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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 22 Mar \ parent \ on: The Crumbling of the Dollar (FT Weekend Essay, Barry Eichengreen) econ
'But what else can you use to send and receive fractions of a penny to strangers on the internet? Nothing else at least that's decentralized and proof-of-work.'
If you mean using LN for payments it is not so decentralised as LN is an abstraction from L1 and relies upon centralisation to some degree.
It is by dominating use for international trade payments that reserve currencies develop and Bitcoin is not visibly developing in that direction.
Bitcoin is much more developing as you say as a store of capital- even as a speculative commodity, not a MoE. At current rate most of Bitcoin ever issued could be held by institutions with a 5-10 years and excluded from use as a P2P MoE.
Its hard to know where this will end up except the historical precedent of the dominant nation/s in trade also dominating monetary systems.
Bitcoin is what it is today... because of speculative nonsense, NGU fools, Youtube 'open mouth' disease, and trader retards.
I don't think that lasts forever. As far as lightning goes... yes there is some trust involved with the apps the ecosystem the way it's developing, but in my opinion there is with everything. Everything has a cost nothing is free.
And I don't think the speculative trader retards will be around forever. Eventually Lightning as a discussion-motivator will migrate beyond Stacker News and Nostr... companies will want it to facilitate their websites plus spam-reduction, and people will like it. Then we will see what Bitcoin is really worth.
This is my opinion.
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You may hopefully be right.
In its early stages I tried LN and found it difficult (as a low tech user) and suspect many others did as well- only since finding SN and using coinos wallet have I found LN is now and can be user friendly for non tech people.
This gives hope that adoption can and will grow.
I am not even totally opposed to state / banker fiat money but believe that having Bitcoin as a competitive alternative is very healthy - it imposes some competitive discipline upon the fiat operators and gives people freedom of choice.
With CBDCs probably emerging along with Chinas increased monetary power projection Bitcoin being available as an alternative to state fiat is nigh essential in terms of freedom.
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