Yes, I think the root here is the chicken and egg problem and the fact that Bitcoin is simply different from traditional currency than this being a real problem or deficit of Bitcoin. There is no country with millions of workers that get paid in Bitcoin because it is the only legal tender. There are only a few workplaces that maybe give you the option to receive your salary in Bitcoin, but again wherever you are you will be faced with the same problem. Why would you take your salary in Bitcoin when you have issues spending it? In most cases people would take a small amount or none at all.

I agree with you, I don't think that we will see a fast transition. I personally think and expect the major crashes to continue to weaken especially now with the interest of institutional investors and treasuries. A serious treasury will not sell in the short term in hopes of chasing the bottom. They are more likely to buy more and DCA down to increase their profitability from other's panic at limited risk. The problem with massive downside volatility is that the price increases are still massive. It will take quite some time before this stabilizes completely, and I'm excited to see one cycle where it goes notably down let's say to a maximum of 50% for the first time ever!

The risk of political shifts in a large nation state is acknowledged. It is a good point. As much as it pains me to say it, a reserve by countries with centralized and sustained leadership such as China and Russia would be safer for Bitcoin should they really commit to it. Further, a reserve is a funny thing these days. Should governments sell depending on the market behavior of the assets and try to acquire more, or should they sit tight? I would only consider it a proper reserve if it seems like a quasi permanent thing, i.e., subsequent parties don't try to sell it just because its price performance in the short term is not particularly good when there is no economic need.  

I think that the current laws and regulations are making this very difficult. There is too much KYC and AML going on, and I don't know whether many merchants or service providers ask for information on the source of your coins. Probably for large purchases they might. Depending on the country and regulations you may need to provide a very extensive list of documentation or history. This is completely contrary to cash up until the imposed limits by a country. You go somewhere, you spend it. That's it. No questions, no need to track any history and hope you have sufficient documentation to pass. The problem is amplified by the fact that there is no automatic refund if you are unable to provide enough information, the money may be locked for months or even years depending on the situation! Who wants to risk all of this?

I agree.

I was also thinking about the price performance in this context. What is good to use for retail interest besides Google Trends is app store rankings of main exchanges. Usually during peak sentiment they start topping the charts. Currently they are nowhere to be found. For transaction activity in particular it is even more difficult to make proper comparisons and draw conclusions as it is influenced by some many social and economic factors and hype. To name two examples: For Bitcoin the ordinals and runes created a temporary and extraordinary high. For Solana the memes did. Sustained economic activity would not lead to significant reductions in on chain activity, but activity that occurred largely due to hype would. I think when running comparisons at the very least we have to somehow take into account these events.

Fiat has been very bad probably for at least 2 or 3 decades, but it was corrupted a long time ago. If you trust the very manipulated government numbers, it has lost a significant amount of value since we came off of the gold standard. The reality is much worse though. I'm ignoring this year because of Trumps policies to keep it simpler, but just before his election the USD has lost at least 50% of the value it has before the pandemic (and so have most currencies, some less others more). This is the reality, not cherry picked individual data points where it shows minor price increases or even decreases because of improvements in supply or supply chains or other reasons. For rich people that have infrastructure and connections fiat is great. Debt is cheaper to pay off, in similar ways to what Saylor is proposing. For everyone else it is a complete scam. Everything is getting significantly more expensive and wage increases usually do not keep up with this.

The real and only reason why money printing became a thing is the ability to finance wars. Before money printing, wars were constrained by the country's budget and by the amount of money that it can reasonably borrow. Now the state is able to utilize everyone's wealth to finance war. Every dollar printed is a dollar of value that is stolen from the country's population divided by the number of its people. Because it is equally divided, it hurts those that have less much more than those that have a lot. It has nothing to do with economic activity, fighting deflation or any other of that pseudo scientific bullshit that comes out of lobbied universities. There was not a single period in history that empirically proves that controlled deflation is bad and must be fought with any means necessary, a key argument of money printing proponents. The USA great depression thing is a bullshit and hasexample which had nothing to with deflation itself but was caused by a combination of many other reasonscatastrophes such as bank panics. Please note my emphasis on controlled deflation, it is most probably significantly better than controlled inflation but for status quo reasons they won't even try this temporarily. You could argue that one should not dire events such asgamble with the depression and runoff deflation due to extraordinary eventseconomy in this way, but they make all kinds of gambles all the time so this argument is very weak.

 My last statement here would be that inflation promotes all kind of irrational behavior, dangerous consumerism and degeneracy. We could split this into a separate thread entirely and discuss where appropriate.  

Yes, I think the root here is the chicken and egg problem and the fact that Bitcoin is simply different from traditional currency than this being a real problem or deficit of Bitcoin. There is no country with millions of workers that get paid in Bitcoin because it is the only legal tender. There are only a few workplaces that maybe give you the option to receive your salary in Bitcoin, but again wherever you are you will be faced with the same problem. Why would you take your salary in Bitcoin when you have issues spending it? In most cases people would take a small amount or none at all.

I agree with you, I don't think that we will see a fast transition. I personally think and expect the major crashes to continue to weaken especially now with the interest of institutional investors and treasuries. A serious treasury will not sell in the short term in hopes of chasing the bottom. They are more likely to buy more and DCA down to increase their profitability from other's panic at limited risk. The problem with massive downside volatility is that the price increases are still massive. It will take quite some time before this stabilizes completely, and I'm excited to see one cycle where it goes notably down let's say to a maximum of 50% for the first time ever!

The risk of political shifts in a large nation state is acknowledged. It is a good point. As much as it pains me to say it, a reserve by countries with centralized and sustained leadership such as China and Russia would be safer for Bitcoin should they really commit to it. Further, a reserve is a funny thing these days. Should governments sell depending on the market behavior of the assets and try to acquire more, or should they sit tight? I would only consider it a proper reserve if it seems like a quasi permanent thing, i.e., subsequent parties don't try to sell it just because its price performance in the short term is not particularly good when there is no economic need. 

I think that the current laws and regulations are making this very difficult. There is too much KYC and AML going on, and I don't know whether many merchants or service providers ask for information on the source of your coins. Probably for large purchases they might. Depending on the country and regulations you may need to provide a very extensive list of documentation or history. This is completely contrary to cash up until the imposed limits by a country. You go somewhere, you spend it. That's it. No questions, no need to track any history and hope you have sufficient documentation to pass. The problem is amplified by the fact that there is no automatic refund if you are unable to provide enough information, the money may be locked for months or even years depending on the situation! Who wants to risk all of this?

I agree.

I was also thinking about the price performance in this context. What is good to use for retail interest besides Google Trends is app store rankings of main exchanges. Usually during peak sentiment they start topping the charts. Currently they are nowhere to be found. For transaction activity in particular it is even more difficult to make proper comparisons and draw conclusions as it is influenced by some many social and economic factors and hype. To name two examples: For Bitcoin the ordinals and runes created a temporary and extraordinary high. For Solana the memes did. Sustained economic activity would not lead to significant reductions in on chain activity, but activity that occurred largely due to hype would. I think when running comparisons at the very least we have to somehow take into account these events.

Fiat has been very bad probably for at least 2 or 3 decades, but it was corrupted a long time ago. If you trust the very manipulated government numbers, it has lost a significant amount of value since we came off of the gold standard. The reality is much worse though. I'm ignoring this year because of Trumps policies to keep it simpler, but just before his election the USD has lost at least 50% of the value it has before the pandemic (and so have most currencies, some less others more). This is the reality, not cherry picked individual data points where it shows minor price increases or even decreases because of improvements in supply or supply chains or other reasons. For rich people that have infrastructure and connections fiat is great. Debt is cheaper to pay off, in similar ways to what Saylor is proposing. For everyone else it is a complete scam. Everything is getting significantly more expensive and wage increases usually do not keep up with this.

The real and only reason why money printing became a thing is the ability to finance wars. Before money printing, wars were constrained by the country's budget and by the amount of money that it can reasonably borrow. Now the state is able to utilize everyone's wealth to finance war. Every dollar printed is a dollar of value that is stolen from the country's population divided by the number of its people. Because it is equally divided, it hurts those that have less much more than those that have a lot. It has nothing to do with economic activity, fighting deflation or any other of that pseudo scientific bullshit that comes out of lobbied universities. There was not a single period in history that empirically proves that controlled deflation is bad and must be fought with any means necessary, a key argument of money printing proponents. The USA great depression thing is a bullshit and has nothing to with deflation itself but was caused by many other reasons such as bank panics. Please note my emphasis on controlled deflation, not dire events such as the depression and runoff deflation due to extraordinary events. My last statement here would be that inflation promotes all kind of irrational behavior, dangerous consumerism and degeneracy. We could split this into a separate thread entirely and discuss where appropriate.