Hey welcome to Nostr. 

You should setup a lightning wallet so we can zap you prestigious sats. 

 I'm not new and I removed the lighting wallet.  

 🤠 

 What are your thoughts about billions of people who can’t get bank accounts and who can use Bitcoin to transact without permission? 

 I think there are plenty of other options that are faster and cheaper than bitcoin that can also be used without permission. As an investment it's fine. 

 Are those services run by companies that can be pressured by governments? 

 Some are some aren't, I wouldn't recommend using the ones that are. 

 If nothing else it is instant value transfer anywhere in the planet without using banks or government systems that (internationally) can take some time and will accrue high fees and can be subject to “take backs” if the other party complains. Bitcoin has none of those stigmas 

 so you’re a glass half empty kinda person huh ? 

 It depends on what you mean by that I guess. 

 What about being actually able to be mobile in uncertain times whereas most people have their wealth tied to the land they’re currently inhabiting?

That’s definitely something 👍 

 Yes, but the majority of the crypto space has this ability as well. I don't think it's specifically something bitcoin does, though it does also do this.  

 Not at all to the same degree of acceptance and depth of liquidity 

 Liquidity into what? 

 Not really in the mood to continue entertaining this conversation.

Good luck. 

 I kind of agree 🤷🏽‍♀️... But I also like it as a store of value that one can carry in their pocket and the big FU message it can send to governments 😉 

 Yes I agree it's cool that it can be carried around easily but so can the other cryptocurrencies. I would argue it's not really an FU to governments when it's being integrated into their systems and people are paying taxes on it now though. 

 I probably wouldn't go the other crypto for carrying it around just because bitcoin is the biggest, most famous, and most traded afaik. 

They can only tax what they know about 😉. Although, I believe in some ways governments integrating it makes bitcoin a better store of value than it was. It's more popular and number of fiat you can get for it keeps going up when institutions buy up big.  

 The government does know about the vast majority of it, most people who have bitcoin give their identity to an exchange so they can buy bitcoin. 

 The meme "there is no second best" is not some fancy bullshit to degrade other projects, it just to know that there is no necessity to have other units of measure for time/energy, it is really just noise to have many things that have the same purpose.
So it is important to take the one that at the base is the most reliable, an then build on top.
Would be interested to know why you think having others "crypto" is useful 

 Because Bitcoin is slow, Bitcoin transactions are expensive and Bitcoin is transparent and not everyone wants to use it. I believe in a free market and that includes when it comes to money. I don't like the idea of "we have established bitcoin so just follow us and shut up" (which is the mentality of a huge percentage of bitcoiners) I don't like the idea of layer 2's because the further you remove yourself from the base currency the easier it is to control. 

 Also the meme "there is no second best" just seems to discredit other options. It's a marketing tactic. 

 I wouldn't write Bitcoin off so fast. Whenever a new technology comes along the vested interests try and make it conform to the existing systems. Like England requiring motor cars to have a driver, an engineer and a flag man to walk in front and warn people of the coming danger. 

If we fragment off into smaller crypto currencies, the small ones will become subject to currency manipulation and lose value over time as the number of crypto currencies continues to grow. 

The battle needs to be for Bitcoin.

If 90% of miners and nodes signalled an upgrade the banks would have to follow or hold a dead chain. 

Miners want more transactions on chain. Users want permissionless payments without a bank. When the pain comes, nodes will flag to upgrade, unless they have been persuaded to give up.

Banks would need to subsidise miners and fund expensive misinformation campaigns to stop Bitcoin developing in a way that maintains a peer to peer permissionless protocol. This would be expensive and increase costs which won't be sustainable long term. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ca70mCCf2M 

 I sort of agree or at least know how you're thinking. Ideally have BTC as base layer then just atomic swap into relevant other crypto's when a specific use case is needed. Interoperability FTW