Can Bitcoin succeed without widespread adoption? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Can Bitcoin succeed without widespread adoption?

3479 sats \ 14 comments \ @SpaceHodler 7h bitcoin

This post was inspired by the thread A Cypherpunk Disagreement That Lives On, specifically the question of the relationship between a libertarian society and individual freedom.

I tend to believe freedom tech is only freedom tech when it can be used unilaterally, without anyone's permission. You can't free yourself from your oppressor if the freeing requires their permission; if they were happy to give you such permission they wouldn't have enslaved you to begin with. As Larken Rose put it "Perhaps the most valuable thing the "Great American Experiment" accomplished was to demonstrate that "limited government" is impossible. There cannot be a master who answers to his slaves."

However, the term "unilaterally" is nuanced, because life benefits from cooperation and community. Networks rely on the network effect, and the economy is one of the most important networks. That's one of the lessons of Austrian economics: peaceful cooperation (trade) increases specialization and productivity. Agorists emphasize community building, because gray and black markets are illiquid and inefficient with few people using them. The more people want to be free, the easier it is for you to be free as an individual. Therefore, people's lack of a desire to be free can be seen as a negative externality for the freedom seekers.

I can't use encryption in communication with others or benefit from mesh networks if I'm the only one using the tech. Bitcoin, being money, requires a network of people using it - for its monetary value, but also as a technology (nodes, miners, devs).

I don't know what the current Bitcoin adoption is (however we define it), but let's say it's 1%.

And let's say our society is, for the most part, not interested in freedom money and Bitcoin adoption stays at 1% for a long time. Can Bitcoin still succeed? 'Success' meaning benefiting those individuals who choose to benefit from it, which may include its use as a SoV or a censorship-resistant MoE.

Some random thoughts:

Even at the current adoption rate, bitcoin is already liquid enough for the needs of most individuals.
Fine art has a very low adoption rate as a SoV and is less liquid, but despite that it has worked for centuries as a SoV.
Monero is much more niche, fewer have heard of it than of Bitcoin, and yet it has worked so far as the MoE it was intended to be.

You could say it's not successful as a MoE if you can't pay with sats for your coffee, but then, do many people care for paying for coffee in a censorship-resistant way? As long as the government doesn't ban coffee that is, or get much more eager to freeze people's bank accounts - in which case adoption may increase accordingly, making it a self-balancing system.

I could fantasize about how much freer I'd be if the masses chose bitcoin over fiat, but it's their choice to make. Bitcoin is not benefiting me as much as it could in an ideal scenario, but it's benefiting me as much as the externalities of other people's choices allow. And they're not going to adopt it as a solution to a problem they don't think they have.

If it's currently under-adopted, it's also undervalued, and that just means I'll be rewarded more with NGU as well as the technical know-how if / when government coercion or inflation increases, mitigating the current negative externalities of low adoption. It's a hedge against state aggression. If that's low then I'm relatively free (and freer than most) and if it goes up I'll be ahead of the game too thanks to the cheap sats I stacked when few wanted them. Isn't that a success already?

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19 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 4h

Great post.

This passage reminds me of when I discovered PGP in a very early message board. I was very excited about the encrypted email potential until I discovered that not a single one of my clients could be bothered to take the few extra steps needed for privacy.

200 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 6h

Isn't that a success already?

Problem is we don't know how good of a "hedge against state agression" it is. We kind of have to wait and see what happens when/if a state really attacks it.

in which case adoption may increase accordingly, making it a self-balancing system.

This is the hope. Increased threats from state (financial controls, gov't money debasement) will hopefully lead to increased adoption. But we don't know at what level of state aggression a person's threshold for adopting bitcoin is.

The more people want to be free, the easier it is for you to be free as an individual.

You are spot on with this and I think it is true of bitcoin specifically, as well. So it makes sense for anyone interested in it to try to make bitcoin easier to use and understand so that the level of state aggression at which it becomes an attractive alternative is as low as possible.

Whether we think it has succeeded or not, it makes sense for anyone who wants censorship resistant money to continue to put effort into increasing bitcoin adoption. Because with more adoption, we get better censorship resistance.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @justin_shocknet 6h

Bitcoin's success is in the eye of the beholder, much to the dismay of many there's no consensus as to what Bitcoin is or what its goals are. Those are personal projection and nothing more, what you're really asking yourself is, "am I being realistic?"

For example, your entire framing can be undone with one different assumption. Assume a faction within government created it, what does that mean for it's success and the implied role in the world for it?

The definition of adoption is another assumption altogether, as it's mere existence has impacts beyond its immediate users. Do nuclear weapons prevent war if they're never used?

68 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 2h

The definition of adoption is another assumption altogether, as it's mere existence has impacts beyond its immediate users. Do nuclear weapons prevent war if they're never used?

I hadn't considered this way of thinking about it, but it seems useful. To continue the analogy, the deterrence power of nukes was achieved after 150k-250k people were killed, and two cities were obliterated; followed by various other extreme demonstrations of power even more terrible as technology advanced over the years.

What would constitute a similarly compelling show of force, wrt btc? Has it been achieved already?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 49m

Yea important to remember the nukes in japan weren't to win a hot war against japan, but to start a cold war with the soviet union. Bitcoin has that kind of chilling effect, in that it's so asymmetrically powerful that capital controls become off limits because they'd just boomerang.

Trump for example has already spoken to how he considers its price to be a proxy for peoples savings power. He wants it up like he wants the stock market up, so its already influencing policy from that standpoint. Everybody is subject to the game theory whether they think they're playing or not.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Solomonsatoshi 1h

The purpose of Bitcoin was set out very clearly in the White Paper- perhaps you have not read it. It was created to provision a censorship resistant P2P payments protocol- ie an alternative to the state imposed banker operated monopolies that are fiat money. The bankers and governments have via very sly means succeeded in obstructing use of Bitcoin as a P2P payments protocol and diverted its narrative, perception and majority use into that of a speculative commodity- one that is increasingly held in the custody of bankers where its use as a P2P payments protocol is expressly prevented.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 42m

It's been long established you have to outsource your thinking. so this may come as a shock, but I don't care what the whitepaper says its purpose was.

The purpose of a thing is what it does, not what someone stated.

It's also pretty obvious by now that Satoshi was an intelligence agency with a higher level agenda, not the fairy-tale you comfort yourself with.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @BallLightning 3h

Bitcoin is very hard to use by most people. People aggressively argue with me about this, but try sending someone new 1 sat to demonstrate the technology? No you can't. (I've literally been accused of "missing the plot" (what plot, bro?) by pointing out that very small transactions on lightning may be extremely uneconomical due to base fees on routing nodes). The whole lightning "you need money to receive money, but don't worry, it's only at the start" betrays the great ignorance on the bitcoiners part.

Also people like DarthCoin love to insult people for being stupid and that he doesn't need them, but if you want widely accepted money you will need not only people you think are stupid, but actually stupid people to use it. Furthermore you need to accept that your actual enemies and people who you hate or they hate you should also be able to use it.

On the technical side I don't see a scalable solution that will scale for all the people on earth. But for this part I am hopeful that it is solved (once upon a time I didn't expect something like lightning either).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @halalmoney 38m

Do you see any merit in projects such as this one for very small Bitcoin transactions?

https://wallet.cashu.me/welcome

5 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 6h

I see bitcoin as already being very successful. It's provided an outside option for everyone in the world.

Even if adoption stays low, knowledge of its existence has positive effects. Other financial institutions will have to improve, at risk of losing customers to bitcoin.

Also, merchant adoption will grow, even if they don't become real bitcoiners. If one percent of potential customers will go to a competitor who does accept bitcoin, then they'll start accepting it.

We're so early, the game theory has only just begun to play out.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 1h

If merchants are faced with hostility from their bank and threats of removal of banking access to potentially gain a 1% market most will not bother and they are not. Merchants also face extremely burdensome tax reporting requirements if they choose to hold any Bitcoin. Consumers at the same time also face extremely burdensome tax reporting obligations if they choose to use Bitcoin as a payments protocol- most will not want such obligations imposed and so choose not to use Bitcoin as a MoE. The fiat power have very slyly obstructed Bitcoins use as a MoE/payments protocol and yet many Bitcoiners remain deluded that it will happen eventually. It seems very unlikely that it will just because they want it to and yet they ignore the sly obstruction that has already very effectively been put in place.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 1h

I think it has been successful as a niche so far. It could end up like distributed citadel communities if the adoption tapers off.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 1h

Yes Bitcoin has already succeeded as a SoV for those who adopted it and many who adopted did so wanting a money free of coercion and intermediaries. However Bitcoin has become mostly used now as a speculative commodity because that is what it has been permitted to be by the legacy fiat powers. They have deliberately made use as a MoE extremely inconvenient by imposing arbitrary tax reporting requirements and by threatening loss of banking access to businesses who dare offer Bitcoin as a payment option. The legacy fiat operators are not so worried about Bitcoin as long as it remains primarily and predominantly used as a speculative commodity as in that context it can be and is being accumulated under institutional custody and control. As the proportion of Bitcoin held in ETFs and corporate Treasuries increases the chance of it becoming a widely used P2P payments protocol diminishes...and thus it does not threaten fiats MoE hegemony. Bitcoin is increasingly a speculative commodity plaything, not a P2P payments protocol. As this happens it becomes increasingly easy to justify a ban on MoE use and self custody but also as long as MoE use is largely obstructed such a ban may not ever be required. Bitcoin is being captured and controlled slyly without most Bitcoiners even noticing or caring as they are distracted by the significant speculative gains they have made to date.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatoshiNakanodo 6h

For me it is succeeding, and so, yes.