Bitcoin development and innovation looks to be facing a dead end. 🪦 A friend of mine pointed this out to me the other day, and he's right.
Note:
⚠️ This is not saying "Bitcoin's dead" or that the price will crash! ⚠️
I'm talking specifically about the "Bitcoin-native" development roadmap, and how all of the big hyped initiatives just haven't panned out.
Segwit was massively hyped as a scaling solution, but ended up being a tiny, inefficient, and opt-in block size increase.
Lightning was massively hyped as being so big it would obsolete the whole rest of crypto! 🤣 But, despite still being worked on and used by some institutions, it has largely, and spectacularly, fallen on its face. No one saying "Lightning will change everything" is taken seriously anymore.
Then we have Taproot, which didn't really change much. Sure it enabled some extra stuff, but it was just an incremental change that didn't lead to any significant killer apps.
Fedimints/ecash/etc. turned out to be something with Lightning-esque complexity yet fully custodial, which is the worst of all worlds. It's not going anywhere.
Finally we have OP_CAT, which is basically stalled out from lack of "consensus" or whatever. Not sure what it does, not sure I care because it probably won't happen.
Nothing cool happens on Bitcoin anymore.
However, other blockchains are picking up the slack.
Kraken just released their wrapped Bitcoin on ETH, there's stuff like tBTC, v4v lets Hive users instantly bridge HBD out to Bitcoin, etc. Lots of examples.
Bitcoin will still persist for quite a long time. However, all the "maximalist-sanctioned" scaling solutions and other cool stuff is essentially dead at this point. Other "non-sanctioned" and "shitcoin" chains and projects will do the cool Bitcoin stuff from now on.
Bitcoin's network will just be to move from custodian to custodian, or to bridge to superior networks. That's basically it.
You heard it here first. Bet on it on Polymarket or something, I don't know. 😁
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Bitcoin was poor in design. Fixed money always pools. That also makes it awful as a medium of exchange, something even the maxis have given up on. The fact that the digital gold narrative is being embraced shows how there is no technology behind it, only trust. That is fine and will likely make it a held (and high priced) asset. However, it is not "the people's money". Wall Street now has 5% of the market cap in ETFs.
Plus the network is truly garbage.
And people thought it would replace the US dollar.
So called good money always pools, as people prefer to get rid of or use bad money. This theory was one of the most interesting I learned about trying to understand Bitcoin, and all the Sound money lectuyres.
I will have to write an article about Gresham's law and the fallacy of it. Historically, that is not the case. It is also misunderstood since the currency is valued based upon the economic productivity behind it.
It also gets warped when legal tender is involved.
Yeah, it could have evolved to be something interesting and useful beyond the SoV narrative, but it was intentionally held back.
Why?
Long story but watch this, or read Hijacking Bitcoin
To be honest i don't know a lot about bitcoin development. Only thing i do sometimes use is Lighting network in podcasting apps. And that is only by sending some HBD through V4V to an podcasting app for tips. Looks like podcasts are one of the rare ones using it a lot.
Brianoflondon (he works on v4v) talked how Lightning will never be for everyday users as non custodial option for few years now. And in the end it will end up centralized by few big institutions running custodial wallets.
And from my limited understanding of how Lighting works, it makes sense that everyday crypto people will never run a node and maybe just use the service.
Brian's right. I had a long chat with him at HiveFest. Lightning is basically a centralized settlement layer.
It's easier than ever to use, and live off of, crypto in a completely decentralized, noncustodial way. But it's harder and harder on Bitcoin.
the ATM to cash you mentioned would probably be an option for me if i actually earned crypto :)
maybe it is a good thing that lightning is not so good. convenience would make people happy to use centralized systems.
See if any near you sell:
https://coinatmradar.com/
Good point, convenience is a trap, we all have stepped into before
I am no developer, but $BTC seems likely destined for to be pigeon-holed forever as a store of value.
Most developers will just accept/embrace that and develop other use solutions on other blockchains.
Agreed.
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