Oddbean

my oldest bitcoin keys are from 2012. I can't be a bitcoin maxi after seeing what people thought bitcoin was supposed to be and comparing it to what bitcoin is today. it's got a high market cap at the cost of being over-reliant on custodians and financial institutions, and it became useless for any form of electronic commerce that the state disapproves of.

The people who are surprised by bitcoin don’t understand Gresham’s / Thiers law. Yes, some early folks believed that it was just P2P currency. Nope. It’s mildly amusing to see them dump their coins in disgust. Ya gotta understand the process. Store of value <— you’re here Medium of exchange Unit of account At some point it will move to the next level and be a medium of exchange. No point in getting upset that it isn’t there yet. We’re making good progress.

The sad fact is that most people trust the government, trust banks, and generally trust authority. When told, they inject their children and themselves with experimental genetic therapy. They follow the American Heart Association’s advice and wonder why they’re fat and unhealthy. Etc. Even the few who don’t trust authority are scared to be their own bank. They know they forget their passwords all the time. Very few people are willing and capable of being sovereign individuals. I wish it were otherwise but most people need a custodian. I’m bullish on systems like Fedimint. Local custodian managed by people you know.

the number of people who are willing and capable of being sovereign is much greater than what bitcoin can handle. forget about the untermenschen for a second and imagine the wet dream of the bitcoin maximalist. if everyone who was sovereign in altcoins and all the other alternatives all of the sudden got the light of the holy spirit and felt called back into bitcoin, the network would choke to death with or without lightning. there is simply not enough room for everyone who is worthy of their own channels to have them, and almost nobody who is a maxi even thinks this is a problem. instead of making self-custody more accessible, the developers have turned their backs on the most valuable users in order to cater to people who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel. a payment channel solution that cannot scale without shoving almost everyone into a custodian, a privacy tool with ruggable IOUs, and the worst sidechain I have ever seen with a freaking consortium security model. and now we have bitcoin that can be printed out of thin air, frozen, censored. these are the trappings of what you call shitcoins, but "it's okay when we do it." that's where almost all the effort is being focused right now. all in a vain attempt to accommodate ignorant people who would stay away from bitcoin without a second thought if the TV told them to. I fail to see how stripping bitcoin of all of its benefits in an attempt to make it more retard-proof is going to help anyone.

It’s hard for me to see your point. People are flocking to ETFs. I talk to wealthy people all the time and they don’t “get” the benefits of being sovereign. I just shake my head. It’s all I can do. They vaxxed their children too. Go figure. Of course, I expect they’ll figure it out eventually. When they do, I still don’t see the issue. Bitcoin L1 isn’t going to choke to death. Fees will be similar to wire transfers. Payments for our morning coffees will move to ecash. Every few months we’ll transfer from funds from cold storage to a few mints to top up our spending money.