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There are actually a class of Bitcoiners who will refuse to use my service because it's not Bitcoin only. That's fine. Everyone can make their own decisions. But the argument that I'm trying to make about that attitude is that it is suicidal and only hurts Bitcoin in the end.
I don't see this as a case where they should be criticized for what they're doing, nor should companies like yours necessarily.
Purists are the intolerant minority that will make bitcoin-only projects viable much earlier than they otherwise would be. That yours isn't there (yet) isn't necessarily a knock. It might just be a sign of how early we are.
I would love it if one day I could move to a community where Bitcoin was the only thing that was accepted and that our little ecosystem could proliferate throughout the world. But that just hasn't materialized yet and thus it's not time for that yet. If you want to build a business that scales and becomes truly impactful, you have to cater to the existing audience of non-bitcoiners while still incentivizing Bitcoin.
As far as I'm concerned, we're rowing in the same direction.
What I want to emphasize, though, is that getting to that destination will require purity pressure. That some of us go out of our way, and pay more, to support bitcoin-only merchants, and withhold our support from those we think could be doing better, moves us towards the goal.
Like you say, the point is to incentivize bitcoin use.
Agree on all counts. Pressure Bitcoin adoption when one calculates that such pressure could result in something good for Bitcoin.
I feel that in some cases, the pressure is applied incorrectly and ends up hurting Bitcoin instead.
For example, when I wanted to make a post about PPQ in the Bitcoin Reddit, the mod refused to post because PPQ wasn't "Bitcoin only". However, when my Altcoin competitors want to post in a whole bunch of cryptocurrency reddits, they get huge encouragement and approval from those subreddits, gaining hundreds of real customers.
So I'm the good guy being "Bitcoin first" and yet it's never good enough for the some in Bitcoin community. Meanwhile, my competitors run laps around me in a marketing sense because the other communities are not as gated. Furthermore, those communities don't like the arrogance of some in the Bitcoin community and paint me that way as well, rejecting my posts in those subreddits as well.
This actually happened to me. I couldn't post in the /r/bitcoin reddit, nor could I post in the /r/cryptocurrency reddit. Hilarious self-own by Bitcoin purists.
I wonder though if the bitcoin-only moniker has much value left in it if - to ignorantly change Darth's words - the goalposts get shifted for many of these places over time.
This intolerant minority will feel abused and rightly so, because lets be honest now: they have been abused.
So as all these promises get broken there must be the logical next step of a mechanism for severe damage to those that abuse maxis. But it needs to be a precision scalpel: those that didn't make the promise need to stay out of shot.
Feeling betrayed is probably the worst feeling there is.
those that didn't make the promise need to stay out of shot.
Exactly. There's a huge difference between fiat companies moving towards bitcoin and bitcoin companies moving towards fiat.
You defend those who choose to conceal LN wallet status and those who chooose to minimise their use of LN while constantly virtue signalling that they are BTC Maxis 'living on The Bitcoin Standard'.
It was not this post in particular that triggered me, but his general posts over time, as well as the general attitude of a lot of certain Bitcoin Maxis that I've had to deal with over the last two years while trying to run my business.
There are actually a class of Bitcoiners who will refuse to use my service because it's not Bitcoin only. That's fine. Everyone can make their own decisions. But the argument that I'm trying to make about that attitude is that it is suicidal and only hurts Bitcoin in the end.
Some bitcoiners are relentless in their pursuit of purity, both in terms of Bitcoin and in privacy and technology, etc. They demand that I adopt every single new Bitcoin or privacy tech under the sun, and they get so distracted by this ideological perfectionism that they lose sight of the fact that the whole point of this is to make a good product and to solve real problems for real people.
I could have spent 90% percent of my time perfecting a Bitcoin‑only, privacy-perfect approach, but then I wouldn't be able to spend any time keeping up with all the latest and greatest AI developments that roll out daily.
Why did I post it from my company handle? Well, it's the only handle that I have on Nostr. Secondly, I actually believe in these arguments, and I want my company to wear this belief on its shoulder and lead by example.