Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[BobLawblaw]

Bitcorn is having some morning wood.

[aesma]

Green green green ding ding ding !

[cAPSLOCK]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

**A little Saturday read inspired by your post... I will merit you, but I just dumped all my merit on Hal Finney.  You can't be mad about that right?***

This is a very hard thing for the old school bitcoiner to accept.  And some will reject it outright. In fact that is why Roger Ver went the way he did.  I think CSW is an actual pathological conman, but I think Ver fell in love with a version of Bitcoin that he began to see as doomed, ironically as it began to become successful. But I want to put forth a couple reasons I think what you said above is important and inevitable.  

1.  The banking infrastructure  and concept is STILL useful.
2.  We actually NEED it.

The first bitcoin transaction I did in 2011 was to a poker site (bitco.in, as Seals with Clubs did not even exist yet!)  The whole reason I went to the trouble to get my hands on some bitcoin was to play online poker with it.  But like so many of us, along this path I suddenly saw what being able to transact value without a middleman FELT LIKE.  The lightbulb turned on... one pill will make you smaller, etc.  And it stuck.  My poor wife.  She has had to listen to a decade of it.

For some reason it is not as hard for me to accept as it seems to be VER.  It is inevitable.  Bitcoin, if it does indeed begin to serve the world as even a semi-niche store of value will grow to magnitudes of it's current resource usage.  And I am not going to crank the blocksize debate up again, but to put it simply we can either keep bitcoin validation decentralized and thereby enforce the consensus, or we can let it be taken over by a small minority, and end up with a digital panopticon that would make most fundamentalist evangelical's vision of the "mark of the beast" look like Monopoly.  The fight is over which resource use grows... and the market has, in some way against all odds, chosen correctly: Fees.

I agree with the market here and I realize the future is not what, even Satoshi, seemed to have seen.  Although Hal got it.  And WAAAAAY back then too...

I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.

2010, y'all!

And we are watching this unfold right under our noses.  But most people don't really see it yet.  There are a lot of contenders, and people tend to look at the exchanges and talk about them being the bitcoin banks... and behold JUST THIS WEEK the news hit that Kraken was granted the whatever-it-is regulatory powers to become a BANK.  But even more than that, I think the underestimated and EXTREMELY Savvy @jack is already a little ahead of them in some ways with Square/Cash App. Not only is it one of the best places to buy bitcoin, but he is laying the groundwork for all commerce to be done using his application.  They just introduced some sort of payroll feature.  This makes Wells Fargo look like a fucking brontosaurus looking at the curious bright streak coming through the sky called Cash App. "Oooh pretty!"

And then we have Jack Mallers, the grandson of one of the founding fathers of the Chicago Board Options Exchange who is doing one of the most interesting projects laying down a REAL, WORKING payment layer for Bitcoin using the lightning network.  This ultra laid back hoodie wearing millennial (Gen Z-er?) stands to create an even bigger legacy than either of his ancestors.  He is quietly laying the groundwork for a bulletproof bitcoin payment network, that SETTLES on the main chain.

Boom.

Credit card terminals are not going away.  Banks are not going away. Loans and mortgages and myriad other financial instruments are not going away.  The vision of each bitcoiner living in a citadel guarding his 8 of 15 multisig seed word stashes served by his farm of nodes all running mixing protocols and so on is a "Mountain Man Fantasy".  And some of those mountain men will doubtless exist.  But in reality the VAST majority of humans could never handle that amount of responsibility.  They want to pay someone else to guard their value for them.  Someone who is an expert in the kind of security needed to safeguard value, and now with the added wrinkles and challenges presented by cryptography.  Perhaps someone who offers insurance against a failure or theft. Someone who does all the dirtywork behind the scenes so you can buy your iconic cup of coffee without having to remember a 19 character password.  

Those someones are called "banks".  Or, at least that's what they used to be called.  This level of disruption is big enough that they COULD end up with a different name.

Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.

Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems. They can work like banks did before nationalization of currency. Different banks can have different policies, some more aggressive, some more conservative. Some would be fractional reserve while others may be 100% Bitcoin backed. Interest rates may vary. Cash from some banks may trade at a discount to that from others.

That was a very wise man seeing the rise of Cash App, Strike, and Kraken back when everyone else was just wanting to figure out how to get around all the regulations that made it hard to play online poker.  Insert Ver's scrunched up face here as he foams at the mouth taking about PEER TO PEER CASH!!! AND I AM SORRY I JUST GET SO EMOTIONAL!

No one can stop you from using the chain.  Ever.  That is CERTAINLY one of the things that makes bitcoin a "zero to one" invention.  But if you really want to compete for the kind of VALUE that Bitcoin will command and REQUIRE for on chain transactions??? ...better get that business plan ready.  And there are some fairly smart folks out there with a good head start on you already.  Bitcoin is not replacing credit cards... Bitcoin is replacing FedWire.

If we want Bitcoin to be successful then this is where we are going.  And we should really be glad.  It might not look like what we all thought it would 10 years ago (or 7 or 3 or last week), and part of the reason for that is our vision is limited.  We get hung up, like Ver, on shiny things that look more important than they are.

That feeling you got when you did your first few Bitcoin transactions?  It's not going away.  It's just changing form.  And you are one of the lucky ones that got to experience that first.  Most people will have the much more ho-hum feeling of just watching the mover and shakers roll out the new world for them...

Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize consensus progress as the subsidy declines.

-Greg Maxwell around the BTC all time high Dec 2017. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-December/015455.html

Happy Saturday!

[Paashaas]

cAPSLOCK how are you doing these says, still having bad says at work ore are you more relaxed than before?

[cAPSLOCK]

cAPSLOCK how are you doing these says, still have bad says at work ore are you more relaxed than before?

Lol.  I am great.

I didn't meant to be overly whiny a couple days ago... I am a musician... one of my gifts is expressing emotion.  And I was so tired of my job that day.  And I know I am not the only one here, that even though we know where we are headed, are like a little kid in the car on the way to vacation. WHEN WILL WE GET THERE?!??!

But yeah... I was up at 0530 this morning because I could not sleep because of a change I put into the Electronic Medical Record for a 16 facility hospital system that had a small, but not insignificant error.  So I had to get up super early on Saturday to fix it.

My job is kinda stressful.  In some ways it's like being an air traffic controller for healthcare.

I still look forward to handing in my resignation. Although i REALLY REALLY appreciate, and for the most part enjoy my job.

Sometime in the next 5 years, I believe.

How are YOU doin?

[rolling]

how do you determine on-chain transations to cost so much?

He can’t.  His post is just a roundabout way of saying, “Bitcoin cannot scale, and will thus become a banker’s toy as bone-crushing transaction fees force everybody into the next generation of Paypal.”  Baloney.

Almost all bitcoin transactions in the future will be done on exchanges, between bank accounts, or through digital warehouses without any bitcoin moving on chain. I'm not holding mine like that but you know most people and companies will, out of fear or because they don't know any other way.

Nice list.  You are basically describing a centralized shitcoin that’s like meta-Paypal 2.0 with magic “blockchain” pixie dust sprinkled on top.  Who needs it?  (Not the banks, who do not like transparent blockchains for their own use!  There is a reason why JPMorgan Chase (!) paid the erstwhile Zcash Company to adapt zk-SNARKs to their own bigbank confidentiality requirements.  See also Greg Maxwell’s discussions of bigcorp interest in Confidential Transactions—which are accordingly implemented in Blockstream’s Liquid.  Only idiots make their own finances publicly transparent; bigcorps are not so stupid.)

Notably, you omitted Lightning Network, and other off-chain things not under the control of banks and other regulated corporations.

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

I could see perhaps something on the order of magnitude of $100 (in today’s current value) on-chain transaction costs, but $1000+?  Smells like FUD.

Bitcoin needs to be accessible to even relatively poor individuals for long-lived channel management on a future L2:  Scrape together, say, $100 to open a channel that runs for years.  N.b., I am not saying it will cost that much!  Just taking that as a figure that will seem high to most people, it would be less expensive overall, amortized over the channel lifetime, than the ripoff fees that regulated money transmitters charge to the “unbanked” in many regions.  Proportionately, the poor always get ripped off the worst!  Speaking from experience—if I had back all of the money that I have ever paid to move small amounts of money without a bank account...

That is not some bleeding-heart egalitarian hogwash.  It is simply a functional description of what is necessary to be something other than just another bankers’ tool.

$1000+ tx fees would mean that Bitcoin is destined to fail—or worse, to become an abomination against financial freedom—and that I should dump it and get out right now.

Fortunately, I do not believe you.  On-chain scalability improvements, combined with off-chain layering, must and will keep “Be Your Own Bank” financial independence within the reach of ordinary individuals—including those who are not early-entrant “Bitcoin rich”.  Just look at the excellent work in Segwit v1, soon nascent, and then consider what the same types of continuing incremental improvements will bring to the baselayer—and what types of new protocols they will support.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

That would turn Bitcoin into a bankers’ wet dream:  The totally controlled, centralized, regulated basis for a cashless dystopia in which everybody can be tracked, traced, and forced to ask permission to use money.

That is not a new allegation, and it’s not true.

The fact is, whether you the bankers like it or not, cryptographic cleverness will continue to enable technologies that put the individual in direct control of his own money.

Sounds like the kind of rant the bigblockers went on just prior to forking off. You are welcome to get out now and go chase another shitcoin dream. Bitcoin will be just fine without you.

The free market will decide what Bitcoin becomes, not an opinion of what it should be. For better or for worse, those with all the money now, will largely be the ones with all the money in the future. Bitcoin is open to everyone including the banks, governments, and billionaires. This will push out the little guy, just like in every other industry in history.

99% of people don't have the mental ability to deal with private keys, wallets or anything of the sort. They want a bank account and a debit card. Their attention span is about 3 seconds. There is no way they will ever grasp crypto. They may want to invest in crypto or hold it but it will be at a bank or brokerage and governments will impose their restrictions on those accounts just like they are doing now.

On-chain will be for the big boys. If you don't like it, become one of the big boys by filling your bags now while BTC is still dirt cheap.

[friends1980]

in his worldwide bestseller "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind" (which is a great book, that I can deeply recommend, even for historians)

(...)

bitcoin is on its way to deliver another big leap forward

(...)

Discovered and read it during the lockdown (thank you Wuhan), instant classic which you simply can't put down. You can borrow it for free on The Archive.

[AlcoHoDL]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

**A little Saturday read inspired by your post... I will merit you, but I just dumped all my merit on Hal Finney.  You can't be mad about that right?***

[...post too long for quoting, body removed, click here to go to it...]

Happy Saturday!

Very good post, thanks.

I hope jbreher and the other big blockers read it (I'm saying this in a positive way, not intending to offend anyone...).

Happy Saturday everyone!

[600watt]

banks existed for 500 years. their business model is to allocate our money over space and time. for 500 years there was no better way to send money to someone than using a bank. it became so embedded in our lives and minds that banks are custodians of our money that we started to believe it's natural that they keep&handle our money. now, with bitcoin achieving digital scarcity, that 500 year old business model is threatened. with bitcoin and some more adoption the "be your own bank" meme is true.

but... as mentioned by capslock, that does not mean they go away tomorrow. ever since desktop publishing the paperless office did not happen. there is the digital web with news sites, but you can still buy a printed newspaper. there are ebooks, but lots of people (like myself) prefer analog books.

if something was dominant for 500 years it will stay another 50 years even with business model gone digital and p2p.

[nullius]

Ancient modern history dates back to ancient Greece? Mhe... when great Greek cholars like Thales, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle arrived in Egypt the great pyramids of Egypt where already ancient.

Perhaps that may be why the Greeks accorded the Egyptians a great respect for their antiquity.

Why the need to discount the Greeks?

The Greeks invented the philosophical, naturalistic way of thinking that is the foundation of modern science.  Other great civilizations existed; but outside of a few relatively isolated instances of inspired thinkers, their investigations of the natural world were mostly pragmatic, and they never even thought to be objective.  Insofar as is known to history, only the Greeks developed a trend toward doing what later became science and moreover, doing it for its own sake.  Thus, the modern world does indeed descend from the Greeks.

Without the Greeks, you would not now have the Internet with which to make that post, and there would be no TV and smartphones...  Wait, now I hate the Greeks.  Damn it, they also invented democracy.  Lunatics.  The ancient Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese were much wiser and moreover, saner!

I love history it gets really crazy the more i search.

Most of what you think you know about history is wrong.

That’s not personal.  It is just a general observation.  Most of what people believe to be “history” is fake news, either twisted or just made up by somebody with an agenda somewhere along the line—the Bible being only the worst and most notorious example.  Indeed, if you want a neat demonstration of just how bad the problem is, peruse the idiot-bait on Wikipedia and follow the “verifiable” citations to so-called “scholars” who crank out arrant nonsense “supporting” or “investigating” the historicity of completely fictional stories.


I wrote the foregoing yesterday, but did not consider it to be finished.  I have not edited it, because I really think it’s done now:

in his worldwide bestseller "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind" (which is a great book, that I can deeply recommend, even for historians) Harari explains why our ability to cooperate with strangers to build kingdoms and other large entities was an important driving force of history. shared beliefs (or intersubjective truths) like religions and money were the tools humans used to cooperate. progress was happening but was relatively slow. then came the invention of limited corporations (yet another shared belief/intersubjective truth) a few hundred years ago. since then we treat limited corporations as legal entities that can be sued and held liable for their actions/products. (before that the liability was always on the founder/owner and that crippled any progress for millennia.) Harari argues that it was the invention of limited companies that brought all the economic progress of the last couple of hundred years. he writes it was capitalism via limited companies, technology and science that were the main driving forces.

Nice narrative.  And another case in point.

Ironically, just now when I saw this, I was writing a condemnation of Globalist Capitalism—another guise of International Communism, with stock market enterprises that own the State in lieu of State-owned enterprises.

Highlighting has been very purposefully selected, word by word.  The tail wagging this historical dog has been underlined.


Edit:

"Sapiens - A brief history of humankind"

Discovered and read it during the lockdown (thank you Wuhan), instant classic which you simply can't put down. You can borrow it for free on The Archive.

Being anti-copyright in principle, I just checked:  Several copies in multiple languages are available on libgen.  Just in case you do not want to “borrow” with DRM invading your computer, or fork over to a bigcorp propaganda mill.

[cAPSLOCK]

banks existed for 500 years. their business model is to allocate our money over space and time. for 500 years there was no better way to send money to someone than using a bank. it became so embedded in our lives and minds that banks are custodians of our money that we started to believe it's natural that they keep&handle our money. now, with bitcoin achieving digital scarcity, that 500 year old business model is threatened. with bitcoin and some more adoption the "be your own bank" meme is true.

but... as mentioned by capslock, that does not mean they go away tomorrow. ever since desktop publishing the paperless office did not happen. there is the digital web with news sites, but you can still buy a printed newspaper. there are ebooks, but lots of people (like myself) prefer analog books.

if something was dominant for 500 years it will stay another 50 years even with business model gone digital and p2p.

I agree with this entirely.  Where I see nuance is in the realm of the definition of "bank".  Taken as a whole banks perform several ultimately essential functions.  Essential as in "somebody's gotta do em".  It's like plumbing.  Something we take for granted entirely, but an age old trade without which the world as we know it would not even be CLOSE to being able to exist.

Just as email replaced some of the functions of the post office, it did not replace them all.  And other functions like package delivery became MUCH more important in the internet age thanks to Amazon, EBay et al.

So the successful banks for the future will be the ones that isolate the still needed functions that work as the "plumbing" of digital society.

-Payments
-Security
-Contracts

I think these are the areas where banks will need to focus.  The first one scales bitcoin.  The second keeps it safe, and helps it remain legitimate.  The third?  Well that's the really fun one.  All kinda of conditional financial instruments will be coded into banking PLATFORMS.  Ethereum has the mindshare on this, but many will realize that a blockchain is actually NOT where we want to do contracts.  Contracts will be anchored in Bitcoin and run atop using proprietary trusted systems, just like it is now.

As those systems emerge, the ones that are proved to be needed, and can be replaced safely and efficiently in the FOSS world will be.

Ethereum has it backwards, IMHO.  It's a hammer looking for nails.  The tools we need will be developed FOR the needs, and most likely rooted into the security of Bitcoin.
 

[LUCKMCFLY]

Hi guys, it's nice to read this type of article where you keep encouraging hodl ..

New Bitcoin bull run? Whales and institutions accumulating, data shows

Bitcoin continues to retest $11,000 as market data hint at an optimistic trend

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-bitcoin-bull-run-whales-and-institutions-accumulating-data-shows

[Hueristic]

I am in Bitcoin because, in my confirmed empirical experience, the banking system “doesn’t work well”. 

Banking is working Exactly as intended, to control people.

[hv_]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

**A little Saturday read inspired by your post... I will merit you, but I just dumped all my merit on Hal Finney.  You can't be mad about that right?***

[...post too long for quoting, body removed, click here to go to it...]

Happy Saturday!

Very good post, thanks.

I hope jbreher and the other big blockers read it (I'm saying this in a positive way, not intending to offend anyone...).

Happy Saturday everyone!

The electronic settlement layer of the world will be adopted cause of efficiency, cheap txs by good enough security and simplest stable protocol design where no consensus governance is ever neede cause it was set in stone 10y ago.

I wonder why it's hard to see and get real on that

But it ll take time, cause the globe still thinks best option is Corda (by Mike Hearn) , Hyperledger by IBM or DAML ... cause here they ve minimal governance/ compliance risks and easy smart contract solutions in once.

Why go on open system if risks are too high by any means?

Set things in stone is first option to reduce risks, not some 'high' market cap

[nullius]

Nice rant, rolling, loaded with bait-and-switch rhetorical chicanery, bold inversions of the truth, and some smug attempts to intimidate by bluster a nobody who is not thereby impressed.

What it boils down to, in translation:  “Banks and financial manipulators rule the world, whether you like it or not—nyah, nyah!”

First, the bait and switch—I replied to this point, which I will quote at some length so as to make obvious the obvious:

how do you determine on-chain transations to cost so much?

He can’t.  His post is just a roundabout way of saying, “Bitcoin cannot scale, and will thus become a banker’s toy as bone-crushing transaction fees force everybody into the next generation of Paypal.”  Baloney.

[...]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

I could see perhaps something on the order of magnitude of $100 (in today’s current value) on-chain transaction costs, but $1000+?  Smells like FUD.

[...]

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

That would turn Bitcoin into a bankers’ wet dream:  The totally controlled, centralized, regulated basis for a cashless dystopia in which everybody can be tracked, traced, and forced to ask permission to use money.

That is not a new allegation, and it’s not true.

The fact is, whether you the bankers like it or not, cryptographic cleverness will continue to enable technologies that put the individual in direct control of his own money.

Whereupon you ignore what I said (just as you pointedly omitted Lightning from your list of off-chain transaction media), and jump from quote-unquote “the transaction costs alone will ensure it” to:

99% of people don't have the mental ability to deal with private keys, wallets or anything of the sort. They want a bank account and a debit card. Their attention span is about 3 seconds. There is no way they will ever grasp crypto. They may want to invest in crypto or hold it but it will be at a bank or brokerage and governments will impose their restrictions on those accounts just like they are doing now.

So, which is it, rolling?

Is your argument that most people are passive, ovine meat-robots?  I would not argue with that.  I did not argue with your brief mention of that point in your prior post—which was tossed off seemingly obiter dictum, amidst your vehement insistence on the primacy of transaction costs.  Actually, mass stupidity is the principal point of a plurality of my recent writings.

Or is your argument that “transaction costs alone will ensure” that individuals who want financial freedom will be unable to control their own money unless they are rich?

Sounds like the kind of rant the bigblockers went on just prior to forking off. You are welcome to get out now and go chase another shitcoin dream. Bitcoin will be just fine without you.

You are the one throwing bigblocker “Bitcoin won’t scale!!!” arguments, only with the twist that you think that’s a good thing.  Or at least, a “hah hah, little guy, you’re just totally fucked—bow down to your masters!” thing.

Is your binning me with the bigblockers intentional irony, whereas you seem afraid to mention the Lightning Network?  You know—the thing the bigblockers don’t believe in, which makes scalable, decentralized, private, trustless, permissionless off-chain transaction costs negligible.

Boldface is rolling’s; highlighting is mine:

The free market will decide what Bitcoin becomes, not an opinion of what it should be. For better or for worse, those with all the money now, will largely be the ones with all the money in the future. Bitcoin is open to everyone including the banks, governments, and billionaires. This will push out the little guy, just like in every other industry in history.

= “STFU and kneel in awe of the ‘free market’, i.e. the slavemarket owned by banks, governments, and billionaires.”

That is your opinion.

Of course, Bitcoin is open to everyone.  As I recently noted, “I myself tend to distrust institutional corporate holders; but there is nothing that I can do to stop them.”  Bitcoin being open to everyone is my point.  Whereas I suggest that you contemplate your blatant self-contradiction that I have highlighted.

On-chain will be for the big boys. If you don't like it, become one of the big boys by filling your bags now while BTC is still dirt cheap.

It is the bluster of a typical proletarian—the type who probably believes that $10 million is a lot of money.

In substantial essence, you are a worshipper of plutocracy.  Too bad for you that the big boys won’t pat you on the head for wanting so very much to be one of them.  Anyway, Bitcoin doesn’t care for your opinions.  It will scale, whether you like it or not.


(Aside to Jay:  As you may have surmised, I am not your typical prole in terms of contact with actual wealth.  And I have a pretty good idea of how the world actually works.  I am much less idealistic about Bitcoin than I tend to let on:  It is a tool.  It is an excellent tool, and timely at this moment in history; but it is just that.)

Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize consensus progress as the subsidy declines.

-Greg Maxwell around the BTC all time high Dec 2017. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-December/015455.html

I almost quoted that myself, in my prior reply to rolling—in anticipation that some people may object to my discussion of potential fees on the order of $100 value (which was explicitly admitted handwaving in the absence of the crystal ball that none of us has).  No, transactions cannot remain cup-of-coffee cheap—cannot, as Bitcoin slowly transitions to what is effectually a fee-based security model.  The amount of fees produced by the fee market set a practical upper bound on hashrate as block rewards fall toward the point of economic irrelevance.  In the long term, on-chain fees that are too low would cause Bitcoin to fail—wherefore the champagne.

Maxwell made that statement at a time when on-chain transaction fees were close to bank wire transfer rates.

Somehow, I seriously doubt that Maxwell, of all people, was arguing that the future of Bitcoin belongs to banks (!).  He is probably the single most out-of-context quoted personage in the Bitcoin world—other than Satoshi.

For my part, I think that Bitcoin will converge on optimal fees—neither too high, nor too low—as on-chain improvements pack more transactions into a block (e.g., forthcoming Segwit v1 will make much more efficient use of block space for certain types of transactions), and layering developments move most transactions off-chain.

[Biodom]

in his worldwide bestseller "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind" (which is a great book, that I can deeply recommend, even for historians)

(...)

bitcoin is on its way to deliver another big leap forward

(...)

Discovered and read it during the lockdown (thank you Wuhan), instant classic which you simply can't put down. You can borrow it for free on The Archive.

I liked "Sapiens" a lot too, next book "Homo Deus"- a tiny bit less, but very much liked the third book "21 lessons for the 21st Century".

[nullius]

Story of my life:

Doomed to see the future and unable to prevent it

Cassandra was so accursed as punishment for sexually rejecting a god.  What the fuck did you do?

The question is rhetorical—none of my business.  And don’t ask what I did.

I am in Bitcoin because, in my confirmed empirical experience, the banking system “doesn’t work well”.  

Banking is working Exactly as intended, to control people.

Whereas it’s been obvious for years that TPTB are approaching Bitcoin via co-option.  Those too worried about a ban which would be difficult, expensive, and inconvenient to enforce should remember that tyranny interprets freedom as damage, and routes around it.

Why fight Bitcoin openly, when you can shear the sheep all the better by herding them into Paypal 2.0?

New and improved!  Don’t worry.  Be happy, grinning idiots.  It is just like the comfortable collar that you have always enjoyed on your necks; but it’s more better, now that the upgraded collar is leashed with Blockchain!

For the bankers, the fly in the ointment is that Bitcoin still allows self-control by highly motivated individuals who take matters into their own hands.  It is imperative to keep it that way.

[rolling]

More ranting...

If you can't sum up your argument in a few sentences, you're pulling a JJG and trying to prove your point with walls of text rather than logical argument.

My argument is people are idiots and the few who aren't will be priced out of the market by high fees. Bitcoin scales just fine, you're just looking at it wrong. The highest value use cases will survive and the everything else will be done off chain or die, including your ideology. This is the free market I'm talking about.

I have no problem with Lighting and I think it and other side-chains will have their use cases.

I'm not a worshipper of plutocracy and the world isn't going to change just because you will it to. Things are just what they are.

[Torque]

Something to ponder tho...

What is the difference between ?

1. A banking system that issues IOUs backed by Gold/Silver.

2. A future with "bitcoin banks" that issue private digital currencies backed by Bitcoin.

^{A: Nothing, nada, zilch. First it's backed 1:1 to build and insure public confidence and trust. Then it gets fractionally reserved. And finally they go off the "Bitcoin standard" (i.e., The "Gold standard" of the future) and back their private digital shitcoins with literally nothing, while they inflate them to infinity. Repeating history all over again.}

[Biodom]

https://news.bitcoin.com/analyst-1500-bitcoins-lost-every-day-less-than-14-million-coins-will-ever-circulate/

While I am of the opinion that 21 mil "theoretical" coin number should not be touched, this number '1500" lost every day is actually quite interesting.
If true, this means 600 (from 1500-900)X1304 (days until April 15, 20024, which is the midpoint between Feb and June 2024, theoretical timing for next halving)=782K coins lost until next halving.
After that, if losses at 1500 a day continue, we would be losing roughly 1050 a day on balance or about 1.5 mil more coins until 2028 halving.
8 cycles (~30 years) at this level or slightly increasing due to halvings and ALL coins would be gone, poof, evaporated.

Maybe his 1500 number is incorrect, though, it is difficult to pin down.

EDIT:
As a purely theoretical exercise, I can see the following happening if most or almost all coins are really lost in 30-40 years:
1. Remember the "stone" money (Rai stones)? In one curious occasion one stone accidentally drowned, but was still used by villagers to do transactions in a "virtual" chain of custody. They were referring to it as if it was present even when it was not accessible.
2. If losses of coins will exceed certain %, I am sure that there will be a proposal to make some reference to Satoshi's coins (if they are still not moved) to be such lost "stone".
3. Of course, that would be fractional reserves and the "bad" cycle would start anew.