Bitcoin will never reach mass adoption - that's my case here. It's not because there's anything wrong with Bitcoin of itself. It's simply because Bitcoin isn't aiming for mass adoption.
The Bitcoin team isn't focused on mass adoption, and maybe they never were. They're focused on something else - I don't know exactly what, something technical, some kind of engineering miracle. I know they're not focused on mass adoption, because mass adoption comes with user experience. The way you get people to use your tech is to make it easy to use. You start with your customer in mind.
Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode.
Stay Safe
Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. If you are storing hundreds or thousands of dollars of crypto on exchanges, you're putting yourself at risk. Your account could get hacked, the exchange could get hacked. That's why I recommend getting one of these babies - a Trezor. In many ways, it's even more secure than storing your crypto on a paper wallet buried in your backyard. I've been using mine for more than a year and had a great experience with it. You can store more than 500 different cryptos on here. Put your mind at ease, keep your crypto safe with Trezor.
UX is not a priority for Bitcoin
We know that user experience isn't their priority, because we can hear it from the developers themselves. In 2017 when Bitcoin transaction fees were surging, Bitcoin dev Lukejr said "Just pay a $5 fee and it'll go through every time unless you're doing something stupid."
In 2013, developer Gregory Maxwell gave his opinion on the 1 MB block limit which caused the transaction fees to get to that point, saying he wouldn't have joined the project if they didn't have that limit. More recently in October 2018, both Maxwell and developer Jimmy Song advised people to use their credit cards rather than use Bitcoin for a purchase.
We can tell these are people who aren't striving for a good UX, saying these things without apologies. Whatever plans they have for Bitcoin, it's not as a payment platform for regular people. Bitcoin has an established history, it's the oldest project of its kind, and it is tough. I would still say it's the most stable project in crypto, but I'd also say that stable and stagnant are two sides of the same coin.
I like to think about the case of BetaMax vs VHS, the video systems from the 80s and 90s.
BetaMax vs VHS
Ask some people why BetaMax failed and they'll tell you it was market failure. BetaMax had the superior tech, and buyers just made a bad choice and made VHS popular. BetaMax did have superior picture quality, but users made the right choice. Users bought the product which best served their needs.
BetaMax was so focused on tech that they never bothered to ask what their customers wanted. What they wanted, on the whole, was an affordable system with a long play time. Picture quality was always secondary. BetaMax could only record an hour in its first form. VHS could do two hours, enough for a movie or football game. BetaMax also waited years to add new features like the remote control. And so, people bought the system which gave them what they wanted.
The whole product
This is an extract from an article about BetaMax vs VHS:
... almost no journalists, and no geeks, have ever come across the concept of "the whole product", though it is well known to marketing people. Real people may not be aware of it, but the "whole product" model is an accurate description of the way they buy things.
Let's take a simple example: digital audio tape (Dat). Get someone to compare Dat with a humble C90 compact cassette and they will find Dat to be technologically superior, especially for recording music. However, if you consider "the whole product", Dat is vastly inferior for most people most of the time. This is why people still buy millions of cassettes, while Dat has virtually disappeared from consumer use.
The point is that when someone buys and uses a product, the technological aspects are a small and often uninteresting part of the decision. When you choose compact cassette, you are also buying into a vast infrastructure of capabilities, services and support. These include the availability of cheap cassettes on every high street, cheap personal stereos, and the ability to use the same format for a wide range of applications (personal stereo, portable radio/cassette players, in the car, in your hi-fi stack).
That was Jack Schofield writing for the Guardian in 2003. We don't use cassette tapes any more, but fundamentally nothing has changed. Techies still don't know that there is more to a product than just its specs.
Go verify your own blockchain
A month ago, I interviewed Juan Galt about why he still believes Bitcoin is the most important project in crypto. Juan told me that:
"It comes from an an American culture, so there's an analogy to the right to bear arms in the Bitcoin world, and that's the right to be able to validate the blockchain itself ... If you can't download a node to a consumer grade computer and run the verification process, you can't actually know the supply is limited."
I respectfully disagree with Juan. if you're nerdy enough to want to download an entire blockchain and prove for yourself that the amount of coins is limited, you're probably nerdy enough to buy specialised hardware to do it. Working the whole project to cater to this small group of people who want to be able to prove the basis of their money on their home computer, is backwards. Regular people don't care about that.
I encourage people to go back and listen to the full interview with Juan so you can hear his arguments and make up your own mind.
Everybody wants a good user experience
Regular people want something easy to use, and to get them to change their habits, it might even have to be easier to use than what they have now. Services like Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo set the standard of modern financial services. Being able to verify the blockchain on your iPhone generally is not something that people have on their mental checklist.
This tech can already be used to send payments cheaply, evading capital controls, and giving an option to people stuck with a hyperinflating currency. There are people suffering out there who could really benefit from digital currency, but they still can't get it because there aren't services that let them access it. Fortunately, some people are working on things like Dash Text, which lets people with feature phones send Dash.
I don't know which project will hit the mainstream first. What I know is, if your project focuses on tech and not people, it will stay in your mum's garage. First and foremost, all tech, all design, all crypto, should be about people. When you care about people, people will care about you.
Important Links
Buy a Trezor and keep your crypto safe
Steve Jobs on UX
Why VHS was better than BetaMax
Just pay a $5 fee
Greg Maxwell 1 MB limit
Credit cards are better
Juan Galt - Practical BItcoin Maximalist
The Episode
You can listen to the episode on Anchor and other podcasting services here: Cryptonomics - Bitcoin will NEVER gain mass adoption. Or watch on YouTube below:
There is no Bitcoin "Team", you most likely don't understand anything about Bitcoin after saying that.
The majority of influential devs working on Bitcoin want mass adoption as store of value not as a payment system.
Compare how slow and inconvenient it is to pay with physical gold and then how baseless and iffy the digital fiat transfers are and you'll see how big a gap there is to fill.
But why store value in Bitcoin? What makes it so appealing? Id say that even Steem could have that function through powering up even better then BTC.
Anything really can be a store of value and the only appeal BTC has over other alternatives is that its "best known", "biggest"., limited supply.
Once more people start getting into crypto realizing the options available it could easily happen that BTCs appeal might be lost in favor of technologically superior crypto of which there are huge numbers already.
People tend to act as if BTC has some kind of predestined place in the future of money and that place cannot be taken over by anyone.
I dont hold that belief and i think that something that doesnt have a potential utility outside "hodl it might go up/hodl it might not lose value" is something that doesnt have a bright future. It might do well in midterm but without major improvements BTC is almost a burden to Cryptocurrencies and a go to crypto when critics want to spread FUD due to BTCs complete lack of ability to compete in utility with any legacy payment systems.
If STEEM had a bigger market cap (that it deserves) i would even say that it would be a far better store of value long term (if in SP) then BTC, even with the inflation aspect.
The main reason im a huge believer in STEEM is because it has the potential to be "everything".
And by "everything" i mean exactly that. You could actually build a whole society on the STEEM blockchain.
It does sound far-fetched but its really not. Look at what you have right now.
You have artists like me providing entertainment, you have fundraising, games, people offering all kinds of services, buying and selling rl objects, even a bank (of sorts), supportive and active communites that function on-chain, humanitarian efforts and most important you have SBDs and STEEM as the currency. All these things happening on the blockchain.
I respect BTC greatly for what it did but i really cannot see what the appeal is now that i have found STEEM.
I like Steem a lot, though I'd say it's not really ideal as a payment platform at the moment. The way it's structured, it could be difficult to have a wallet app for it that's secure... maybe though.
In terms of user experience, I'd say Steem has the best in the market by now. Even just having usernames instead of crazy long addresses makes a huge difference. Even so, it has a long way to go. Generally, people just won't accept the idea of "yeah, if you lose your keys/password, that's the end."
I cant speak on the security in the broad sense since im not educated enough on the issues. If you gave me an example or elaborated a bit more i could respond.
My comment was more in regards to Steem being the only crypto on the market that actually has society building potential on top of what every other currency offers.
BTC and all others crypto want to "force" itself into the mainstream society while Steem builds one from bottom up and invites individuals to be a part of it.
Steem, Gab, Minds, MeWe, Brighteon, & Bitchute, are doing pretty good. Bitcoin is mostly like buried treasure. Steemit is my favorite. Yeah, trying to force itself into the mainstream is like trying to force a baby to eat.
Who says, Steem, Gabs, Minds, MeWe, Brighteon, and Bitchute, can not become the mainstreem. The Facecrook, Twitter, Pinterest, cartel, banning lots of people, is a major opportunity for us to grow, and work longterm to replace them. As more, and more people awaken, social media websites, like steem, will keep going from strength to strength, with continuous longterm growth.
Yes, Steem is becoming mainstream. A lot of things are spreading. Like they say in V For Vendetta, you can't kill an idea. It's cancer but in a good way. We still got so much work to do to keep it up, but we are making history.
Sure. What I meant was, if you want to use Steem from your phone and spend it, you'll have to have your private key ready to use on your phone. With other cryptos, you can just have another wallet with a small amount of funds in there, but with Steem it's not always so easy to make another username.
Yes, there's definitely a lot of potential to build stuff on top of Steem, and it's brought a lot of newbies in with a UX that's more familiar.
Bitcoin is mathematicaly the safest structure out there. Steem is not near as redundant as Bitcoin. Bitcoin has the lowest complexity. Ppl often think the more complex the better but in crypto-economic-transactionsystems-world its the simpler the better. Its touring incomplete and has the longest track record. It has the best aviability (which is still quite low) but you have the instruments to trade it direct paired to USD or EUR, with STEEM, you simply cant. No custodians will be avaiable for steem --> hance no accredited investors .
Ofshore money are hundrets of billions even trillions with all the hedgefund money, multi-billions are moved every day in forex, they simply dont aim for us and our play money.
Of course steem is far better for our everyday use. Since it has more layers of complexity it is more fragile than Bitcoin, thus it cant be everything. It cant be the robustest crypto-system simply because it is not build for this purpose. Thus it makes no sense to compare it with Bitcoin.
https://bit.ly/2RV1vix
Why do you think your post is a good response to my comment?
because you clearly don't understand the concept of bitcoin. even comparing it to STEEM lol
hehe. :D Thank you for your input.
What is FUD?
Fear, uncertainty and doubt. It's a sort of "marketing tactic" or propaganda tactic, where you try to convince people that competing products or companies are inferior or dangerous.
Didn't they use fear to convince people to hate Trump? I'm for free markets, for making government smaller and smaller. It is up to each of us to stop tyranny, increased taxes, regulations, red tape, the swamp, the corruptions, etc. People don't have to like Trump to love freedom. When people awake to the responsibility of taking care of freedom, they abandon their hobbies to fight for their children, their future.
People will still say, Bitcoin will never gain mass adoption, when it reaches $1,000,000 a Bitcoin, I ignore the doom-mongers, and focus on delivering value. I gladly support Trump, and I am a bisexual woman, from the LGBT community. Sure, I may not agree on everything Trump does, I am, no fan of Pence, just Trump, but I agree on the majority of things Trump does.
I am for smaller government and raising money, by alternative means, like the government, buying tons of houses to rent out, to raise revenue for the government. Additionally, the government should get to work, buying airports, water utilities, power utilities, among many other purchasing decisions. The government should then, pass along the budget savings, the government has made, due to raising money by passive income. With the goal being, to lower taxation, with the eventual goal, being that all government functions, are run 100 percent free of taxation, with revenue raised, from passive income, and voluntary contributions only.
Monopolism?
Would you rather have people pay a monopoly, like the government, for their power, water, utilities, or would you rather pick from a variety of free market power companies, water companies, etc?
Solar Power?
Would you rather have an option to maybe buy solar panels for your electricity, or water power, or other options?
Exactly. you beat me to it, it's meant as a store of value.
Bitcoin =gold
enter crypto here = the payment system.
Bitcoin is just the digital gold, no one needs to use it.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your values and how you see cryptocurrencies, XRP and/or XLM will be the digital currency, where BTC stays as digital money
Bitcoin will develop layers that operate as the payment system in the future. There won't be another crypto filling that gap.
Bitcoin as we see it now will be how large transactions take place between businesses/governments/etc as store of value continues to make more sense globally.
With day to day transactions happening in Satoshis on a slightly less secure extremely fast network.
Bitcoin is a 50+ year project that is blowing past expectations in its first decade.
I highlight a few reasons why this is here: https://bit.ly/2RV1vix
Believe in Bitcoin the Digital Gold, support decentralization
In a round-about way, I think we're actually in agreement here on many points. We're in agreement that they're not working on user experience, or on a payment platform. The point we disagree on is that, you believe it can reach mass adoption without building a user experience, and I believe mass adoption must first include a great user experience. Is that right?
Jesus you still dont get it
This post is pretty much worthless so I am going to make it worth something with................................................... !rabbit
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!rabbit
Troll. hahahaha
No. What User Experience are you even referring too? The majority of Bitcoin enthusiasts/HODLers/and OGs DON'T WANT TO SPEND THEIR BITCOIN. They want to STORE IT AND GROW THE VALUE.
A user experience can come decades down the line.
Here I explained it a little better for you here: https://bit.ly/2RV1vix
I gave a few examples of what counts as a good user experience in the video. This is good though, because you're not the only one to ask for clarification on that point. Maybe this video ruffles feathers precisely because people don't know what user experience is.
I read your article, but I still don't know why you believe mass adoption doesn't matter. Can you summarise your answer, or point me to the part of the article which explains it?
Also just want to point this out 1 MB block is a security feature:
Don't believe me here words from a BCH fan:
Nothing wrong with bigger blocks but as seen you can't just increase it-it becomes an attack vector. You either cap it or let go up the limit which let blocks grow infinitely. i much support at max 10 MB blocks on bitcoin.
I don't see how that quote from Vin provides support for what you're saying. Can you clarify?
How does bigger blocks become an attack vector?
Assuming you're right and you can't just let it grow infinitely, that points to either a lack of foresight from Bitcoin developers, impotence of Bitcoin developers, or some other structural problem which inhibits development. The block size issue went on for literally years before they implemented SegWit.
this issue was always known in theory. CSW just made it into an attack vector officially. The attack vector is to spam blocks so much it disconnects other nodes thus giving them more power to mine.
there are to ways to slove it make it a limit or make no limit at all and hope for the best.
A block limit makes fees high but not shut down node. In no limit method the node client and your own resources just have to get good
Okay, interesting. Doesn't the fact that you have to pay fees to ensure inclusion prevent spamming blocks? Is this a problem with Dash or with Steem?
yep fees prevent this type of Ddos. Smaller MB blocks make this cost get more expensive thus preventing prolong spamming. Dash might have this problem but their use of masternodes helps them subsidize big blocks. That is why I believe if their is one coin that can do big block it is Dash.
Steem no... due to RCs which depend on your steempower(after the base limit) so the built in spam prevention system is kinda like a collateral based system. the more steempower you have more Rcs(resource credits) you have. Or in the future you can rent out RCs but even then spamming won't work that well.
but, but, holding gold and using it as a payment needs better UX else no "mass" adoption. :(
Gold doesn't have mass adoption. Most people today don't own gold to store value, and they definitely don't trade in it. So what is your point?
Goldsmith Bankers?
Centuries ago, goldsmiths were bankers, possibly the first bankers ever were goldsmiths and they would store people's gold in their vaults.
Paper Money Receipts?
Paper money were generally the gold receipts. Yeah, so many people may not have gold. But they probably should have gold. A lot of people would keep gold in their basements maybe, if they had gold in the first place.
Bitcoin is kind of like gold in that sense.
Ethereum might be like silver. So, some people are collecting Bitcoin. The popularity & the idea of holding onto crypto gold is spreading around the world.
It's growing.
So, it may not ever gain mass adoption, but it is becoming more adopted than gold, more decentralized than gold, and safer than gold in a variety of ways.
Bitcoin might not ever gain mass adoption, but it's likely that some digital currency will. I hope it's a free, stateless currency, not one controlled by banks or governments.
You know that the dollar is mostly a digital currency, already? The dollar is not a cryptocurrency because it's centralized by the Fed and central bankers. But most money is debt. Most money is theoretical. A lot of dollars are running around through wire transfers from bank to bank and stuff like that. Yeah, may the better cryptocurrency rise and continue to compete against the others. So, all of this is very good. But we are also in the fight of our lives against world banks and others as they have not had this level of competition for like many centuries.
Bitcoin team lol
Not sure if I agree. Bitcoin is about security. This is not move fast and break things territory. Maybe users wont care about security, but the will care when their money is lost. I think there is enough room in this space to have very conservative projects such as bitcoin and more experimental ones.
My case isn't about whether they move fast or slow, my case is about which direction they're moving. They're not moving towards user experience now, and they haven't been for a long time.
You're also phrasing this as if you have to sacrifice security in order to get user experience... Is that true?
I agree with your statement and analysis overall. Bitcoin tries to be very conservative. In the question of blocksize, keeping it small means more people can verify and that increases security. I dont think with current technology you can have fast cheap transactions that are secure and I like the decision to keep blocks small. The situation is a classical trilema, choose two out of security, speed and price. You cant have all. But I also like that there are others that have bigger blocks. We are still experimenting very much and diversity is great.
Maybe bitcoins approach is not the winning idea, but maybe other chains will suffer attacks in the future that are not possible in bitcoin and people realise that we need as many nodes as possible.
On many other topics we do not have such a trilemma and huge advances in user experience are possible. I think the problem is that the btc people are very theoretical and dont have the skills to deliver good user experience. People that are designing UI on the other hand dont know how to participate. There is a lot of opportunity, but it is difficult to make money and enter that space.
It does increase security, but I do think that Bitcoiners are obsessed with security. It wasn't that long ago that banks ran on a simple double ledger system, where the bank had a ledger and you had a copy in your chequebook. By today's standards, I'd say that's clearly not secure enough. But I'd also say Juan's statement about everyone being able to verify the blockchain on their home computer is going too far - it's limiting the blockchain to the slowest runners in the race. It would be like a video editor developer saying they're going to make sure their software runs on the least powerful device, thereby sacrificing all the benefits of specialisation.
Thanks for your respectful and thought-provoking comments, they're much appreciated.
That bc Bitcoin does not plan to scale by it main layer.
Specialization is decentralization. It will happen to any system but the key it to make it low.
You asked "You're also phrasing this as if you have to sacrifice security in order to get user experience... Is that true?", and I wouldn't presume to answer that question, as phrased, because I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "user experience"
But I will state unequivocally that security and convenience are opposite ends of a sliding scale. More secure is less convenient, and more convenient is less secure. You cannot have both. As Tycho Brahe (the Penny Arcade dude, not the astronomer) put it, "every avenue of convenience for the user is also a vector of exploitation".
There is no hardware solution to this conundrum, and there is no software solution. It is simply a law of the universe. The only working solution is compromise; you set that slider somewhere in the middle and hope for the best.
Yes, I see your point. I'm going to think that one through more thoroughly. Right now, where do you think the slider is sitting with Bitcoin?
I did try to give an explanation of what I meant by user experience, with a few examples and also with the extract from Schofield's article about "whole product". I'm going to think more about what constitutes a good user experience and maybe do a video about it, as it's apparently not as straightforward as I thought.
Thanks for your insightful comment.
Ux is important but that not up to Bitcoin core dev. Their job is to make the main blockchain secure. One little screw and bang $ gone.
Their a reason why Bitcoin called the most secure blockchain in the world right now. Bitcoin was built to be Sovereign State resistant and fights to remain such.
Creating a wallet ux is for other bitcoin dev just not the main blockchain dev. There plenty of beautiful wallet out there being worked on. And Ln wallet as well.
Would bitcoin still survive at this point if Blockstream was raided and shut down by some government entity? In other words, are there enough devs outside of Blockstream to keep the project going? I see that company as a form of centralization that creates potential vulnerability. Bitcoin needs to be less reliant on company structures for progress.
yes they are enough dev outside of blockstream...
the rumor that blockstream control bitcoin dev is bc many dev support blockstream goals. But don't work for blockstream.
Blockstream has great power but not to the extent you think. Blockstream has more social power if anything. Blockstream might scare some people but is also trusted by many others...
There is an case study done showing less than 10% of bitcoin core dev worked or held stake in blockstream.
Be interesting to see if any of the cryptos actually do see mass adoption, or if they just lead the way then die out and give all the ideas for the big players that dominate society to emulate and steal the glory...
There is no they in bitcoin, only "us". You're at the very beginning stages of understanding bitcoin, like I was when i first heard of it. You just need to research more and give yourself time. Everything you talked about here is the same thing we've been hearing from newbies since 2011.
This sounds like an ad hominem. Perhaps you can explain where my error is, or what I need to research.
I have been researching Bitcoin since 2011.
Toyota accepts Bitcoin and Amazon will sell you gift cards for Bitcoin, many many more accepting it as time goes on. Maybe Bitcoin will not be yet other cryptos are filling the spaces bitcoin cannot Etherium, Ripple, STEEM...
We need to do our own part..
Well said! Thanks for posting this. It's been my thought for years.
Usability is important. I'm betting on PalmPay.
Where's the "Bitcoin is like Poker" video? I can't wait to comment on that one! It may be a bit long and involved but it's golden advice!
Thanks Michael. I'll have to check out PalmPay.
Bitcoin is like poker is one of the first ones I posted... I've been reposting stuff on The Paradise Paradox YouTube. At first I thought it made sense to start a channel just for Cryptonomics, but now it seems like it was silly because my old subscribers aren't seeing my stuff. Live and learn.
My bad. Regardless, my compliments on some well done work.
No bad to it haha. I'm glad you're enjoying these videos. As you might guess, I put a lot of thought and planning into how I approach Cryptonomics so it's cool that you and others are appreciating them.
Ah at first I found this one PalmPay.co which does look like an interesting project, for finance and loans in Africa. But I assume you mean PalmPay.io, for accepting cryptocurrencies. Interesting how they decided to use BitShares for it.
Indeed. Bitshares is one of those cryptos I don't think most understand the potential of. I'm no expert myself but when it comes to user experience, as you point out, the most usable wins. This is going to be rolling out in Acapulco over the next few months... we'll see how it goes.
DAT’s were the best for recording! B. E. S. T.
Haha. I never had the chance to try one, just heard about them in rap songs.
They recorded so0Oooo SloO00oooww. You couldn’t even see the little wheels in the center of the cassette turning as they were recording. Pristine quality and sound!
Except we had to pay top shelf price for the Dat’s, we could only get them in like 10 packs or something, too, the Dat players, etc.
Good morning from Los Angeles.
I don't think there will ever be mass adoption of any crypto, period. Because adoption implies people understanding what crypto is and using it of their own free will.
Instead, I think there will be mass distribution to people that are completely clueless about crypto, through apps that they are already using. Whichever coins get into the hands of the most people the fastest will "win".
So wallet UX doesn't matter, as the masses will never be downloading standalone crypto wallets. Instead they'll be using the wallet built in to whichever app or apps that crypto is tied to.
Bitcoin will stay king for a long time though, because there will always be people who want high security for storing and transferring large sums. But it won't be the coin you get for gaming, posting stuff online, or watching porn.
Yes, that makes sense. If you can get them using it without them having to use the term "cryptocurrency", that's probably the best way. People will download the Starbucks app and start using Starbucks to pay for their coffee.
I'm not entirely certain about Bitcoin being used in the long term for highly secure large sums. There's definitely a lot of momentum there, but in the end I wonder how secure it will be. In my interview with Juan, he said you can't change Bitcoin easily and that's one of its key strengths. But if there's a serious problem, that quickly becomes a weakness. In the case of the block size issue, it went on for years and it was partly because the developers had this mentality of "let's play it safe". It's possible a situation could arise where playing it safe, not changing things, is actually what leads to its downfall.
Time will tell.
wait wait wait, hold on, backup! I can get paid in crypto for watching pr0n?
WHERE do I sign up? ;)
redpossumtube.com
Great post and I totally agree.
In fact, I would go one step further and say that cryptocurrency will NEVER achieve its full potential because of the crypto community. Not everyone but a large number of people including many ignorant authority figures in the space.
The problem is REGULATION.
So many people are desperate for regulation and believe this is the next evolutionary step for cryptocurrency. It's beyond stupidity.
Governments around the world are only interested in blockchain technology to give themselves more power and control over society.
They are concerned about cryptocurrencies because they understand the potential of this technology far more than 95% of this community. However, they may be concerned but they are by no means worried because they see the number of people crying for their help.
I wrote an article on this a few days ago that explains the ignorance and stupidity of the crypto community who have no understanding of what regulation means. If your one of the people preaching regulation, I highly recommend you read this article or piss off...
(Sorry to swear, I'm just getting fed up with people not understanding the basic ideology behind crypto and thinking that a government is anything but your enemy. WAKE UP FFS)
https://steemit.com/blockchain/@richreeve/regulation-you-must-have-a-few-blocks-short-of-a-chain
I'm definitely not calling for regulation. It probably is going to happen, but I'd say cryptocurrency is going to keep evolving to move through the cracks. I'll have a read.
Btw, I wasn't implying you were calling for regulation and it's nice to hear your not. Your in a small minority of sane people. HaHa.
I've given this a lot of thought and the only thing I think regulation will do is force KYC for tax and tracking and to prevent opportunities for the poor. Beyond that, there isn't much effect on the average user that decentralization and anonymity can't fix. Hopefully, the masses will realise they have a choice to police themselves or not.
I think it's important that people start to create different digital identities from their physical one. If people did this, it would be so powerful.
I think a new, technologically superior crypto will eventually unseat the king BTC.
I've actually come to the conclusion that it's ok if BTC doesn't gain mass adoption. We still win..
Yes, do you mean because other cryptocurrencies will advance the cause, or something else?
I believe that BTC along with other crypto assets serves holders with a particular kind of freedom that is unique for this dispensation. Even if we never see mass adoption for 50 years, we who possess these crypto assets eill still remain winner. "one Bitcoin will always be worth one Bitcoin.."😃
there is immense value and rarity in something that is unique, creates value, is a store of value, and can't be counterfeited or duplicated with no limit.
Something extremely rare and valuable in owning something only you have access to and can control which has forward, backward and lateral compatibility and can be converted into other coins, more btc, or even fiat.
I must say @eoinroi, I am loving the process of accumulating assets without regulation. It's my best fit..
Transition Bitcoin Gateway.
Yes, Bitcoin is a transition from fiat towards decentralized cryptocurrencies, blockchains, bit torrents, internet 2.0 systems, new emailing systems, new emerging technology. So, Bitcoin doesn't have to be the movie star to be fundamental, pivotal, in helping people transition over to new worlds, new ways of doing things. Bitcoin red pills people.
Would we have Steem without Bitcoin?
People invest & save in Bitcoin. Later on, they begin creating other alt coins, blockchain systems like Steem & Minds. So, Bitcoin is that door, that window, that gateway into getting awesome people on board. Then, they go on to do awesome things to help many people.
Indirect Hollywood Success?
So, indirectly, Bitcoin is like mainstream but not directly but instead Bitcoin serves as a foundation for other things to be built on and upon to grow off & expand from.
This is such a great statement @joeyarnoldvn! Your metaphors are on fire sir!
Yeah Gold has a crazy advanced UX...
Good information it makes a lot of sense now that you have put it in that manner. It's a pity that us as Africans always get information after almost a century of it first use.
Right... well, the hope is that Africa is going to "leapfrog" a lot of things in the traditional banking system. Just like a lot of people never had landlines, but got mobiles relatively quickly, people in Africa might go straight to digital currency from their phones and never use traditional bank accounts. Time will tell; I hope it works out for Africa.
0.0
Satoshi's white paper was titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", a disruptive concept of money transfer based on a distributed blockchain that was built on the basis of immutability, no double spend ( as compared to the fiat printing press) and low transaction fees. Up until early 2017, despite the huge price gains, it was still feasible to transact with bitcoins for a low fee. After it's meteoric rise in 2017, with fees sky rocketing, and more blockchain tokens issued in 2017/2108, bitcoin is now seen as a store of value. What value is there when it's original concept and objectives has since been hijacked by miners, corporations and pure greed? It is only a pale resemblance as it's objectives have now been overtaken by other better conceived tokens or coins with the proliferation of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Green, Private and what not, reminding me of the Coke commercial with so many choices of Coke, you would rather have a Pepsi. So instead of Bitpay, in China, Alipay and WeChatpay have already taken the concepts and made them viable albeit in the hands of corporate giants where Apple Pay, Samsung Pay have failed to take off so much so that the Bitcoin ban in China has had little to no impact.
Yes, I call it the retreating battle of use cases. Once upon a time Bitcoin was supposed to be for micro-transactions, medium or regular transactions like a cup of coffee, and even big transactions. Now It definitely fails at micro-transactions, it's kinda too slow for a cup of coffee, and more or less works for big and really big transactions. I'm skeptical whether it will continue as a store of value... but I guess it's a possibility.
Steem's biggest flaw is that it is connected to people's identity (even internet ID is just too trackable). People value blockchain for passport/ID protection, but that's only for when people don't want to be anonymous. We're quickly entering a world pushing back against surveillance and I suspect this will be a challenge for the Steem model. Plus I see it as an internet model and nothing more, aspects of its design suggest to me it is destined to be niche such as BAT, and eventually to compete with BAT.
As for Bitcoin, if you notice it has the highest volume in value transfers on exchanges. By who? Hodlers all hodl, they hate giving up their bitcoins. So what's going on with the daily transfers? My guess, institutions. I think BTC is actually doing what XRP plans to do right now, and I suspect that is BTC's future. But I don't think that is the devs' plans, they want a techocracy with themselves positioned at the top.
That said I see BTC as essentially a ponzi at this moment. Notice how angry all the hodlers get over anyone using any other crypto? Its because its a first come first serve system, and they need new people flooding in for it to keep going up making them wealthy. But most newcoming people see this and have no desire to do this. They don't care how big BTC is, they want to find their own mooncoin. Its like Charles Hoskinson said, "altcoins are only bad for people invested in BTC," but not for the world. Now, to be fair, all money is essentially a ponzi, and thus all crypto projects a kind of a ponzi. Its the usefulness of the tech that makes it a legit money that ultimately reverses the ponzi-effect supporting real value behind it. The problem with BTC is that it has been denatured to the point of having value only in the form intended for XRP, which is also, incidentally, why XRP is a less accomplished ponzi.
I'm not anti-BTC, in fact, I believe everyone needs to have both BTC and BCH to be safe, because I think BCH going big blocks will force BTC to go big blocks too in a fight for survival, and if BTC is quick enough about it, I think it might defeat BCH. However, only by going big blocks before BCH takes on too much adoption will this work, if they wait too long, Bitcoin Cash will be known by the masses as "Bitcoin" and BTC will be permanently hosed. I think BTC folk are too comfortable, believing they can just slander BCH every chance they get and go to lunch. But the problem is, if big blocks work, the game changes. This is why BCH is good for the world, even if it loses, it forces BTC to become what it originally was meant to be. May the Fork be with you...
That's why people create Dapps.
100 years ago, only rich nerds have a bank account.
Bitcoin is not a fucking consumer app. That's why nerds like Bitcoin. If you don't understand how Bitcoin solves the Byzantine Generals Problem without centralization of power, you have no qualification to critic Bitcoin. You might as well by Nouriel Roubini to me.
Ahh... LOL, you've said it there yourself. Look, I was as much of a normies as you when i started. Keep reading about what Bitcoin actually is. here is a good resource to start with
Also, take some time to watch some @aantonop videos. I recomend you start with this.
Maybe it's the void itself that will change the behavior.
You wanted this?
it is doing something. it's storing value. The people who store money, giant amounts of it don't like ntc because they don't want competition.
Most people get fiat rich, because of some measurement of security and or friendship or valuation of some form of government. But you can become wealthy without their permission and without their help and thus they do not qualify to manage your crypto for you or advise you on how to spend it,
Our society is so conditioned to having trends enterain us. Twerking, hair dye, emoji balls, dogs, money, celebrities entertainers.
BTC is not a tiny dancer or a prostitute lol. Its an accurate reflection and metric of the current market cap of hyperinflated fiat currencies of globalist governments and their colonial cohorts who have ruined everyone's perception of money
It's monetary evolution, and everyone will not evolve.
Oh yeah!
Thanks for that wonderful insight!
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!pancakesanywhere on the blockchain and we will send you a menu.I'd still say bitcoin is easier to use than any crypto. There's a reason people don't just use other cryptos. I see it reaching adoption. Only difference is that they are willing to do it the slow and gradual way and while many don't like it, I think its great.
The most number of (software) clients, the largest number of merchants, the largest number of apps. That is BTC.
Does it have the largest number of merchants? How many merchants really accept bitcoin?
I bought Bitcoin at an ATM (BTM) in Saigon, Vietnam, in 2017. There were stores that were accepting payment in Bitcoin. I'm from Oregon. The point of Bitcoin is not to spend it but to save it for when the dollar crashes in the 2020's like it did in the 1920's. We may face big global economic depressions soon. That is why we have all of this and much more as a way to get around inflation, depression, the Federal Reserve, the world banks of Rothschild and others.
I was there this year. The Bitcoin Bar? Or the Bitcoin Cafe in District 8? When I was there the Bitcoin Bar had a sign up explicitly saying that they don't accept bitcoin for payment, as it's illegal, and I think they follow that rule. There must be places that accept it though, with the dong doing so poorly.
Well, that's one reason to have Bitcoin, but it's not the only reason to have it.
Yeah, I used an ATM machine at that B Coffee & Bar that is at 74 Bui Vien, near Pham Ngu Lao, in District 1 of HCM. I bought my plane ticket on a website with Bitcoin. There was a cafe that said they accepted Bitcoin on Bui Thi Xuan, Q1. At least that is what they said to me, personally, as I was walking on by.
Next time you go let me know. I love it over there, Now if only we can get a BTM in Cambodia, Laos, etc. There are so many neighboring countries that have few to no BTMs. Thailand I believe has 1, Vietnam has 5, China I think has a couple but that's mostly it for Asia
Western Union Bui Vien, District 1, its a nice little place
Bitcoin Team?, which one?
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yeah well said but with confliction in some points.
I disagree. Everything a regular person who is not too technical is right here: www.EvolvedMoney.XYZ including learning courses for people who want to write smart contracts or people who want to try their hand at buying and trading cryptocurrencies without risking real money.
....And steemit is for geeks and will never beat Facebook. Yet Steem is the highest in value in cryptocurrency I have. I say alot more about Bitcoin at twitter @madstudio30620
The IoT and micropayments need Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Yesterday another musuem, like the third, announced they were accepting Bitcoin. When more museums accept Bitcoin, more people will have more of a reason to own and use Bitcoin.
Gold and Silver will run out by 2025 due to the need to use them in electronics. Think about it. Paper dollars remind me of Zimbawe and Germany WW2 with the stories of taking a wheelbarrow full of bank notes to buy a loaf of bread.
The wheelbarrows full of money problem happened in Germany long before WW II. Point taken though.
In the collapse documentary by Michael Ruppert he accurately in shorthand describes the nature of money. "What is money? He quotes Einsensteins book Sacred Economics, can I crush it up and throw it in my gas tank? Can i use it to heat me, or eat it?
It's the belief in the power of money, and how it's moved into an unnatural state where it never dies.
We live on a finite plane, in a globalist world economy that demands infintie growth every year, per annum, every quarter. And infinite growth collides with finite interest and is thus not possible. Nothing grows forever.
Put simply, shemitah laws and cycles aside, you cannot print more money than there is energy to back it up. It's that simple.
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Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing it. We need to hear more voices in the crypto community, and the points you raise and concerns you have are valid or at the very least worth investigating. Keep up the good work!
Sorry if i got to promote this here, but i have made a response to your post...
bitcoin holders are the elite, and always will be, mainstream doesn't matter.
Well that is an interesting proposition and thought.
I am not sure you are right about this. I do agree that UX is the most important aspect to use something but when it comes to money there are other things than the use itself that make up the user experience, such as doe it hold value or appreciate etc.
As such bitcoin currently is doing better than anyone else, however it is in competition to others.
we will see who wins.
You don't pay for your coffee using a fraction of your gold, do you?
Coffee shops don't accept gold, but you'd still "store" gold, won't you?
Ah... I've never done it, but people did it and it wasn't that long ago. Maybe you should consider this question more deeply.
That's just it. People weigh worth based on access. Once people can't access it, they will want it. When BTC was at 20k last year, everyone's head turned in its direction, because it seemed inaccesible while it was scaling. But like gold, people were tricked into thinking fiat could exist backed by nothing but the face of dead old guys.
Gold is older than fiat and has more practical uses, but many countries are buying it up just to store it. Because there may be a time coming, where people won't accept any amount of fiat for it.
Theyre called precious metals for that reason, fiat over the times have come and gone, metals remain. And bitcoin is a reminder to the fiscally wise about the relationship and position of money in society relative to valuation metrics in all economies.
The real problem with Bitcoin is you
You, me, anyone who reads “you want to succeed in crypto” and thinks, “yep, that’s me.” We have several problems that run deeper than blockchain. Not problems of understanding, but of attitude. We’d better face them if we’re going to realize the true potential of this new technology.
90% of the people involved in crypto have 0 interest in the whole decentralization idea it was originally meant for.
and that might be about 10% by stake.
Yeah were looking for best UI
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Thank you for posting !!
really great topic and clear perspective .... : )
Hi cryptonomics1
Great job
The Investing in Bitcoin has always been Big frustration to all, and i told you i lost half my portfolio to the crash, trading couldn’t help me because I had little experience , all I needed was somebody to put me through.On several occasions, Bitcoin Ben and some majority of the videos uploaded on Altcoin Buzz channel made references about a Pro Trader-“ Scott Grimes” who has an affordable Strategy to show thousands of investors out there loosing because they lack the knowledge to trade their Bitcoin, they also dropped his contact in the comment section. I reached out to him through his Telegram, he has been giving the best trading Tips and I have been able to increase my little 6.5Btc to *32BTC, Thanks to those that mentioned him in your videos, you are all part of our success story.
There's nothing worse than crypto enthusiasts turning against the very thing that made them who they are :(
Bitcoin's lack of user experience isn't what made us what we are.
I liked your post, this post has shown a good excitement about bit coins, thanks you
well done friend I congratulate you
BIEN EXPLICADO!
Great post, sure I will try in the future.. very good
wow I am impressed this is making you $500 - not bad
i wish to sell my btc ,anyone if interesting can pm me.
one time shot i wanna sell 8 btc.
the price will lower 5% compare with ex rate.
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Yes, it's true. Because bitcoin has mass adoption, but it's not practical at the moment.
Thats the job for the wallet-developers to make it more practical. And when a big Payment-Service-Provider joins the party, then it will be unstoppable.
Sad. But mabey this is true for now.
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This information is very valuable. Thanks for this post.