Topic: What is the best way to scale Bitcoin to the masses? (Read 235 times)

I think you misread my post. I advocate using the system more.

How does using bitcoin more not affect how much it scales? I would think the more people that use it in transactions the more network effect it has. Can you explain what makes bitcoin scale and what your strategy would be?


Taxes are definitely an obstacle. Hopefully in the future this will change.

This has got to be one of the worst threads created on the topic of 'scaling'. What you proposed is not only inherently bad to the coin itself, it also has absolutely no relevance to scaling. You don't scale a system by not using it/using it less. Anyone with an IQ higher than a rock should understand this sentence.

That bill where purchases under $600 are not to be taxed would help with that.

You are on to something here. Adoption will only come trough usage and we should all do our best to promote Bitcoin by using it. It should come slowly by itself. As the crypto world evolves and more money pours into it the price will be more stable and more people will hopefully start to use Bitcoin instead of just speculating on its price.

I have started to buy as much as possible trough direct BTC payment but it is not often easy. I live in Croatia and there are precious few shops excepting BTC as payment, mostly online computer hardware shops.


I think you slightly missed the point here. People who have money invested in stocks/bitcoin are maybe spending more fiat money. But we need to spend BTC directly.  When you say that you had to pay bills you have probably exchanged BTC to fiat and used fiat to pay the bills. This doesn't help adoption. It would be much better from adoption point of view if you used same amount of BTC to purchase goods directly and then consequently had more fiat to pay the bills.

I feel for you regarding tax return problems. This is a big obstacle in adoption as well. We can't expect average user to fill that many tax return pages. This should be made more easy. In Croatia we don't even have a clear cut low regarding taxing of crypto currencies. Therefore, we have to search for best answers trough collective effort and hope we will not have problems in the future.

Yes, especially when stocks go up. People feel richer and tend to spend more fiat. Something similar happens when the housing market goes up.

I think most people who hold bitcoin has spent some as well, and I am skeptical as to what we can do on this forum to scale bitcoin to the masses. I think it will scale because the path is already built and don’t think anything we do will help a lot.

I'm not sure if HODL is affecting spending that much. Do people who have stock investments spend less fiat? Quite the contrary I think.

I know that I spent probably 10 times more bitcoins than I saved but on the other hand I never could have afforded to HODL 10x. I had to pay the bills etc.

To me the biggest hindrance to spending Bitcoin in the US is the way it's taxed. I have to track every single transaction AND ITS COST BASIS. This year I had a 26-page Form 8949 in my tax return. I can't imagine a typical Amazon customer willing to bother with that.

So apparently through the grapevine of the Bitcoin community I have heard that Bitcoin is having trouble scaling. That blocks are too full to fit more transactions. Does this mean Bitcoin can't reach mass adoption without creating side chains or will it be easier when technology speed advances? I hear a lot of stuff about the lightning network and have been pretty excited about it.

For awhile Bitcoin was slow and also expensive which was the opposite of what it was initially intended to be. Is there a way for it to be fast and cheap with advanced technology? Is there light at the end of the tunnel or have we reached a wall? I really like the concept of Bitcoin's decentralized uncontrolled nature that does not inflate over time.

I think a good strategy to get people to adopt bitcoin is to have some coins for HODLing and other coins for spending. I would say just having coins for spending, but people aren't going to want to do that when the price keeps going higher and higher. I think if we pursue the creation of a culture where people have BOTH HODL coins and spending coins it could help grow adoption. The more we use Bitcoin personally the more incentive merchants have to open it up as a payment option. I've heard of businesses that have had Bitcoin as a payment option because customers requested it, but then nobody used it and so they drop it from their business model. If we want big companies like Amazon or grocery stores to accept bitcoin, then we have to use it as a currency in order for it to start happening. The hodl cult was started and people jumped aboard the train. Maybe we could create a spodl cult. (spend + hodl = spodl) Okay cheesy I know, but something like this could help. Just hoarding money never accomplished anything.


The thing about LN that seems greater than just raising the block size is that it allows for growth without corrupting the main chain. I really think that even some centralization can actually be good just so long as it doesn't affect the "root" of bitcoin. A decentralized currency with centralized platforms seems like the ideal vision. I believe the masses will have a hard time being like "Oh, I lost my private key. It is on me." Some people are going to be okay with that risk, but the average person is not going to be comfortable with that.


Okay so these are just a couple of thoughts. Anyone else have some good ideas?