Most bitcoiners want bitcoin to increase in value so bad, they will do anything it takes to make it go mainstream but don't really see where this is will lead us or even care at all how bitcoin will look like in the future.
I've known about bitcoin for very little time but from what i could gather here and there (correct me if i'm wrong), bitcoiners have been very enthousiast about bitcoin for many reasons one being that it is an alternative currency which is not manipulated by banks.
So when I see goldman sacks investing in bitcoin and everyone wetting their pants i am starting to think that we might have two differents crowds of bitcoiners, one that wants the currency to succeed and one that wants the value to rise but don't really care about the currency itself.
Sad but true. Most users of bitcoin are in it for the profit, not in it for the innovation and the coin per se. Most even use it as a means of getting more fiat rather than keeping bitcoin as bitcoin. They didn't even use it for payments or everyday use, they just hoard it (or hodl) thinking that prices would skyrocket and change it to fiat.
In my opinion people who wants the value to increase and wants rapid mainstream adoption will be responsible for bitcoin to never go mainstream, the blockchain will though, people will be transfering fiat between eachothers using the bitcoin blockchain or another one, but what is the point of having a blockchain in the background doing all the work and fiat on top of it? people will have no incentive to use the actual bitcoin, merchants will probably in the future have fiat denomination for their digital payment, and all transactions that were previously cash could be monitored by government with the help of bitcoin banks like coinbase and circle.
One of the awesome things about bitcoin is that it helps understand how money works in our current system, it raises very interesting questions, it educated people about what actually is money and also raises awarness about current manipulated fiat system.
I care about the value, not that much. In fact, it is
There are still bitcoin users who are dedicated on the improvements and innovations made in bitcoin, and they care less about the value more than anything else. It is bad for a technology to be brought to its peak only to be "milked" out by some profit-hungry people. That will bring the technology down to its lowest, imo.
By putting the blockchain in the background with fiat on top we will slowly remove all of these subjects from being discussed that are so important.
Bitcoin to me is not gold2.0 as some believes, gold is an asset bitcoin is an alternative currency.(my opinion)
The question i ask is why do all these people want bitcoin to go mainstream apart from the fact that they will earn money from that? if bitcoin is mainstream one day we will probably never hear about the word "bitcoin" anymore.
My post may sound a bit like i am some anarcho libertarian but I am absolutely not, i think government has a role in society but this role is not the issuance of money, bitcoin fascinates me because it is sound money and not controlled by anyone.
Even if bitcoin blockchain remains decentralized what is the point of having fiat going through it ?
If blockchain is used even in the fiat system, people who uses it will have more restricted movements and every single cent they spend would be monitored, which I think is not good and worrying. Also, blockchain without bitcoin is pointless, because the concept of the block chain ledger is made for bitcoin.
Personnaly i think that's a good thing that we have many different crypto currencies, some very interesting open source projects of bitcoin ecosystem could very easily be rolled out on another crypto but i just think that bitcoin is not heading in the right direction because people do not give it the time to.
There are cryptocurrencies with good technologies with it, it's just that people also use those to gain more btc in order to have more fiat. Bitcoin users are really giving the time for bitcoin to see widespread adoption. Some even educate others to use bitcoin as well. It's just that seeing bitcoin prospers is a double-edged sword: there will still be consequences after all the success in it.