The Concerns of Someone Newer to Bitcoin \ stacker news ~bitcoin

The Concerns of Someone Newer to Bitcoin

2715 sats \ 18 comments \ @SatsMate 26 Jun bitcoin

Hey All - Over the past couple of years, my hesitations of Bitcoin have changed over time - as my knowledge and expertise grew in this area.

A couple of years back I wrote down some of the concerns someone had on Bitcoin during a flight. They understood a decent amount as I think they were a reporter attending a Bitcoin conference. I looked it up a year or so later and thought this would be Stacker News gold.

I'd be curious to hear everyone's line of thought on some of these areas. Many of these I had when I didn't understand enough about Bitcoin, but I think it is important to consider these - because others newer to this space may have these as well!

Lightning and Mining

Is lightning the best layer two solution, if not - what else can reasonably take its spot this decade?
How do we further diversify mining pool activities? 70% of the hash rate is with three pools.
What efforts to further decentralize the node options for lightning wallets?

Philosophy

In a hyperbitcoinized world, there are/ will be risks of extreme wealth disparities. With an ever- deflationary model, incentives will evolve for the better. How will you get your hands on Bitcoin if you can’t buy it anymore?
Will everyone make it on the life raft, for those who don’t (and many will), won’t the government become extremely authoritarian and draconian to Bitcoiners?
Will we see a peaceful world on a Bitcoin standard or more of a world ruled by Oligarchs in Citadels?

Satoshi

If Satoshi were to ever be revealed would this be a net positive or net negative?
If Satoshi were to dump on retail where would bitcoin be?

Bitcoin Core

Core developers earn a meager salary and meager living, any ways to incentivize whales to offer more development efforts on the core?
With as many smart people as there are studying the code, and analyzing the BIPs, how did Taproot get pushed through with the unintended consequences of Ordinals?

Circular Economies/Practicality of Bitcoin in Developing Countries

How is the older generation handling the learning of Bitcoin? What are the biggest gaps, and biggest successes?
Service and Internet issues? Without excellent internet, bitcoin can be a sluggish experience. In addition to Star Link, what is being done to enhance the internet in every square foot of El Salvador and country wishing to adopt Bitcoin?
How has Chivo functionality been improving in the past couple of years? -What hardware wallets are Salvadorans (and other nations with smaller capital pools) able to subsidize self-custody? Most hardware wallets are $60+

Cheers Everyone!

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67 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 26 Jun

In a hyperbitcoinized world, there are/ will be risks of extreme wealth disparities. With an ever- deflationary model, incentives will evolve for the better. How will you get your hands on Bitcoin if you can’t buy it anymore?

Read up on marginal utility (which arises from subjective value) and you'll realize that once someone has a lot of something (e.g. bitcoin) they will want to trade it for other things - from things that meet their basic needs like food, to things that meet more advanced needs, like travel, entertainment etc. People don't want money, they want what money can buy.

Corn will trickle down on those offering goods and services bitcoiners value.

And you'll always be able to buy corn as long as you have something valuable to offer.

64 sats \ 6 replies \ @IamSINGLE 26 Jun

I'm learning about Bitcoin philosophy so I chose to answer this...

Will we see a peaceful world on a Bitcoin standard or more of a world ruled by Oligarchs in Citadels?

It all depends. Nobody knows about future. But so far it seems it's all good with Bitcoin. Oligarchy can't rule the world in a Bitcoin standard, IMO. Bitcoin is decentralized and I know nobody can make it centralised.

11 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 26 Jun

That’s probably the most important of the questions.

My thinking is that the ruling class uses fiat because it benefits them. Therefore, sound money should reduce their power.

32 sats \ 4 replies \ @IamSINGLE 26 Jun

Yes, what I've learnt so far, it seems that reducing the power of ruling class has to be one of the outcomes that we achieve in Bitcoin standard. What I don't see or pains me that we don't talk a lot about what process we must go through to achieve this outcome. Am I right?

11 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 26 Jun

I don't think it has to be a planned approach. I view it as more of a natural process, like erosion.

Building up our systems will consequently undermine theirs.

32 sats \ 2 replies \ @IamSINGLE 26 Jun

Natural process! Right, it has to be that way. As, you say 'building up our systems', what type of systems you are referring to? I can guess but please tell for the sake of generating conclusion.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 26 Jun

I mean everything that enhances our ability to interact without using the things they control. The list is endless: LN, nostr, local meetups, merchant adoption, accounting systems...

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 26 Jun

Thank you so much! Bd it endless, I'll prepare.

142 sats \ 1 reply \ @Radentor 26 Jun

Is lightning the best layer two solution

At least currently yes

if not - what else can reasonably take its spot this decade?

Ark

How do we further diversify mining pool activities? 70% of the hash rate is with three pools.

If you're on the cold side of the planet, HeatBit > Regular heater
If you're on the hot side of the planet, mine Bitcoin with solar energy
If you're on the humid side of the planet, hydromining is also an option
Some Guatemala Miners also reportedly mine Bitcoin using cooking oil waste

Those options can further increases hashrate by making access to mining easier. I haven't even mention country-based mining such as what El-Salvador would established, Stratum V2 can also helps decentralizing mining and lastly solo plug-&-play ASICs such as Nerdminer exist

What efforts to further decentralize the node options for lightning wallets?

We have :

Many different big nodes to connect : ACINQ, Voltage, Blixt, Olympus, WoS, Bitfinex, Kraken, River etc
Connecting to own node is also an option
Connecting to your peers that you regularly transacts with is also an option

If your "Lightning Wallets" can't be configured to connect to different node than you choose the wrong wallet to begin with

In a hyperbitcoinized world, there are/ will be risks of extreme wealth disparities. With an ever- deflationary model, incentives will evolve for the better. How will you get your hands on Bitcoin if you can’t buy it anymore?

Do you think the already-existing "Bitcoiner" do not eat, do not need house, do not need cars etc etc At that time, as long as you can provide value, you'll get compensation for that

Will everyone make it on the life raft, for those who don’t (and many will), won’t the government become extremely authoritarian and draconian to Bitcoiners?

This is why you shouldn't wear Bitcoin t-shirt/cap/jacket etc to begin with if you know you're in non-Bitcoin friendly country. The point is too lay low and not bragging your bag. Freedom is earned, not demanded

Will we see a peaceful world on a Bitcoin standard or more of a world ruled by Oligarchs in Citadels?

Why do you even ask?

If Satoshi were to ever be revealed would this be a net positive or net negative?

Why do i/we/you even care ? The software has been running for 15 years and 80% of that without Satoshi's influence

If Satoshi were to dump on retail where would bitcoin be?

He gave the world fair distribution of Bitcoin since the beginning, everybody (with enough knowledge and humility) can mine Bitcoin since it's release of source code.

If one day his UTXOs were to be moved, that's not my/your/anyone's business to worry about. If you're talking about fiat prices, then i'd be glad to have another chance buying cheap Bitcoin.

Core developers earn a meager salary and meager living, any ways to incentivize whales to offer more development efforts on the core?

You can't force people to donate to someone in the first place on any topic to begin with. But, Grants exist from such organization such as HRF & Opensats

With as many smart people as there are studying the code, and analyzing the BIPs, how did Taproot get pushed through with the unintended consequences of Ordinals?

You can put "non-transaction suff" on Bitcoin since it's inception, Ordinals are just another way to do it. How to store data on the blockchain?

How is the older generation handling the learning of Bitcoin? What are the biggest gaps, and biggest successes?

There will always be ways, what are we talking about exactly ? You can always find analogies that helps such as : UTXOs ≈ paper bills & coins

Service and Internet issues? Without excellent internet, bitcoin can be a sluggish experience. In addition to Star Link, what is being done to enhance the internet in every square foot of El Salvador and country wishing to adopt Bitcoin?

How has Chivo functionality been improving in the past couple of years? -What hardware wallets are Salvadorans (and other nations with smaller capital pools) able to subsidize self-custody? Most hardware wallets are $60+

Chivo is not the backbone of Bitcoin lmao, Bitcoin still operates well with/without Chivo
Hardware wallets are for paranoid geeks
All singlesig wallets are equally hackable, private keys are just number between 1~2²⁵⁶ and there are many derivation path to brute-force right now
You can create multisig wallet without hardware wallet

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 26 Jun

142 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 26 Jun

You should do these in a series and get a spectrum of answers for each one. It’s a lot of digest and try to respond to all of them. Here are a couple I will take a stab at.

“Is lighting the best layer 2 solution- if not what can replace it”

It is the best solution we have as of now. That doesn’t mean it will always be the best solution or the only one. I would imagine there will be a number of layer 2s and some might be better than others for different things. Maybe lighting is best for fast cheap payments but another protocol might be better for privacy etc.

“If Satoshi were revealed would that be positive or negative”

I would lean more towards negative but I think it would depend on the circumstances and who Satoshi was revealed to be. If we find out it really was Hal Finney it’s probably neutral to positive but if we find out Satoshi is a CIA creation or something like that, it definitely would be negative.

“If Satoshi dumped their coins”

I do think this would be a massive negative for Bitcoin but not catastrophic. Bitcoin could survive it but we would probably have a multi year confidence crisis. It would be ugly but not existential.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate OP 26 Jun

Yea - I will have to break this up into a series of posts! Content for days and days!

Great responses, I may resurface some of these - if not already discussed by other stackers. I think some people who have been in this space may even ponder this stuff sometimes. In the end, if one random person on a plane has alot of these reservations/questions - many others may as well!

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 26 Jun

These are good.

I’m still learning about a lot of this stuff, too, so I look forward to reading the answers.

The one I’m confident in is that in a hyperbitcoinized world it’ll be easier to get bitcoin than it is now. Of course you won’t be buying it, just like you don’t buy your local fiat now.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate OP 26 Jun

Thanks! There is already payroll being done on a bitcoin standard through Bitwage... Now how does this scale is the question...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 26 Jun

Yep. That’s not quite Bitcoin Standard, though, because the wages are still defined in fiat terms.

Bitcoin Standard will be when you earn a set amount of Bitcoin for your work.

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 26 Jun

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate OP 26 Jun

hahaha, looks like I have content for weeks now. I should make posts on each subsection over the next month.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @16d86e9daa 27 Jun

i dont know if its possible to convert my sats to bitcoin? if yes how, by using what wallet?