Topic: A perspective of the future of Bitcoin.. - page 2. (Read 932 times)

I get your point. I can see that people not educated about privacy leading to a general acceptance of the surveillance measures is allowing majority of the exchanges to get away with draconian measures. Kevin has also summed up the same sentiment quite well in his reply here:


I can understand this sentiment. When I said that bitcoin was not supposed to be completely private, what I meant is that its not bitcoin's job to ensure privacy as a feature. Addresses/ transactions have been traceable as always. What we have built AROUND it is the reason for dilution of privacy. Who built these ecosystems? Surely the erstwhile whales and bitcoiners have a role to play. These are the same people who talk about these issues but refuse to put the money where there mouth is. For trading, there is Bisq but to provide it with liquidity and usage is up to the users. If a Binance manages to garner much attention with trading shitcoins and becomes a "business leader", then that is just capitalism working.
Why can't a Bisq replicate the same form of success. Open source, built by HODLers and builders. ChipMixer has done that. Where are the others? There is BTCPay as an alternative to BitPay. They do not get the same attention because few people are educated about the need for privacy. We still have an ecosystem to ensure that people who want to treat bitcoin the way they want can actually do that. Privacy is one of the MANY goals of bitcoin. As people get educated more and more about privacy in general, they would be able to use bitcoin the way they want.

I get your point that Bitcoin advocacy should go hand in hand with privacy advocacy. I just get pissed when people take an elitist approach to it and bash newbies instead of showing them how they can use bitcoin and still keep their balls (KYC). Thanks Kevin and oeleo for making this a fruitful discussion. It also give an ideas why Theymos' has shown tacit support to Grin, a coin that incorporates MimbleWimble and has default privacy. Maybe, we should have a dedicated section for Privacy issues as a sub for quality discussion as well as resources for newbies here at the forum. Moderators, Can we Please, Please have that?? Make someone like @nullius a moderator for it. Have a few more people with real life experience living that life. (Where is Jameson Lopp when you need him)

The day will come where Bitcoin will de-couple from the fiat currencies and stand alone.  Remember; each Bitcoin is made up of 1x10^8 Satoshis.  The day will come when people will think in terms of Satoshis.

I would never beat the bush whenever it comes to the question of why I got into cryptocurrencies in the first place. I heard about the huge gains just a normal human behavior I got interested and decided to learn about this technology. Once I got to know about the blockchain technology and how bitcoin plans on making transactions very secure and also private I tend to admire this technology more.

Now I am all in the support of several blockchian solutions that would help solve the major existing problems in the financial industry. It has been a long journey, got scammed but I learned my lessons haha.

Is a good perspective OP, but i think the main problem is the nature of bitcoin, it works better as an inversion tool than a daily use normal coin. And this is because the volatility doesn't let us handle is as a normal coin. If on Monday we buy the products for our shop with bitcoin under $10k/btc and on Friday bitcoin drops to $8k, then at that moment we already lose 20%, our product are instant devaluated. I know it could go to the other way, but at the end is like flipling a coin and not everyone can take this risk.

Previous year bitcoin value is too small and anyone ignored bitcoin but now most of the people wants to learn how to earn bitcoin and how to trade bitcoin. In the future i think that bitcoin value will be rised and will be most demand currnecy in the internet world

There was this thread (Repost: Request: Make this anonymous?) where satoshi talks about Tor.
There is also this thread on P2Pfoundation (http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source) where satoshi talks briefly about the desire for great privacy.

I quietly use bitcoin in my daily life at least every other day, but the slow creep of privacy invasion has made things more difficult on a number of occasions. I had previously used a merchant to buy some expensive electronics with bitcoin, and was planning to do so again, except they use BitPay as their payment processor and BitPay introduced KYC for buyers buying goods of over $3000. Out of the question. I had previously used localbitcoin to buy and sell between bitcoin and fiat, but they also introduced KYC, so I had to move to an alternative P2P exchange. I'd love to be able to use a bitcoin debit card so I can pay with bitcoin everywhere, but doing gives the issuer of the card the ability to not only monitor every purchase you make, but also to shut your card down if you make a purchase they don't agree with. So much for "without the need for trusted third parties".

Maybe it's more fair to say Bitcoin will be what the majority treat it as, which is different from what deciding it should be, which for me means a more purposeful deliberation rather than "I dunno, I'm holding I guess lol".

It won't be what the early guys wanted for sure though, but the essential outcome of the majority.

@20kevin20: I have been in it since 2016 -- wrote about it in 2013 as a journalist actually, but personally was not moved by the concept, mainly because I had spent my time reading articles about them, rather than listen to or study the discussions about them, which I eventually did in 2016.

I always say it's a social experiment and I'm a voluntary participant. I'm not hardcore, probably never will be, but I like most the users who quietly use it, don't get upset over how others use it, I meet those quite regularly and I think, we're all okay if bitcoin fails -- though none of us thinks it will. I am somewhat dismissive over investors who don't actually own Bitcoin (I know a few!), they're absolutely not contributing to the network at all but hey, they contribute to the idea and the awareness of it I suppose I gotta give them that.

I don't really think we can predict anything about the future, except that Bitcoin will most likely end up in ways that would surprise most of us, and upset very few of us.


As much as I hate to admit it, but this is one of the hard corer segments of Bitcoin for sure. I don't believe they're all bad (hey I like a satellite network too, for example), but you know it's hard to shrug off the taint of corporate agenda.

(Each paragraph will be a response to your reply's paragraph)

Well, you see, that's exactly the point I was making: It was supposed to be a decentralized, reliable currency for peer-to-peer trading. It was not supposed to become a currency I could almost only access through third parties. While I do get your point that it wasn't supposed to be completely private, I can't let my intimacy be taken away this easily by the government like it was nothing. Take a look back at Bitcoin's creator and see how transparent he was about his identity. Spoiler alert: he wasn't. He wanted privacy and he has it.

Satoshi talked about using Bitcoin Core with Tor for more anonymity in some of his BTCTalk posts - I think I can recall that. But hey, there's the big problem I always see: linking the privacy-seekers to tax evasion. If I want to be private, it does not mean I do not pay taxes, that I am a criminal or an illicit activity supporter. This is a very wrong stereotype and the reason why I fear a Bitcoin ban or attacking it through exaggerated and anti-Bitcoin laws will succeed. Because most people have this false link in their mind between Bitcoin, privacy seekers and criminals.

Bitcoin will never be the perfect solution to fiat's problems. However, I can't ignore the fact that our authorities are starting to effectively stomp our heads with increasing surveillance measures. From laptops with hackable webcams we've reached the point where we buy 10 Alexas to put in every single room and bathroom we have that listens to us 24/7. From street surveillance cams we've reached the point where police departments want to use surveillance drones that follow you around to make sure you obey the law and even think about equipping these drones with pepper spray and fucking explosives and are working with surveillance companies willing to fly surveillance planes. We now have states considering mandatory constant tracking apps for your phone, the gov interrogating all your friends and hiring people to do contact tracing interrogation & investigation if you are found positive with COVID-19 (which is the perfect way to create a web of links between hundreds of millions of people) and so on. I can't support what they're doing just because I have to pay taxes. I never said I don't have to, but give me some air. Is this what I'm paying taxes for? Don't suffocate me with these surveillance-state like measures because it's starting to look Elysium-style.

I agree that more people coming in will help the ecosystem. But I'm trying to say that we may be just accepting too many invasive rules and laws. You may say I am against the law - yes! I am against the privacy-invasive law! I understand we need to have some regulations regarding BTC, but damn - back in 2017-2018 I wanted to join a stock trading website and I could without all the documents a KYC-enabled crypto exchange asked me for.

If adoption and usage of Bitcoin is important and privacy isn't, then Bitcoin is not for me anymore. I thought all three go together. If we have opposed thoughts and you say privacy isn't a concern for you while I say for me it is, the thing is that I am forced to let my privacy taken away while you are absolutely fine with it. I do not have a choice but to move to more inconvenient platforms that don't even have volume because otherwise I risk having my money abusively seized by an exchange obeying the laws you think are fine. And even then, you'd think I do not pay taxes because I wanted privacy. Do you think that's fair? I am not against the non-abusive laws. I am against forcefully taking my privacy away through the law.

---

I can compare that with the vaccine situation we are into right now in my country: some people want to get their kids vaccinated, some don't. If mandatory vaccination law comes in, the people willing to get their kids vaccinated are going to be perfectly fine while the ones who don't will have to send their kids to take the injected substance by force. Moreover, if you do not want your kids to take the substance, you'd be sent to some centers regularly where they're going to literally brainwash you and program you to agree with the mandatory vaccination law. I mean literally - every time you leave that center saying "no", you're going to be punished. Not to mention that those not agreeing with the law may be called "terrorists". Why force me to take something just because you think it's fine? Why do I not have the right to say "no"? I am not against the vaccine. I am against forcefully taking my right to say "no" through the law.

But I have a question for you. What if, one day, you decide to take your privacy back? What if, one day, the state decides to experimentally inject their citizens with some never-tested-before substance and the pro-mandatory vaccine ones will want to have the right to say "no"? Well, that is a personal concern, isn't it..

I've been around for more than four years. I also found out about BTC from the news and family because Silk Road was shut down and there have been ongoing investigations and stuff. I hope that one day the scalability issue gets solved (perhaps with off-chain transactions, I don't know), and it gets as easy to pay with Bitcoin for pretty much everything as with a debit card. But that's a long-term perspective. As for a short-term one, I hope Bitcoin becomes more stable and more recognized by the authorities as money and gets favorable regulations.
In my country, it's still the way you describe 2016-2017, so maybe that's why I still feel quite optimistic about it. But your text is inspiring and those concerns make a lot of sense.

But that doesn't mean people like me can't lament the general lack of interest in privacy that is growing throughout the population, can't advocate for people to take their privacy more seriously, can't become exasperated at those willing to give up their privacy for the promise of some airdropped garbage.

Privacy is a private matter, sure, but how other people view and treat their privacy affects me too. Because the majority of people don't care about their privacy, they don't care when governments pass ever more draconian surveillance laws, or companies start coding back doors in to their products, or facial recognition technology starts monitoring people as they walk down the street. Because of this, I have to take ever more complicated steps, dedicate ever more time and effort, to protecting my own privacy. I get viewed with suspicion for doing these things. I get asked such ridiculous questions as "What are you trying to hide?".

Further, we are seeing the bitcoin ecosystem grow to more resemble the fiat one we are trying to escape. Privacy invading centralized exchanges are starting to "police" the space based on their own rules. With several major exchanges, you now can't deposit or withdraw coins to addresses associated with casinos or sportsbooks without having your accounts frozen and your coins seized. They even trace your coins through multiple transactions to see their history. This is antithetical to not giving third parties control over your money. As above, they get away with this kind of behavior because the majority are apathetic.

I'm not going to tell other people what bitcoin is or should be, but I'm also not going to stop advocating that people take their privacy seriously.

Okay. Unpopular opinion coming in. This bygone-era romanticism of being "True Bitcoiners" committed to privacy is as much bullshit in the long run as someone saying that they know how bitcoin will evolve and that there is only one way it should. To begin with, bitcoin never was supposed to be completely private. It was supposed to introduce a shake-up of the existing fiat system by being used as a decentralized, reliable currency for P2P trading. Merchants and business adopting it out of their own volition and people using it for payments over internet. "Commerce on the internet" as Satoshi mentioned in the opening line of his whitepaper.

All of these ideas of complete privacy with TOR nodes, Mixers, CoinJoin came along gradually. A very specific section of people want complete privacy and anonymity of their transactions and they can very well have it with the existing options available. Yet, this arrogance about being "True bitcoiners" is because some of you think that you somehow have a great vision of the way the world could be if nobody paid taxes and we did not need governments. Wake the fuck up!!!

Inequality and disparity in wealth distribution is not something that will be solved by completely anonymous transactions. It will be solved by more people having access to financial education, financial opportunities and an ability to do business unrestricted by borders. Bitcoin does that. There are other problems in the world like an inflationary reserve currency propped up by central banks taking care of vested interests. Or people having their wealth seized by rogue states. Bitcoin solves that too, IF you use it the way it is meant to be used. Not all of these problems are First-world, Western issues like flaunting "My rights" even in the face of dire global epidemics.

Our right to privacy as humans is a fundamental right and we all have to be aware of it but its an issue with implications and causes far beyond bitcoin. Bitcoin can solve it for you personally if you use it that way. Nobody stops you. So stop having this "holier-than-thou" attitude about bitcoin just because you think that newbies coming in through exchanges are diluting it. This is some other level bullshit. Infact, the more people come in and have a stake into bitcoin, the better it is for the ecosystem.

---

The problem is not dilution of privacy. It has never been because privacy is, as the name suggests, a private issue. There is no particular "direction" that bitcoin will take without the active inputs of thought-leaders and people developing tools and businesses suitable to it. This is what has stopped. For example, the latest features going into bitcoin are not even discussed anymore. This oft-repeated, old old-school romanticism does not entitle anyone to tell others what bitcoin is or should be. It has to be adoption and usage first as a community. Concerns like privacy are in individual's own control.

---

---

EDIT: Thanks for the cool discussion o_e_l_e_o and 20kevin20. Apart from adoption, ensuring that people care enough about privacy is also very important. As you guys say, we are losing the battle for eyeballs due to the business requirements of major exchanges like Binance and coinbase despite having options like Bisq. Insistence on privacy should become the norm rather than compromising with it. We definitely need a sub for privacy, security and online safety so the good people of bitcointalk, especially the ever eager, KYC airdropping, bounty hunters and newbies can learn to ACTUALLY bitcoin. Any of you reading this, please, please go to this link and understand and express your support. Much thankful..

It certainly does have a hard Core; banker-backed Blockstream. Good luck if you think that will result in giving many hope.

Hello everybody. I repeat, once said, that which is invented by man can be destroyed by him. Therefore, I am scared by the idea that as soon as Bitcoin reaches a new level of capitalization, it will be the main enemy of the government and the banking system and, accordingly, destroyed by them. Today, Bitcoin is a manipulative project subject to strong price fluctuations, which makes it possible to earn big money. In the next 10-20 years, I see the prospect of a huge price increase, because there will be a clearly limited number of these coins, which will put enough pressure on psychology. Trading on the exchange is a war of psychologists. Even the amount of gold is not limited by anything except the bowels of the earth. Although, it seems to me that the potential of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, in general, is far from limited to trading on the exchange. Of course, a certain opposition from the state slows down the development of the cryptocurrency industry, but I believe that the time will definitely come and cryptocurrency will be used in many areas of our lives.

This post is great and long but it is worth to read. I am here in cryptocurrencies and I am here in bitcointalk because I am a beginner here and I wanted to earn from myself. I am learning here by reading this forum and I am learning and studying what I can study to help me in my adventure here in bitcointalk  I hope that I can earn good amount of money here hecause I want to use it for my future and I am sure that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will not fail me because now the status of bitcoin is getting better and it is rising to such great heights. I hope that I can eean more here so that I will have money that I can use for my studies and It will be a help for my family. I hope that I can earn more here because I want to help my family too. I hope that bitcoin will continue to spread because it is helping me and I rhink that bitcoin is heloing more people.

You're right, it's us blindly accepting the states stomping our face with their boot and accepting anything they request. I think the old bitcoiners are still on our direction towards decentralization and supporting what Bitcoin was supposed to be, but the newbies are constantly affected by the false ideas propagated among them and they do affect others too. In the end, it's few of them following the original path Bitcoin had and the rest going for the new, shitty direction.

---

I agree that profit is an important factor of entering a market, but the idea is not using Bitcoin purely as an investment. On the other hand, as other members above said, they do bring in lots of newbies out of which at least a handful will become true believers. It's a double-edged sword.

---

Well, if these people who only want to get rich quick help increase BTC's price and most likely make new miners pop up too, then don't you think they'll also help decrease it once they find out it's not as easy as they thought it would be to earn a fortune off BTC?

I don't think your last statement is a fact. The more people use Bitcoin, the better it actually is for those creating their own BTC reverse search & analysis tools. Do you think research on BTC's network is all done manually? It's probably going to be all about AI and automated links between addresses (see WalletExplorer). It's going to make their web expand even more. I guess it's like a survey - the more people you survey, the more accurate it gets.

---

I'm more willing to benefit from it as in having more freedom than more wealth. It makes no sense to chase only wealth if they are stripping your freedom away.

---

Thanks for the support!


I bet most would reply something not much different than "being alone, with nobody around". But they forget that their web cameras can see them at any time and their Echo are listening to them 24/7.

I think it already became traditional. Almost nobody's paying attention.

---

I had this chat with someone close to me - they ran out of credit on their prepaid card and praised WhatsApp and Facebook for being free so I asked them, "have you ever wondered why they're free?" which put them to silence for a few moments.

Most people don't even realize these things and how they're willingly selling themselves just so they can have things "for free".

I don't really care what type of person is present at present. More than likely they'll come and go or be converted into someone who recognises that it has elements worth fighting for.

As long as there's a hard core defending the base tenets it has the chance to be what many hope it will become.

Even so ultimately Bitcoin is what the collective decides it should be. It may not be what the early arrivals wanted, but it is the will of the users.

IMO, these are huge statements. I love it.
Gave me the chill.
Hmm.
Privacy. Maybe we should create a survey on how they define it.
Looking at how many Facebook users, you will see they just don't care about it anymore.
Could have been better to stay with Twitter but they picked Instagram instead posting their photos for everybody to see.

No, they might not have the spare time to care about it anymore.
Popularity and being seen is the culprit.
They want likes, they want to be accepted by the mass or they just want some attention risking their own privacy without even having the thought.
It's scary and it is becoming the norm of society.
If this keeps up, it will become traditional and nobody will pay attention anymore.

Well said, there are so many people who are in cryptocurrency having a goal of being rich, well even me has that reason and I think all of you guys think the same way because one of the purpose why we are entering something or joining something is because we want to be benefited from it and that's how bitcoin gives to all of us.

We are also here to have more information about cryptocurrency, some only wants to have some transaction with others. We have been so long in bitcoin and we see how good is bitcoin now from it's very first time until now, many things happen and thing are going well.

You couldn't be more wrong here.

First of all, bitcoin is categorically not anonymous by default. It is possible to use bitcoin anonymously (or close to it), but there are many steps you have to take to be able to do so, and the majority of average users who try would trip up somewhere and de-anonymize themselves.

Secondly, bitcoin not being supported by governments is the precise reason that interest in it is growing, not fading. People are getting fed up of governments printing trillions of dollars (or equivalent) of monopoly money to bail out banks, airlines, tech giants, and other billion dollar industries, while the average citizens sees their wages stagnant, inflation run rampant, the cost of living increase, and becomes poorer.

So don't give it to them. It's entirely possible to live your life without social media accounts. In fact, research shows those who delete their social media accounts have better physical and mental health, better productivity, better sleep, and feel happier and less stressed.