Quote from: Mastercon on Today at 07:08:32 AM

Quote from: mrkfdr on May 19, 2025, 02:11:41 PM

Quote from: WhyFhy on April 06, 2025, 01:24:41 PM

I've had a weird relationship with Bitcoin lately.
I think about community developments on things such as LN , Vanity search projects, tools, tickers scrapers ECT.....
How they where developed by altruistic members for the chance of creativity, freedom and decentralized banking.

Bitcoin is now a store of value ,a commodity of fiat held by institutional parties.

Major altruistic contributors , sidelined. Some got tips. Most got nothing.

If fees stay at 1 Satoshi , will LN/Layer 2 really be necessary? What happens when we are all mined up, no one sells and only holds, and the mining fees don't cover the electric bill. Bitcoins showing signs of fatigue and stagnation overall. Will it die ,I don't think so, but Bitcoin doesn't appear to be designed for and by cypherpunks.
If it was , wall street weaponized it.

I've dedicated a lot of my life to this particular branch of cryptography, I've learned a lot! But it kinda feels like it was for nothing at this point. I've publicly released all my crypto projects source codes and walking away from developing in this sector.

I'll still be around speculating but that's about it.

Humanity uses gold as store of value and medium of exchange since ~700 BCE until ~1950 when the credit system emerged.

Lets say i don't trust banks and i keep my savings 1kg of gold ( equals ~102KUSD). in gold in a good safe.Get my salary in gold ~ 100gr ( ~ 10K USD) every month, either i keep it in 100gr or melt it to the 1kg.
I do see myself buying a car or a house using the gold in a direct transaction.
I don't see myself walking around the city with 100gr Gold in my pocket and buying coffe, pay for parking or buying a dinner.

This is where the 2nd tier / Layer 2 kicks in, convert part of the gold to LN (2nd tier / Layer 2) and use it, this is a much faster and cheaper transaction.
If i have lot of money in the LN, i can convert it back to gold and keep it in the safe.

Same with bitcoin. BTC

The use of the Bitcoin hardware wallet -> convert to Lightning , Liquid or other 2nd tier for fast payments and back to Bitcoin is still complicated understand, use and implement to the average non tech user.

Layer 2 is a MUST, and we have to find more user friendly solutions. users will pay for a good solution.

make sense ?

Depends on your smarts ceiling. There's actually a lot to discuss about bitcoin if you really dig deep into it, like bips and other github related things but not everyone is smart enough to understand how all that works and the code etc including me.

Thinking of trying to improve the Bitcoin ecosystem in various ways. I was wondering whether there is any good ideas for new layer-2 solutions to build for it? Or perhaps a better Bitcoin payment app or something. Essentially you need a project idea related to Bitcoin. I think it’ll help you understand Bitcoin better while trying to improve the ecosystem.

Bitcoin is extremely divisible so even if its relative value rises that is not an issue.

If you're concerned about transaction speed, bitcoin's L2 lightning network already solves this. Lightning is the only bitcoin L2 that exists right now, its all conceptual so far. If you ask me holding self custody on L1 without running a node. I am not okay holding on L2 self custody without my node online. Because you can hack me over easily on L1.

Your node is layer 1, your node is securing layer 2, your node cares. The speed/fees framing to me is basically devs fixating on layer 2 benefit over layer 1. But really need to see layer 2 products that are better than all other forms of payment.

Satoshi said that lost bitcoin is a gift to everyone else so its definitely not a good idea to take away the gifts the rest of us got.

"Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone." - SNttons

That's exactly the point. now try to explain this to a hard working person who has no tech background whatsoever and all he wants is to go to the market and pay for groceries and save part of his income for the kids collage.
Try teaching him self running nodes , L1, L2 satoshi's vision and the whole bitcoin ecosystem. seed , verifying transactions, byzantine generals, its not gonna work.

It has to be :
1 download this app.
2 This is savings account.
3 This is spending account
4 This is the backup
5 This is Receive Button, Spend Button ,Save Button.

All the ecosystem has to be wrapped in these 5 steps and its differently challenging.

KISS Keep It Simple Stupid