In a couple of decades, what percentage of people do you think will be using centralized systems for money and communication vs decentralized ones?
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Most people will be on the Bitcoin standard, but all of them through custodial services.
I see like 30% dollar system. Other will be on decentralized
Ha, people.
100% or 0%
I'd like to think as large corporations and governments continue to tighten the noose on control that more people will come to understand and appreciate the need for decentralization. Maybe in a decade we're sitting at 50% using centralized services and 50% using decentralized services. I don't know.
It depends wh will be leading the masses, if we win there will be a bitcoiner aristocracy if we lose there will be much less freedom. Or maybe we win some battles lose some others. I believe the masses will always be the masses and it depends who's on top leading by good moral values and with jusnaturalismus or by force, repression and juspositvismus.
censorship will only get worse both in money n communication right? if we win decisive battle’s in the information war n get the tools out to those that are looking for the decentralized alternatives then I think we can expect for a large percentage of people to embrace the solution to their biggest problems
Directly using centralized systems for money 100%.
Directly using decentralized systems for money 0.01%.
Indirectly using decentralized systems for money 100%.
I guarantee it. The majority of people don't mind paying for a service if it's more convenient and easier. We invented banks hundreds of years ago for this exact reason. If you want to even go back further. We invented banks for grain thousands of years ago for this exact reason.
5% at best.
By that I mean 95% centralized / 5% decentralized.
In a couple of decades?Progress happens one coffin at a time and that’s a lot of boomer coffins. Replaced by a lot of bitcoiners with real money and some say in the allocation of resources. I have hope 🤞
99.9% centralized
2% decentealized
Question intéressante.
View quoted note →
~80%
After looking at a USD inflation chart, it's hard to imagine what it will look like 20 years from now! Will the USD still exist?
100%. It will be illegal to run decentralized system without controls.
I think people will still be using these archaic obsolete systems in 1000 years. You can still buy gold Roman coins, And actually they are more valuable than just bullion. The question is, How much of the global population is computer or financially illiterate?
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….I was thinking the same thought.
21,324%
99.9% centralized
Depends on definitions. I could forsee a lot of otherwise centralized platforms adopting decentralized protocols - along the lines of Threads adopting ActivityPub or banks utilizing stable coins.
I doubt most people will ever be managing keys, just like most people will probably never be changing their car's oil. But they might very well be using a service that uses decentralized systems under the hood, and would work with people who are using the systems directly.
The only way I'd expect to see a huge bump in people doing this directly is if countries end up completely debasing their currencies or if they completely lock down social media - then there might be a big bump in users in those particular nations.
My 2c anyway
Good thing nobody does things once they become illegal :-D
Is the math mathing out here
80 - 20
I think it will play out like written in the book The Sovereign Individual. The cybereconomy with cryptocurrency payments will be the largest economy and will deprive governments of taxes. Large governments, wellfare states will collapse into smaller decentralized regions that will compete among each other.
So probably 80 decentralized vs 20 centralized.
Something should push them to tighten the noose on control faster so the frogs realize they must jump out of the boiling...noose?
I agree with most comments - a very small percentage will break free of the matrix. Governments and large corporations have ever more powerful tech on their side.
Human nature will not change, so most people will be easily controlled and manipulated into believing all the wrong things.
As a developer I will work on freedom tech, because it's desperately needed, but I have no idea how you help the average person overcome the vulnerabilities of the human mind.
Is BTC truly decentralized if every transaction is 100% tracked by the USG?
if we are above 10% of global pop, primarily using freedom tech, in 20 years, that would be a massive win
my expectation is less than 5%
Less than 10%
I’m not sure, but how many people hold their own keys vs holds BTC in custody? While I’d love for everyone to self custody, the important things is that it is possible, and some significant cohort does. So I think it depends on definitions, since layer 2s may not be fully decentralized, but are still mostly decentralized.
See @ODELL above.
100%
yeah but thats the thing - the ACTUAL "people" will be on the decentralized trip.
the rest wont be people, but slaves.
I would guess 80% of people will use centralized system for money. But the other 20% will represent most of the economic activities. 🤔
85%
15%
i think the classic 80-20 rule applies here
groups overlap
What is that percentage in today's China? What has been the tendency over there in recent years? If you know the data, maybe it's a good extrapolation exercise (I would love to know)
i go to sleep thinking of this question.
once the ux of bitcoin reaches the ux of apple pay & the ux of nostr reaches the ux of instagram maybe it will become more obvious that more freedom = more fun?
will there be multiple crypto tribes? or will bitcoin absolutely obliterate everything making every other coin obsolete.
scared to guess a percentage.
I've always thought decens as maximalists
Good f*** question… 41%
In my opinion, on that time scale, It’s binary. If we are not 99/100 percent decentralised in our money and communication, it will be COMPLETELY centralised.
Winner take all. 😳
Wow. I just read the other 35 comments answering Lyn’s question. In a nut shell, this “freedom tech” focused cohort (Nostr) agrees with nearly perfect homogeneity that in 20 years we will live in a dystopian world of monetary and communication centralisation.
🤯😢
Why would they even bother with Bitcoin, I wonder outloud? 🤨
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If we get to 0.1% first that would be huge.
One in a thousand! Come on, we got this!
Compliance is a natural state of being for majority.
This is a top down VC/investor perspective.
I would ask how might we get the next cohort of people onboarded, and what needs to be built to get there.
what actions do we take to build the world we want to live in
signal is centralized but i would still categorize it as freedom tech
they are just under 100m users, which is about 1% of world population
Over 50% will use centralized systems
Mmm fair, I suppose that’s a shining example.
If you ask this on Nostr what replies do you expect
Transparency and decentralization are different things
I expect similar to what happened to internet: ~70% using Bitcoin but mostly not directly
I wanna say 90% but most likely in reality 65% but what will happen in the next couple of decades that will shift more people to use decentralized systems?
No.
They’re.
Not.
If it’s 100% transparent and the gov’t can easily figure out who I am, they’re still going to show up with guns if they don’t like my transactions or if I don’t pay my taxes.
Over 50% decentralized money
Better technology always wins in the end
95% centralized
5% decentralized
Unfortunately
95% centralized, 5% decentralized, based upon my interactions in real life with people who own BTC.
Probably around the 50% mark.
Think people will be using both (partner and lover). The government will force people to use centralised currency to pay taxes but there will be a parallel decentralised circular economy also …. So this we make fiat more “honest” as there will be an alternative
50-50 in twenty years
I think you’re confusing decentralization with either private or censorship resistance.
A system’s decentralization does not hinge on its opaqueness
Do we have any estimates of what the ratio is today? Curious
90% centralized.
All in centralised 🤣🤡
I’m not.
BTC’s algo can be decentralized, which allows for our trust in PoW.
But if that decentralization doesn’t extend to privacy, and every transaction can be tracked, where you know the government will track it and send men with guns to your house if you don’t pay them, then it’s simply decentralized PoW and centralized PoC (point of control).
I think ~50% of the population will be stuck confessing their sins to centralized digital panoptican gods just to put food on the table.


but isn't the Internet a descentralized system already?
It is, but the apps on top of it are not e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Insta, VISA, MasterCard, SWIFT, etc.
79% centralized
21% freedom fighters
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White Noise are making progress (slowly but very surely) on their Nostr-based protocol for secure chat. In a hack day this weekend, I built a simple chat client with a Cashu wallet built in
They announced their "Marmot Development Kit" just a few days ago, and I was able to vibe code my app in a few days. I found it easy to use
I'll link to my hack day code too, for transparency, by my code is still a mess! I'll keep working on it for fun. I'm new to open source dev, so I just hack on random things to learn. But I'm really quite optimistic about this tech

GitHub
GitHub - marmot-protocol/mdk: Marmot Development Kit
Marmot Development Kit. Contribute to marmot-protocol/mdk development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub
mdk_group_chat_with_cashu_wallet_integration/README.md at main · SatsAndSports/mdk_group_chat_with_cashu_wallet_integration
Contribute to SatsAndSports/mdk_group_chat_with_cashu_wallet_integration development by creating an account on GitHub.
Either 90% or 0%. Bitcoin is ready. Nostr needs a bit of work.
I believe that in a few decades, 90% of transactions will use decentralized money but flow through centralized systems. For everyday use, it’s far more convenient to use a centralized party, as we can already see with custodial Lightning.
Only those forced to do so in closed environments. The dollar is breaking down and debasing real time. When #bitcoin, gold, equities are all moving up and to the right, it’s clear the denominator is broken. We now have the best neutral reserve asset available to mostly everyone so decentralized protocols make the most sense if you have access
P.T. Barnum said that "people like to be humbugged". The pro-wrestling arena of politics and social communication favors a majority stake in centralized platforms. 15% will exit and maybe that can grow to 25%.
@hal what Bayesian theory answers to Lyn Question here
No one imo
Centralised systems will move onto decentralised rails so will be hard to distinguish
I'd like to say 20/80 but more likely 80/20 (centralized vs decentralized)
Use of centralised systems for money and comms will more likely be a result of government regulation with anti freedom sentiments.
Likely 70–85% of global users will still rely mainly on centralized financial systems.
Expect 60–80% of users to remain on centralized platforms.
I still don’t see how privacy an arbitrary amount of privacy is a prerequisite for decentralization. At worst one can claim lack of privacy MAY lead to centralization.
The ability of the government or anyone for that matter to physically harm you is not evidence that a system is centralized.
The fat that they have to come to your door and do violence to you evidence Bitcoin is decentralized; otherwise l, they would take your money or censor you remotely.
We can agree to disagree about the definition of decentralization, but we agree making it easier for governments to harm you is bad.
fact*
Global south I bet will be decentralized while the global north will not be.
I think it will always oscillate between times of higher centralization and higher decentralization across a spectrum of emerging technologies
Mmm, what do you think is stopping Nostr to have the UX of Instagram?
Realistically some other chains will still make sense on some other uses, but somehow they will merge Bitcoin or some wrapped version of Bitcoin for the financial part.
Nothing, we’ll get there
Somewhere, the Pareto principle fits in here, but I don’t think that if and when we do get to the 80% it will be because of influence, but of necessity. The best feature of a decentralized design is the resilience of the network. I will be talking about this and community building next weekend at @NostrValley If you can’t make it irl I hope you can tune into the livestream 🤠
My guess is that it will take a bit longer than a couple of decades.
100% although usage of decentralized may be higher
I think most of the people who are alive today will stay chained to their banks and governments. They’ll trade their liberty for comfort. A new generation, smarter and exposed to more hardship will use the new tools, open networks, sound money, and they’ll be the ones holding the power when the wells of trust run dry. I feel that In 2 decades, 80% will still be using centralised systems, in 3 , no one will.