I wrote a longform piece for Bitcoin Magazine's latest print issue, which includes a series of essays about the world 10 years from now in 2036.
They've put up an online version now too:
Bitcoin Magazine
The 2036 Issue: What Choices Will You Make On The Way To A Multipolar World?
From The 2036 Issue: How will Bitcoin fare as the world shifts into a state of increasing multipolarity? By Lyn Alden
Here's the portion where I talked about risk, about downside scenarios:
"If Bitcoin fails to catch on by 2036, I think it will be because humanity didn’t want it, or wasn’t ready for it. The technology itself is robust. Proof of work helps keep the network secure. Tight limits on bandwidth and storage help keep the network decentralized. Layers built on top of it help provide scaling and privacy. There is more work to do, but the foundation is already strong, open for business, and being used at scale. To the extent that major challenges arise, the network is upgradable whenever sufficient consensus is achieved.
In this latest bull/bear cycle, Bitcoin further separated itself from other cryptocurrencies, but failed to attract many new users. AI services caught on with the public far more quickly, leapfrogging Bitcoin in adoption, because people and businesses could see AI’s immediate benefits to them, while Bitcoin’s benefits were unclear to many who haven’t gone down a rabbit hole of research.
There are many stores of value to choose from, and volatility is painful. In order for Bitcoin to truly catch on, it will need to be because people value financial sovereignty. It will need to be because hundreds of millions of people, not just several million as we have now, appreciate the importance of self-custodied savings, permissionless payments, and financial privacy. Those collectively are the attributes that Bitcoin uniquely provides at scale."
In other words, bitcoin is money. To succeed, it'll be because people value it for its monetary properties.
That doesn't mean I'm against bitcoin companies. Bitcoin is open for anyone, and most things are better when bitcoin is added. And there's no world where bitcoin at scale is only used by people but somehow is magically avoided by companies and governments. I bought MSTR the week they announced their bitcoin strategy back in August 2020. I invite more companies, especially cash-flowing companies, to use bitcoin as a treasury asset.
But it does mean that bitcoin cannot *only* scale that way. Bitcoin's core value is that if you hold it yourself, it gives you a unique superpower: you have debasement-resistant and confiscation-resistant liquid savings, and you can permissionlessly send portions of those savings around the world, and with decent privacy if you use the right tools.
Bitcoin's long-term success relies on one or two more orders of magnitude of people desiring those traits.
TL;DR Bitcoin is money.
Replies (34)
I can turn this into audio for the thread — goes live once 500 sats land here. One zap or many.
I think it may surprise us.
With daily dividends SATA is looking like a beast.
Seems like only NGU tech will get new people here, but once here its up to us to Orange Pill the shit out of em.
Careful. You might be harassing a Jewish person!
thanks for sharing
Even if that were true, how does it change the content she posts? I enjoy her takes.
🎯
Bitcoin is Freedom Money
BitcoinIsFuture
I am bullish on Bitcoin.
- DATUM / Ocean decentralizes Bitcoin mining
- 20%+ of the Bitcoin network are Bitcoin Knots nodes
- BIP 110 limits big data / spam that abuses Bitcoin on consensus level
- Compromised Core are exposed
- Citrea, OP_NET and other shitcoiners and spammers are exposed
- Ordinals spammers / scammers got rekt
- Shitcoins are getting rekt, normies are learning that shitcoins are centralized created out of thin air slavery casino gulag scams
- Geopolitical tectonic shifts that require sovereign money and Bitcoin is The Greatest Sovereign Freedom Money on planet Earth
- Bitcoin Plebs are stacking sats and using their Bitcoin
- Merchants accepting Bitcoin are increasing in numbers
Bitcoin Plebs hopefully protect Bitcoin's Culture and Values as they are heavily under attack.
This is a must for Bitcoin Freedom Money.
Bitcoin node runners are the soul of Bitcoin.
View quoted note →
Bitcoin is a tough sell in affluent countries because people and stupid and tribal. It’s not a tough sell in impoverished countries with runaway inflation.
It seems that Saylor’s approach is the way to bridge the gap. People don’t like volatility so Bitcoin as a bearer asset isn’t appealing to most.
Thank’s
@Lyn Alden brilliant
what does "catch on by 2036" mean?
what if it's still not globally adopted by then, but larger than today? maybe the organic growth takes longer than a decade, that wouldn't be a failure
I think mere existence of bitcoin sends signals to many places, so "they" play nicer. Same as Nostr. Mere existence of Nostr sends signals so they know where people will flock to, in case tyranny gets worse. This is the actual adoption. These liberating techs are enough as is to provide alternative breathing and shelling points.
I think multipolar world will work for bitcoin's adoption even further. If chinese culture also becomes dominant we may see bans of chinese content in USA, which will work in favor of nostr adoption.
freedom tech needs millions n millions more people.
whoever orange pilled bts (was it namjoon himself?) was v smart to try to get ARMY into bitcoin.
I think it's way more useless to say that AI stocks are competing with crypto, and Bitcoin is competing with gold.
I also think it's past the point of retail really mattering for Bitcoins price. To win, Bitcoin needs to divert meaningful capital from gold to Bitcoin, which is to say institutional and sovereign capital.
Bitcoin wins when the market realizes it is a risk off treasury asset. Like a government bond was meant to be, if they didn’t keep debasing
Very insightful commentary. Now off to another chapter of stolguard incident. One sign of a good book is the mental nagging to get back to it to see what happens next…well done Lyn!
Bitcoin as a Satoshi concept, and for the retail investor, was doomed once the corporate speculating whales entered the fray.
It really is that simple.
Thank you. That’s what I imagine becoming the true test.
I do think there's a fair bit of not ready for it that is something that makes it slower than some of the optimists hope it would be. For all of the user friendliness of tools like Spark and Ark, there is a separation of the full sovereignty you get managing your own node and channels. This seems particularly noticeable on the merchant side of things, where use of BTCPay is very limited, and people use Square, which honestly, seems like only the slightest of steps beyond just having a Coinbase account. No hate for Square, but they're doing a lot of hand holding for a society which may as well be invalid 80 year olds who need the hand holding just to get across the street.
This isn't the worst thing in the world, as long as we keep the flame alive of sovereign use in a significant enough portion of the world. The remnant, if you will. At some point using something like a Blixt wallet on your phone won't feel as out of reach for many, and merchants will have their own networks of other merchants who they can fall back on for things like BTCPay servers, and it'll just be the water we swim in. Sort of like how credit cards went from being very limited in use to ubiquitous not only in meat space or "the web", but literally just data in our phones that we make use of by tapping them on things.
These things do take time though -- time measured in generational funerals I suspect. Keep your expectations in check, your node running smoothly, your channels funded, your backups secure, and your time preference low.
I do think there's a fair bit of not ready for it that is something that makes it slower than some of the optimists hope it would be. For all of the user friendliness of tools like Spark and Ark, there is a separation of the full sovereignty you get managing your own node and channels. This seems particularly noticeable on the merchant side of things, where use of BTCPay is very limited, and people use Square, which honestly, seems like only the slightest of steps beyond just having a Coinbase account. No hate for Square, but they're doing a lot of hand holding for a society which may as well be invalid 80 year olds who need the hand holding just to get across the street.
This isn't the worst thing in the world, as long as we keep the flame alive of sovereign use in a significant enough portion of the world. The remnant, if you will. At some point using something like a Blixt wallet on your phone won't feel as out of reach for many, and merchants will have their own networks of other merchants who they can fall back on for things like BTCPay servers, and it'll just be the water we swim in. Sort of like how credit cards went from being very limited in use to ubiquitous not only in meat space or "the web", but literally just data in our phones that we make use of by tapping them on things.
These things do take time though -- time measured in generational funerals I suspect. Keep your expectations in check, your node running smoothly, your channels funded, your backups secure, and your time preference low.
So it all rests on whether humans can be bothered to learn Bitcoin 🤣🤣🤣
And whether you're bothered to teach them.
Unfortunately, most people do not seem to value Bitcoin's core features: decentralization, permissionlessness, and privacy. These are abstract concepts many fail to grasp.
Fortunately, adoption is rarely a choice for them; it becomes a necessity. When they realize their fiat currency is devaluing rapidly, they will be forced to find an escape to save themselves.
Probably.
Sovereign entities seems like the next wave of adopters. They face the largest confiscation risk. Most central banks do not have physical possession of their gold, meaning it is still susceptible to seizure.
People do not change their habits because they were 'taught' a lesson, they change when the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of changing
If Bitcoin a massive educational campaign to function, the product design is flawed
Mass adoption of Bitcoin will not happen because billions of people suddenly decide to study cryptography and economics. It will happen because developers build tools that make Bitcoin as easy to use as tapping a credit card
And that means the majority of users will be captured in centralised products defeating the entire purpose of Bitcoin 🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for the extract. Will give the full piece a read
I don't think it's pointless if people are using custodians and intermediaries. It resets the world order and decentralizes power anyways. You dont want or need disinterested people on the base layer.
I wrote it in jest anyways but you took it serious
Dammit 🤣🤣🤣
Yes, we've got work to do. Thats why we are here, lets goooo!
please stop giving reputation to shitcoin magazine
🙏
If the Bitcoin ethos and best practices were always waiting for NPCs to accept it, then Bitcoin “failed” and Bitcoiners are some of the most naive folks out there, albeit they are coming from a good, first principles place. Nonetheless, they fail to understand how the world operates, how government leverage over violence and coercion work and what a transfer into the next “monetary” system actually looks like in reality.
I do love the vision, but sadly, I fear, it will never have its day, the Bitcoin ethos that is.
