Bitcoin’s Dark Secret; Adoption Sucks
TL:DR: Bitcoin adoption is a long way from where it deserves to be, especially as a payments technology. We’re developing a community-driven solution to address this problem — get in touch if you want to find out more/be involved.
What Does Adoption Even Mean?
‘Adoption’ is one of those words that means many things to many people.
Do we mean retail HODLer penetration? In fact, just ~14years after launch, it seems we’re not doing too badly in that regard:
Do we mean ‘institutional adoption’? Or maybe ‘Public companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet’? That too seems to be well underway, even if it does appear to have stalled a little bit.
Perhaps by ‘adoption’ we mean countries holding Bitcoin in their national reserves? Even here, if we’re honest, we’re not doing too badly…
We already have a few (although admittedly, excepting El Salvador, most ‘hold’ BTC not due to active stacking, but due to seizure of illicit funds).
More countries do seem to be on the horizon.
Perhaps adoption is exactly where it should be?
Perhaps.
BUT — it strikes me that all these statistics are indicators of Bitcoin adoption as a SAVINGS technology.
What happened to the dream of it being a PAYMENT technology?
To me at least, It feels a long way from fulfilling Satoshi’s original stated mission of being a ‘system of electronic transactions’.
My thesis starts with you, dear reader.
When was the last time you bought something with Bitcoin? What % of your day-to-day transactions are done in Bitcoin? Unless you’re in a ‘Bitcoin Bubble’, and sadly, even then, it’s probably been a while since you’ve seen one of these stickers:
Even longer since you personally made a transaction.
I, for one, don’t see anywhere near as many of these stickers as I’d like, and in the rare instances that I do see one, I’m often disappointed to find that the staff aren’t overly enthused about actually accepting a Bitcoin transaction (usually due to an half-decade-outdated assumption that “fees are too high” or “it’s too slow”). Many establishments — despite the worn sticker in the window — simply refuse to transact in Bitcoin altogether. Few-to-none have even *heard* of Lightning, let alone other 2nd layer technologies.
All that sits in stark contrast to industry predictions:
So what’s going on?
Almost everyone has *heard* of Bitcoin, but barely anyone really understands it. Of those that *do* understand it, a tiny fraction use it as the sovereign payment network it was intended to be.
Something is falling short, so we might ask — what will be the spark that lights the next wave of adoption? What will move BTC from speculative store of value, to sovereign medium of exchange?
I wager it will come down to retail and business adoption of Bitcoin as a payment technology, just as Satoshi originally intended.
But it won’t do so alone.
Bitcoin needs your help.
Below I explore some of the causes of why adoption has been slow so far, and, in the end, propose a way for every single one of us to play our part in increasing global adoption of Bitcoin as a payment technology, fulfilling Satoshi’s original mission.
Education, Education, Education
Most people see Bitcoin as nothing more than a tool of fiat speculation.
Few people — even few Bitcoiners — recognise Bitcoin as a *savings technology*. Even fewer understand the potential of Bitcoin as a *payments technology*.
As of today, Bitcoin is widely thought to be a failure in its goal of becoming digital cash.
From a business perspective, it appears that there was an early wave of orange pilling, but it seems to have run out of steam. As I mentioned above, you do see the stickers every once in a while, but in my experience, many of these businesses refuse to use it because ’transaction fees are too high’. They still assume the word ‘Lightning’ refers to a meteorological phenomenon.
But businesses aren’t to blame.
From a retail, hodler perspective, it’s time for me to come clean about something that’s been burning me up inside:
Almost everyone I’ve Orange Pilled (and there have been scores, probably hundreds), a tiny minority have resisted the siren-call of shitcoinery. The vast majority ended up putting the bulk of their stack into the ‘next Bitcoin’. This is a major issue. Perhaps my Orange-Pilling skills aren’t what I thought they were?
Perhaps the issues are also, at least somewhat structural?
Too often we see both supposed Bitcoiners *and* the Cathedral doing their utmost to undermine Bitcoin. They seem hell-bent on drowning out Bitcoin’s signal for the ‘noise’ of ‘crypto’. Everyone has a tip for the ‘next Bitcoin’.
Need proof of this? Try googling ANYTHING about Bitcoin, and notice that all the results are about cryptocurrency, even with an ‘exact phrase’ search. This isn’t an accident. Try the same search on DuckDuckGo — a more balanced, less ‘curated’ search engine.
When I saw the difference in the results on these two platforms, I had the biggest Truman Show Moment of my life so far.
Too often, if Bitcoin is mentioned at all, it’s lumped in with ‘cryptocurrency’ and framed, not as a financial protest again corruption and central bank profligacy, but as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, which is exacerbated, in my eyes, by the very price quote itself.
Why do we quote the value of 1 Bitcoin in dollars? Why don’t we quote the value of 1 dollar, in Satoshi?
Not only would this overcome the issue of retail unit bias, it would also help us focus on the real goal — Sat:Cent parity, and eventually, SAT:Dollar parity :)
All this isn’t to say that there’s some grand conspiracy against Bitcoin (although it’s very possible). My claim is that the signal — that BTC is both a potential Store of Value *as well* as a Means of Exchange — seems to get drowned out in the noise, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
It’s understandable, if you’ve studied human psychology.
It’s easy to see Bitcoin as the boring, ‘outdated’, ‘first attempt’ technology. It’s easy to think you might have ‘missed the boat’. ‘Crypto’, on the other hand is new(ish!), volatile, exciting, and influencers can sell a dream of a mythical future where everyone is rich, without ever having to worry about real world delivery.
They get to live forever in the ‘pre-product’, ‘pre-revenue’ phase.
Finally, there seems to be a common opinion in the Bitcoin space that ‘your coin shouldn’t be spent’.
This idea — in this humble plebs opinion — is not just silly, it’s actively slowing Bitcoin adoption.
Instead, we need to *intentionally* go out and spend our sats, and instantly replace them as we do so… Buy a coffee for a few thousand sats? Instantly buy a few thousands sats to replenish the treasury. Need a new laptop? Buy it with BTC, help increase adoption with vendors, then use your fiat account to replace the spent sats with a few million more.
With this spend and replace strategy, you spend your Bitcoin & spur the Bitcoin economy without draining your long-term treasury.
It’s time for us to recognise that, through every transaction we make, we vote with our wallet. The more we spend our sats, the more locations will begin to accept payment in sats.
Personally, I ask everywhere I go if they accept payment in Bitcoin. Almost all say no, but I enjoy planting the seed (please steal this idea!). Who knows when that seed might take root.
As a quick aside, many in the community may be put off by my apparent ‘maximalist’ stance, so I wanted to address that here. In fact, I’m not a maxi. I do however believe that without Bitcoin’s success, there will be no ‘crypto’. I agree that there are some interesting use cases in the digital asset space (even if the *vast* majority are scams) BUT — they ALL depend on Bitcoin’s success. If Bitcoin doesn’t achieve a decent level of adoption, and soon, every one of us will have no choice but to bend the knee to eCNY, FedCoin, or (god forbid!), Ripple.
So am I advocating for more/better quality education? Kind of, but not really. The issue is hardly a lack of high quality information. There are some *incredible* theorists out there — Saif, Balaji, Saylor, Breedlove, Troy Cross, Lyn Alden, Alex Gladstein, Marty Bent, Jason Lowery and too many more to name here. The early / late innovators have been well shaped by their collective wisdom. The issue is, the ‘early adopters’ — those that follow the innovators — don’t have the time, or really the inclination, to consume all of this high-quality knowledge. They can’t separate the signal from the noise alone.
It’s our job to guide them; one-by-one, if we must.
Additionally (and I believe, more importantly), there’s very little in the way of practical, hands on, direct opportunities for us early & late innovators, and the early adopters that are following closely behind, to harness the power of the pleb network to drive adoption.
Key to the next phase of Bitcoin growth is ensuring that newcomers have a good understanding of the revolutionary, SOVEREIGN potential of Bitcoin, while also providing clear, direct, hands on opportunities for plebs to contribute to the wider Bitcoin mission.
The next wave, if it’s ever to manifest, needs to focus on this — educating the masses on the REAL reason Bitcoin exists, and actively pursuing adoption of Bitcoin as an alternative, sovereign, permissionless payment network.
In short, the community must move from passive to active participation.
This is my call to arms. My cri de coeur. My grito.
If you want to discuss/get involved in my efforts centred around how we can move the community from passive to active participation, get in touch.
