if there's an afterlife, which I very much doubt there is).
I am a big fan of the afterlife too... but what are the odds.. pretty damned low. I would be surprised
(shocked) if such odds were even as high as 1%.
The majority of people need a centralized custodian to take care of their wealth. They need a customer service phone number. Someone to call when they mess up and want to reverse an unintended transaction. Somewhere to go, to talk to someone. Being your own bank puts total control in the hands of the end-user, and that's not usually an end-user's task. At least not in the current state of things.
Fuck that reminds me of my long-ass conversation with my friends the other day, and I remember saying a few things several times and then figuring that they understood what I was saying because I was attempting to frame the matter in various basic ways, and these are relatively smart and successful guys.. but a few times they said things that caused me to realize that they were not understanding some relatively basic ideas that I had been attempting to communicate.. and a few times I just went back and attempted to clarify what I meant about a few of the terms that I had been using so that we were all on the same page, and then other times, I just had to give up or abandon some of the areas that I was trying to elaborate on because neither one of them was getting it, even after I repeated the idea in a variety of ways and even after I tried to dumb it down to very basic concepts.. like what I had thought were ELI5 kind of levels (while trying to NOT come off as patronizing - which also did slip through on more than one occasion, for sure). For sure, people need help, and I am not even blaming anyone for that.
Bitcoin is like a high-voltage line. It possesses so much energy, can do so many things, but can also kill you instantly (or, rather, your wealth, which is the same thing really). Society is not yet ready for it, and I'm not quite sure it will ever be able to fully apply the "not your keys, not your Bitcoin" principle.
Don't give up on society... It seems to me that bitcoin is doing so well is because some parts of society are actually ready for bitcoin.. and sure there are going to be transitionary vehicles and a variety of options, but if society was not ready, bitcoin would have already failed... but neither has it failed it is likely more successful than even satoshi himself would have speculated - even though surely within the realm of possibilities but kind of playing out even more bullish than reasonably expected.
Keys are too hot to handle, it seems, and most people will not want to directly deal with them. I predict that we will see this happening in El Salvador. The Lightning Network (a higher-level, off-chain solution) is already picking up speed there. It will be interesting to see how things play out, but I very much doubt that the average Salvadorian will be able to deal with keys, seeds, multisigs, Trezors, BIP39 and paper wallets.
I am NOT denying your characterization there, AlcoHoDL, but at the same time some of them are going to learn and even learn well, and others will learn in modest kinds of ways and others will learn very little and even slowly, but the longer that they have bitcoin and are "playing around" with it, the smarter and smarter they are going to become about not only using it but likely even finding new and creative ways to use it that will likely add to the bitcoin ecosystem.. and even possibly create some attack vectors, too... I am not even saying that all of the learning or the finding of ways to use bitcoin are going to be positive.. but they are going to continue to grow the ecosystem.. and perhaps we will have another satoshi come out of the El Salvador additional bitcoin infrastructure or a roger ver or a craig wright, or a Adam Beck or a Greg Maxwell... or some combination of those all in one, including with a kind of volcano
(perhaps explosive?) expertise..
The good thing though, is that those of us who want to be their own bank, can now choose to do so. I imagine virtually all WOers to be in this category. In the traditional monetary system, there was no choice, you had to deal with the banking system one way or another. The only option was stashing cash or gold or other precious object, with all the drawbacks and the danger this entails. Bitcoin has given the world the freedom to choose how to manage their wealth. But "freedom to choose" does not mean "ability to do" something, just like freedom of speech does not make all of us grand journalists. Some people will still blindly believe what they read in the papers and will keep being brainwashed by the mass media.
What else is new in terms of having a variety of options, and some people being more capable of using some options as compared/contrasted with other options. I surely would not claim to be any kind of expert in terms of even using or knowing about various options that are available to me or might be available to me with a bit of POW (or attempts to research or develop the matter).
Bitcoin is like Tor for money. It puts you behind the steering wheel, but you'd better know how to drive.
Sure.. but you know that not all of us have to use the Tor version.. We could use the dumbed-down version or we might design our own ways of interfacing with king daddy, or we might have some combination of interfaces that we learn along the way or even try to match our ways of interfacing with our personality traits or discover traits that we did not know that we had.
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