hashrate, they don’t mean the utxo set, or even things like a soft fork or consensus change…
It’s all ‘the exchange rate’ and what it does. Who cares. What about the network itself?
If Bitcoin fails long term it will be because users could not differentiate between ‘the price’ and the actual network which are 2 different things.
NGU tech is actually what prevents this, IMO. There is a monetary incentive to master self-custody. People that use paper Bitcoin (or ignore Bitcoin altogether) get rugged while the niche community survives financially. Competing with institutional scams like USD and ETFs is no different from competing with altcoins. As Bitcoin keeps winning on price, and not rugging the users, everything else fades away.
Bitcoin is not 'winning on price' not at least this year. Maybe it's because this is year 4 of 'the cycle' but I think the real reason is the lack of education.
Dec24 to Dec25 might be an awkward choice of time frame in retrospect. If you add 4 months and compare Oct24 to Feb26 that could be a 200% gain.
Even adding 2 months to measure from Oct24 to now amounts to a 50% gain in 14 months, which is pretty good.