Ever since bitcoin's early days most people didn't show appreciation. While acknowledgment of bitcoin has increased and demand has risen a lot, it's not necessary that those criticizing bitcoin were wrong.
What has bitcoin achieved recently? Getting in more exchanges, getting in ETFs and wider access to traditional markets? Sure. Mining becoming an industry? Ok, let's count that too. Does that mean bitcoin is being appreciated for its values of decentralization and immutability? Probably not.
While all this is happening bitcoin fees reached historic lows, which is a sign that there's very little demand to actually transact bitcoin. BTC/USD is near ATH levels and yet we're still here, many people want to trade BTC than ever but almost no one wants to transact with it. We spent so much time talking about lightning and layer two solutions while on-chain transactions can now even be send with a cost of close to nothing and decently fast confirmation.
People know that if we all started transacting in bitcoin tomorrow fees would go crazy though. The lightning network is far from usable and even for it acceptance is even lower than bitcoin.
But people still don't want to use bitcoin for everyday transactions. El Salvador wanted to pivot to bitcoin to save money on predatory remittance fees and boost its ailing economy that was based on two currencies, a national one and the USD. Still people don't bother to adopt the technology and El Salvador still nearly went bankrupt and had to scrap nearly all bitcoin related plans to receive a small IMF loan.
Bitcoin remains hard to use, mining continues to be environmentally damaging to a very large extent while it also becomes more centralized and scalability remains an issue. This price boom changes nothing in terms of fundamentals. Bitcoin's price went up mostly due to external factors but that doesn't solve the issues related to adoption.
Maybe though in the end, adoption doesn't matter? What are your thoughts?
What has bitcoin achieved recently? Getting in more exchanges, getting in ETFs and wider access to traditional markets? Sure. Mining becoming an industry? Ok, let's count that too. Does that mean bitcoin is being appreciated for its values of decentralization and immutability? Probably not.
While all this is happening bitcoin fees reached historic lows, which is a sign that there's very little demand to actually transact bitcoin. BTC/USD is near ATH levels and yet we're still here, many people want to trade BTC than ever but almost no one wants to transact with it. We spent so much time talking about lightning and layer two solutions while on-chain transactions can now even be send with a cost of close to nothing and decently fast confirmation.
People know that if we all started transacting in bitcoin tomorrow fees would go crazy though. The lightning network is far from usable and even for it acceptance is even lower than bitcoin.
But people still don't want to use bitcoin for everyday transactions. El Salvador wanted to pivot to bitcoin to save money on predatory remittance fees and boost its ailing economy that was based on two currencies, a national one and the USD. Still people don't bother to adopt the technology and El Salvador still nearly went bankrupt and had to scrap nearly all bitcoin related plans to receive a small IMF loan.
Bitcoin remains hard to use, mining continues to be environmentally damaging to a very large extent while it also becomes more centralized and scalability remains an issue. This price boom changes nothing in terms of fundamentals. Bitcoin's price went up mostly due to external factors but that doesn't solve the issues related to adoption.
Maybe though in the end, adoption doesn't matter? What are your thoughts?
Glad you came up with the subject of decentralization. Not many people appreciate the value of decentralization and censorship-resistance. All of these spot ETF approvals and governments adding BTC to their national reserves, is making everyone believe Bitcoin is the "next digital Gold". But it's way more than that. It's a currency, a movement, a revolution. Unfortunately, Wall Street joining the game means less decentralization for Bitcoin in the long run. Big investment companies and mainstream governments will accumulate most of the circulating supply, leaving "the little guy" out of the system. Even some governments are considering running mining farms of their own.
At least, not all hope is lost. Bitcoin is open source, so the community can "fork away" to make a more decentralized version of it. It's like democracy. BTC can be the "currency for the rich", while BCH (or a new fork) can be the "currency for the people". I hope Bitcoin doesn't have to take this path. But we can never tell what will happen in the future. Just my two sats.
