Anyone who wants to use Bitcoin as fully self custodial freedom money which acts as their medium of exchange can. The problem we face is not (currently) technical, it’s social. Very few people care enough or know enough to hold their own keys, much less run a node and verify transactions. I like the CTV model for further scaling in the future, but with that said, people are always going to be free to interact with Bitcoin through proxies. ETFs, Bitcoin banks, Bitcoin Visa cards, ECash, were always inevitable. Even if Bitcoin could support infinite transactions at zero cost, I suspect over half of the world would still prefer to use some form of bank or ETF wrapper. That’s not a knock on Bitcoin, it’s a knock on ourselves.

The fees make Bitcoin inaccessible to vast numbers of people, arguably the ones who need it most. Even at $6 a transaction, that’s a days wage in some parts of the world. Lightning could work, but then the argument of self-hosted freedom is out of the window, because even less people are running or can even afford to open their own channels. Almost no one runs a node. I would guess that the 19,000 or so accessible nodes are run by less than 10,000 people. It’s a tiny minority, and this won’t change because people don’t care as much about this side of things as they do about getting rich. The numbers speak for themselves. The issue is see approaching is that proxies for interaction introduce the same barriers that the system set out to escape. People can censor, deplatform and charge whatever fees they want via the proxies.

All I’m saying is that it’s currently a social problem, not a technical one. Even if $2.37 (current low priority fee) is a days wages somewhere, if you value self custodial Bitcoin then you will pay to have it. When fees are in the hundreds and 100 million people are trying to use base layer Bitcoin, then my perspective would change. The hard reality is that most people don’t have either the technical skills + confidence in technology or the desire to be completely free. No matter where you are in the world, the majority of people are more comfortable holding some type of central bank note or digital bank account than they are holding private keys. If you preemptively try to force Bitcoin to be useable for 8B people in a completely sovereign way, you would destroy it faster than people would adopt it. A lot of these arguments center around block size - if we went to 8MB right now for instance, you wouldn’t “scale freedom money”, you would have empty blocks or even worse, blocks full of inscriptions and spam. I understand the cypherpunk dream and I’d love for it to stay accessible for everybody, but for many, it’s as simple as trust based economic prosperity being better than trust based economic poverty. People demanding sound money with a fixed cap and people demanding sovereign money nobody can control are two different groups, and the first one will likely always be larger.

People aren't ignoring the freedom money usecase. But you might not agree with some of their solutions in that space (e.g. fedimint/Cashu) 🤷‍♂️

I think something like CTV is the inevitable natural progression. Base layer can be used for dispute settlement, but UTXOs can be shared in a sovereign way where you hold your own keys using covenants. Works great with the LSP model too - imagine opening 100 lightning channels using one UTXO. I’m not technical enough to understand any potential risks though and I do think we are going to re-enter a contentious period of scaling debates. Also, you would still always ultimately have to pay fees to settle disputes or claim UTXOs if your LSP disappears. Instead of everything settling on-chain, base layer would become closer to taking someone to court, except the judge makes the correct ruling 100% of the time.

Yea the "the base layer is court" prediction I think is very prescient

I agree. most ppl just want to get rich in fiat terms.

I didn't like his use of "we". Who's we? I love paying in Bitcoin. Maybe there's some twitter drama I'm missing but Saylor using Bitcoin however he wants to doesn't affect me. I can use it however I want to as well. I pay in Bitcoin because it allows me to increase my exposure to Bitcoin. The wider public has to adopt Bitcoin as a store of value before it gets to that stage. The merchants have to want to own Bitcoin before accepting it and the consumers have to want to have Bitcoin to spend. Don't know the guy but I suppose he's working on Bitcoin adoption in the global south. There, Bitcoin is already superior as both a store of value and as a medium of exchange compared to their currencies, so good on everyone doing that. I hope to see more. That said, our existing media of exchange will become dysfunctional with enough value transfered anyways.

Does Ray have a nostr?

Yup @Ray Youssef

Thanks. Shout out ✌️

If you can't afford on-chain, you can use custodial lightning, preferably ecash, until you improve your economic position and the security of self custody is worthwhile your increased savings. Eventually on-chain wouldn't even have capacity to on-board people to lightning, but I'd fancy some upgrades to lightning's protocol allowing channels to be opened natively on lightning or to Bitcoin itself, like covenants. If you don't have savings to lose, Wallet of Satoshi works just fine.

Lightning is fine for small transactions, I wouldn't keep any sizeable amounts on there though. The risk of having issues or losing your money is significantly higher than onchain, which is why I am skeptical of recommending this as an alternative.

I don't consolidate on chain any more. When I run out of inbound liquidity on lightning I send it out. That's about as big as my self-custodial lightning balance is. Personally bullish on lightning. CLN is very reliable.