I'll concentrate on the following points:
A part of the problem seems psychological to me: people don't want to spend their "hard" Bitcoins and hodl. Solution: simply re-buy.
On the other hand there are two more issues I think are important:
The first is fee unstability. The fee level itself is currently low enough to use Bitcoin even for lower-value transactions, but you still can run into a bottleneck. That is of course a problem related intimately to the way Bitcoin's blockchain works and will probably never be solved for the first layer.
That's however not a problem without solution because that's what Layer-2's are for. Ligthning -- here I agree with many in the thread -- is usable and works. It's not the easiest way to use Bitcoin, but it can be used with relatively low technical knowledge already.
LN doesn't entirely remove the need for fees, but drastically reduces them and improves the fee previsibility. Just create your channels and "recharge" them when fees are low, and don't care about bottlenecks anymore.
And regarding other solutions: many sidechain-style L2s and also Ark depend on (or drastically benefit from) the implementation of covenants in BItcoin Core. This change is intensely being discussed, there was a poll last year, and there are options with very few opposing voices. So I think in forseeable time we will see an implementation.
The second is volatility. Volatility would lower if there is less speculative usage. It's tendency however is lowering, so in this point I'm more optimistic than others. And eventually a virtuous cycle could be generated: more usage for payments would generate more liquidity and thus less volatility.
Of course, "adoption as a speculative asset" is also adoption. But the problem is: Bitcoin can grow via this kind of adoption only for a limited time.
Imagine if everybody in the world already owns Bitcoins. To whom can you sell your BTC now?
Instead, a circulating Bitcoin, used really as a currency, would enable a much steadier growth and "fundamentally solid ATHs". Because everybody would know that Bitcoin is being used and that it won't "die" only because some guy in the US said something.
Regarding mining, I'd like to see newer reports than from 2023 to give an opinion.
But people still don't want to use bitcoin for everyday transactions.
I can relate to that criticism. I think it's not really needed for everyday transactions like groceries as it's currently far from ideal for that purpose (with the exception of using gift cards), but for online commerce it can and should be more popular.A part of the problem seems psychological to me: people don't want to spend their "hard" Bitcoins and hodl. Solution: simply re-buy.
On the other hand there are two more issues I think are important:
The first is fee unstability. The fee level itself is currently low enough to use Bitcoin even for lower-value transactions, but you still can run into a bottleneck. That is of course a problem related intimately to the way Bitcoin's blockchain works and will probably never be solved for the first layer.
That's however not a problem without solution because that's what Layer-2's are for. Ligthning -- here I agree with many in the thread -- is usable and works. It's not the easiest way to use Bitcoin, but it can be used with relatively low technical knowledge already.
LN doesn't entirely remove the need for fees, but drastically reduces them and improves the fee previsibility. Just create your channels and "recharge" them when fees are low, and don't care about bottlenecks anymore.
And regarding other solutions: many sidechain-style L2s and also Ark depend on (or drastically benefit from) the implementation of covenants in BItcoin Core. This change is intensely being discussed, there was a poll last year, and there are options with very few opposing voices. So I think in forseeable time we will see an implementation.
The second is volatility. Volatility would lower if there is less speculative usage. It's tendency however is lowering, so in this point I'm more optimistic than others. And eventually a virtuous cycle could be generated: more usage for payments would generate more liquidity and thus less volatility.
Maybe though in the end, adoption doesn't matter?
I think this indeed can be appear this way in the middle of Bitcoin's adoption curve, where the use cases and their "share" on Bitcoin transactions still are changing with every cycle (speculation, hodl, short term trading, arbitrage, currency, Ordinals, maybe financial contracts in the future ...)Of course, "adoption as a speculative asset" is also adoption. But the problem is: Bitcoin can grow via this kind of adoption only for a limited time.
Imagine if everybody in the world already owns Bitcoins. To whom can you sell your BTC now?
Instead, a circulating Bitcoin, used really as a currency, would enable a much steadier growth and "fundamentally solid ATHs". Because everybody would know that Bitcoin is being used and that it won't "die" only because some guy in the US said something.
Regarding mining, I'd like to see newer reports than from 2023 to give an opinion.