El Salvador has become the first country to make #Bitcoin legal tender! 🇸🇻

[tvbcof]

My original point was that El Salvador's latest move embracing Tether, when they have previously been so focused on Bitcoin, is a sign that they are looking for other solutions that Bitcoin cannot address, even though Bitcoin is literally written into the law there. And insofar as El Salvador is looking past Bitcoin and instead to a competitor, this is a negative development for Bitcoin.

You're 'original point' was almost too stupid for words.  It would be like saying that S. Africa has abandoned gold because they allowed some massive Canadian mining company to operate a gypsum mine on their territory.

I think this is a very defensible point, and given that the only response has been... personal attacks, I would say that the point has held up quite well.

I don't.

A quick look seems to indicate that you are a fan of (and maybe the only person aware of) some ho-hum shitcoin amoung the thousands:  'Legiteum'?  Probably 'LeSHITeum' would be more fitting.  Possibly you are the founder because I don't think anyone would hire such a ridiculous clown if they wanted to have a positive impact on their effort.

[legiteum]

A few months ago I managed to get some of my 'old money' out of my bank [...]

[explanation about how it takes weeks to get money out of your particular bank deleted]

So, yeah, I could 'get used to' 30 min and $30 rather easily when I have to use L1 BTC which is rare since L2 BTC works great and solves the possible future problems which we have been promised by 'experts' were 'weeks away' for a decade.

Suffice it to say that your experience is... unusual. Most credit card transactions take less than a few seconds for instance.

As I and others argued, L2, when developed, would resolve these issues while bolstering L1 Bitcoin instead of destroying it or compromising the original principles.

I have no problem with an L2--heck, I built the fastest one in the world--but an L2 is not Bitcoin. Your interaction is entirely with the L2, and whether the backing investment is Bitcoin, USD, or some mix of stocks or whatever, the actual technology you are using has nothing directly to do with Bitcoin.

Indeed, when people ask me whether Bitcoin will survive against competition in the long run, I use L2s as an example of why it will not survive because it's basically just a different currency pretending it's got something to do with Bitcoin.

My original point was that El Salvador's latest move embracing Tether, when they have previously been so focused on Bitcoin, is a sign that they are looking for other solutions that Bitcoin cannot address, even though Bitcoin is literally written into the law there. And insofar as El Salvador is looking past Bitcoin and instead to a competitor, this is a negative development for Bitcoin.

I think this is a very defensible point, and given that the only response has been... personal attacks, I would say that the point has held up quite well.

El Salvador Will not move on and forget Bitcoin, because they know what they have achieved from Bitcoin over some years before they made it legal tender in their country and also be the first country in the whole world to make Bitcoin legal tender.

Nobody forgot the contributions of IBM Mainframes either, and in fact they are still in use today. Early adopters of those systems did really well because they were on the forefront of the computer revolution and then the internet revolution. Bitcoin will always be remembered in El Salvador as the catalyst to get them a more advanced financial system.

[JayJuanGee]

You are the only one full of shit.
[...]What a drama queen you are.[...]
You seem to just love making up shit and making up categories so that you can create drama, [...]

My original point was that El Salvador's latest move embracing Tether, when they have previously been so focused on Bitcoin, is a sign that they are looking for other solutions that Bitcoin cannot address, even though Bitcoin is literally written into the law there. And insofar as El Salvador is looking past Bitcoin and instead to a competitor, this is a negative development for Bitcoin.

I doubt that you have provided facts or logic to support your assertion that any kind of embracing of Tether or providing of alliances with Tether or acknowledgement from El Salvador that Tether can provide  its headquarters in El Salvador rises to any kind of meaningful "moving away" from bitcoin as you are alleging.  It seems that El Salvador should be completely capable of continuing forward with their varioous bitcoin-related endeavors and allowing, permitting and/or embracing Tether to come and create their company headquarters in El Salvador.  These do not seems to be one or the other kinds of zero sum game plays as you seem to be wanting to argue such a seemingly lame and/or ill supported (lacking  in facts and logic) kind of position. 

I think this is a very defensible point, and given that the only response has been... personal attacks, I would say that the point has held up quite well.

I will let my various earlier responses speak for themselves, to the extent that various personal attacks might have had been justifiably weaved into my pointing out of your seeming ongoing disgenuinness in raising your various quasi-retarded claims that are lacking in both facts and/or logic while you had been striving to get me (and potentially other members) to provide evidence and logic to back up a position contrary to your lame-ass dumb positions, which surely is not even close to required since your lame-ass, baseless and potentially purposefully disingenuine arguments are hardly even worthy of discussing. 

Sure, you are free to believe whatever dumb shit that you like, and you are also free to deny that you are the one who failed to support your nonsense and likely justifying that you receive personal attacks due to the seemingly high level of your dumbness and disingenuineness in your continuing to want to propagate such lame and baseless arguments..  If you want  to be treated more seriously then maybe you need to provide better claims and to back them up a wee bit moar better?

 To the degree that 'Satoshi' might have advocated it, he was probably being a bit deceptive in order to obtain mindshare back in the early days.  As I and others argued, L2, when developed, would resolve these issues while bolstering L1 Bitcoin instead of destroying it or compromising the original principles.

I have trouble considering how Satoshi could have had been being deceptive in the various ways that he might have had anticipated bitcoin to have had been scaling or any abilities that might have existed to resolve some of the growth (scaling) issues in advance.  Even when on chain fees go up, there can be questions regarding the causes, and there can be questions regarding the extent to which some other solutions are being built or can be used as alternative ways to transact. 

Surely the most expensive of transactions are still able to go through on L1 bitcoin and can even be financially justified, so surely when fees go up, then the lower value transactions are the ones that are getting squeezed, and most likely if bitcoin continues to have fee based incentives, then it is likely going to continue to become more and more expensive to transact on L1, and surely many of us likely realize that all transactions do not have to take place on L1, yet at the same time, we also know that the on boarding or even building of bitcoin stashes and investments for people with lower incomes can become locked out of having their own UTXOs, and surely the solutions are likely going to continue to be ongoing in regards to the various ways that L2 or L3 transactions are going to end up being resolved back to L1 and also surely questions regarding the extent to which the L2 or L3 transactions are sufficient pegged to bitcoin versus potentially no longer being bitcoin or even devolving into some kind of shitcoin that is merely feigning itself to be sufficiently pegged to bitcoin when it is not.

More than 14 years after Satoshi disappeared, I am surely not claiming to know the answers to the various scaling questions, and I doubt that Satoshi was deceiving in terms of his realizing that bitcoin was likely going to have various scaling challenges that might not be specifically resolvable in advance.

I have no problem with an L2--heck, I built the fastest one in the world--

Yes.  The level of the dumb shit you say may well be attributed to your wanting to market your shitcoin..   Too bad, and so sad that your contribution is not taking off as you expected.  Perhaps if you figured out ways to align yourself a wee bit better with the success of bitcoin, then you might find that you might have growth in your project too... perhaps?  I have my doubts about your ability to even create any kind of legitimate project, especially when you are framing your project as a competitor to bitcoin.

Bitcoin will always be remembered in El Salvador as the catalyst to get them a more advanced financial system.

 

There is no need to remember  bitcoin with fondness of the past, since bitcoin is continuing to grown and will continue to grow.

Sure, there is still going to be a bitcoin history, and various parts of history that will be remembered more fondly than others, yet I see no reason to speculate bitcoin as if it were anything other but an ongoingly growing phenomena with greater and greater building and also more and more powerful network effects, so in that regard, if you have any product, you should be striving to figure out ways to plug yourself into bitcoin...

Perhaps a bit of an ironic thing is that you are seeing yourself (and your project) as a competitor to both Bitcoin and Tether, yet it seems quite likely that both Bitcoin and Tether are kicking your ass and will continue to kick your ass if you cannot consider some ways to build your own time, energies and values in alliance with the winners instead of continuing to try to proclaim that you are offering some kind of a superior product, when there is no evidence and/or logic to really establish the points that you seem to be trying to promote.  In other words, it seems that you would be way better off to figure out ways to jump on either the bitcoin or the tether train, rather than ongoingly fighting them.

[delfastTions]

......
Since he has seen the tremendous change BTC adoption has brought to his country, he now want to improve accessibility, empowering more people to safely and effectively engage in the crypto economy, thereby taking the country to the next level, thereby making El Salvador as a haven for crypto firms.

Almost immediately after the Tether and Bitfinex decisions, which are written about above in this topic, the country, as I suspect through the efforts of the Bitcoin Office, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, continues to see an influx of investment into the IT cluster.

For example, just now the Salvadoran financial technology company Ditobanx and the digital asset company Tokeni also announced their decision to invest $300 million in assets in El Salvador and plan to do so in 2025.

The companies say that the investment will be aimed at helping the country create a standardized structure for tokenized regulated assets.

 According to Guillermo Contreras, CEO of Ditobanx, the launch of these assets is necessary for the future of the entire tokenized asset industry and will not be easy, but with this investment, the company intends to establish these related services in El Salvador. He also noted that such standardization “is necessary to create a more connected, liquid and innovative market, and we are committed to making this vision a reality for El Salvador and beyond.”

[legiteum]

I think this is a very defensible point, and given that the only response has been... personal attacks, I would say that the point has held up quite well.

I will let my various earlier responses speak for themselves, [...]

Yep, they do.

[laspol65]

🇸🇻EL SALVADOR STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE HITS NEW ALL TIME HIGH
Source link
El Salvador's strategic reserve has just hit new all time highs in both bitcoin and USD terms:

    17 January 2025                            
    Total BTC: 6,030.18
    USD value: $617,086,731

And this is just the beginning 🏆👇





El Salvador's bitcoin holdings directly indicate the DCA method, they are constantly buying bitcoins on a daily basis.  El Salvador brings their total bitcoin holdings to 6030 bitcoins, they will be able to hold more bitcoins later as they are currently very busy buying bitcoins.

[As-Soon-As]

🇸🇻EL SALVADOR STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE HITS NEW ALL TIME HIGH
Source link
El Salvador's strategic reserve has just hit new all time highs in both bitcoin and USD terms:

    17 January 2025                            
    Total BTC: 6,030.18
    USD value: $617,086,731

And this is just the beginning 🏆👇

Yes, I have noticed the accumulation of Bitcoin in El Salvador for a long time, because they are able to buy Bitcoin every day. And they will save their purchased sales for the future, because every holder knows that their Bitcoin will become worthless at the highest price. So the most correct approach at the moment is to hold Bitcoin, I think the longer they hold Bitcoin, the more profitable they will be. Because their Bitcoin holding will play a huge role in helping the country economically in the coming years, that is why El Salvador continues to collect Bitcoin.

[tvbcof]

Recently I've heard rumblings from El Salvador about 'a miner in every home'.

I would presume that what's in mind would be something along the lines of this:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POUT2R_opDs

Obviously nobody is going to 'make any money' with such a thing (absent certain incentives.)

The real value of such a solution would be ready-to-go distributed infrastructure which was at least modestly understood by the populous.  Such infrastructure could be readily convertible to solve a wide range or problems including forming the basis for a country-wide communications solution which did not rely on 'the internet' as we know it today.

It could also be the basis of other methods of exchange if for some reason the existing options (USD, Bitcoin, etc) become dysfunctional in some undesirable ways.

(It could also be the basis for citizens to have a _real_ and _functional_ stake in the country's much advertised 'Bitcoin Reserve' making a rug-pull less likely.  People would learn that they actually can be 'self-custodial' through various means in the 'crypto-space' of today.)

At scale, devices such as the above should be able to be made for perhaps $10.00 I would think.  The government just paid for 95% of people's power and water bills for the month up to $30.00 or some such, so it would be eminently practical to just give such devices to any household who wanted one.  And/or whoever wanted to run one as a service either because they agreed that the system could be helpful for the country or they wanted to avail of whatever perks might go along with it (lottery, utility discounts, whatever.)

I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador.  I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has.  If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake.  The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others.  Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.

[Abiky]

EL SALVADOR STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE HITS NEW ALL TIME HIGH
Source link
El Salvador's strategic reserve has just hit new all time highs in both bitcoin and USD terms:

    17 January 2025                            
    Total BTC: 6,030.18
    USD value: $617,086,731

And this is just the beginning

El Salvador's bitcoin holdings directly indicate the DCA method, they are constantly buying bitcoins on a daily basis.  El Salvador brings their total bitcoin holdings to 6030 bitcoins, they will be able to hold more bitcoins later as they are currently very busy buying bitcoins.

Exciting news. It seems El Salvador is going to keep buying BTC at a non-stop rate. Same as how MicroStrategy is doing right now. The more BTC are in El Salvador's reserves, the higher chances it will have towards becoming a developed country in the future. Even the US is considering adding BTC to its reserves under Donald Trump's leadership. I hope other countries do the same in the long run. Perhaps this is an indication that "hyperbitcoinization" will become a reality? Only time will tell.

[Cryptmuster]

Exciting news. It seems El Salvador is going to keep buying BTC at a non-stop rate. Same as how MicroStrategy is doing right now. The more BTC are in El Salvador's reserves, the higher chances it will have towards becoming a developed country in the future. Even the US is considering adding BTC to its reserves under Donald Trump's leadership. I hope other countries do the same in the long run. Perhaps this is an indication that "hyperbitcoinization" will become a reality? Only time will tell.

Bukele has always kept his word when it comes to buying bitcoin, it seems that he already believes that it is a good investment for his country. Sometimes, when there is such an opportunity, El Salvador buys even more than 1 bitcoin. I am also very positive about the trend that El Salvador and Microstrategy are joined by large companies and recently even banks that want to have bitcoin in their portfolios.

I also like that they make such decisions when it seems that the price of bitcoin is quite high (around 100k) and they do not wait for the price to go lower, but buy right now, this means that they think this price is good and believe in further growth.

[delfastTions]

.....
I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador.  I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has.  If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake.  The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others.  Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.

Absolutely right.
Such skepticism towards the new technology is inspired by those very political and oligarchic structures that you wrote about.
And the result of their activity among the masses of the population is quite consistent with such mass processing of public opinion.

Recently, I read in one of the publications of El Salvador that is opposed to President Bukele that the statistics use of bitcoins as a payment method among the population was calculated as follows:

In 2021 - 25,7%,
in 2022 - 21%,
in 2023 - 12%,
in 2024 - 8,1%

Here is this article in this.

Even if this is a correct objective study (which I personally doubt!) then the process of decreasing Bitcoin use has already practically reached a minimum.

And I just think that this is already the minimum use and now this percentage will start to increase. Slower, of course, than it fell over 3 years, but still, the use of bitcoin will gradually increase.
Just do not forget that educational programs on blockchain will in any case bring prepared young people to the payments market.
But, we will see, this also depends on interaction with this very oligarchic group and politicians.
But I still hope for the courage of President Bukele and his concern for the interests of his country and its population.

[JayJuanGee]

.....I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador.  I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has.  If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake.  The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others.  Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.

Absolutely right.
Such skepticism towards the new technology is inspired by those very political and oligarchic structures that you wrote about.
And the result of their activity among the masses of the population is quite consistent with such mass processing of public opinion.

Recently, I read in one of the publications of El Salvador that is opposed to President Bukele that the statistics use of bitcoins as a payment method among the population was calculated as follows:
In 2021 - 25,7%,
in 2022 - 21%,
in 2023 - 12%,
in 2024 - 8,1%
Here is this article in this.
Even if this is a correct objective study (which I personally doubt!) then the process of decreasing Bitcoin use has already practically reached a minimum.

And I just think that this is already the minimum use and now this percentage will start to increase. Slower, of course, than it fell over 3 years, but still, the use of bitcoin will gradually increase.
Just do not forget that educational programs on blockchain will in any case bring prepared young people to the payments market.
But, we will see, this also depends on interaction with this very oligarchic group and politicians.
But I still hope for the courage of President Bukele and his concern for the interests of his country and its population.

It does not even make logical sense. It is like the article is just making up data in order to spin some kind of a narrative... It seems that in the form of a survey, they asked people in a supposed representative way whether they had been using bitcoin, and I wonder was the way that they conducted the survey in 2024 similar to the data that they collected in previous years or they mix matching data?

Do they have any other harder data related to if people hold bitcoin or showing bitcoin transactions in the country to the extent to which transactions matter versus holding bitcoin and surely knowing about bitcoin and/or a variety of other ways of measuring involvement in bitcoin could also matter in order to figure out the extent to which Salvadoreans might be getting involved in bitcoin, and I would not doubt that there may well be potential changes in the ways that regular Salvadoreans might have had been involved in bitcoin over the past 4-ish years.  

I am wondering how the hell were they supposedly getting 25% of the population using bitcoin in 2021, when it was barely introduced?  Sure, in 2021 and perhaps even into 2022, every citizen had a right to receive $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021-ish, and maybe that could have been a measure in terms of citizen's claiming their $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021 and 2022?  

Even though I can understand that some of the regular El Salvadorean's might not have easy access to technology, and it also could be true that bitcoin is ONLY being used by small segments of the El Salvadorean population, yet the data of the article sounds a wee bit contrived to the extent that there might be actual attempts to measure bitcoin adoption in consistent ways across the past 4-ish years.

[laspol65]

Stacy Herbert: “Bitcoin country needs Bitcoin engineers, right? We're producing them... and it’s creating a wonderful positive feedback loop."

"They graduate, they get jobs, they all become friends. … You can feel a tech vibe emerging in San Salvador.”


Their move is very good because I believe they will slowly make Salvador country self-sufficient. This action of theirs will play a proper role, the more initiative they take and they will reach the top of this success.
 They are currently able to create everything in-house just by accepting Bitcoin.

[delfastTions]

.....I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador.  I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has.  If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake.  The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others.  Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.

Absolutely right.
Such skepticism towards the new technology is inspired by those very political and oligarchic structures that you wrote about.
And the result of their activity among the masses of the population is quite consistent with such mass processing of public opinion.

Recently, I read in one of the publications of El Salvador that is opposed to President Bukele that the statistics use of bitcoins as a payment method among the population was calculated as follows:
In 2021 - 25,7%,
in 2022 - 21%,
in 2023 - 12%,
in 2024 - 8,1%
Here is this article in this.
Even if this is a correct objective study (which I personally doubt!) then the process of decreasing Bitcoin use has already practically reached a minimum.

And I just think that this is already the minimum use and now this percentage will start to increase. Slower, of course, than it fell over 3 years, but still, the use of bitcoin will gradually increase.
Just do not forget that educational programs on blockchain will in any case bring prepared young people to the payments market.
But, we will see, this also depends on interaction with this very oligarchic group and politicians.
But I still hope for the courage of President Bukele and his concern for the interests of his country and its population.

It does not even make logical sense. It is like the article is just making up data in order to spin some kind of a narrative... It seems that in the form of a survey, they asked people in a supposed representative way whether they had been using bitcoin, and I wonder was the way that they conducted the survey in 2024 similar to the data that they collected in previous years or they mix matching data?

Do they have any other harder data related to if people hold bitcoin or showing bitcoin transactions in the country to the extent to which transactions matter versus holding bitcoin and surely knowing about bitcoin and/or a variety of other ways of measuring involvement in bitcoin could also matter in order to figure out the extent to which Salvadoreans might be getting involved in bitcoin, and I would not doubt that there may well be potential changes in the ways that regular Salvadoreans might have had been involved in bitcoin over the past 4-ish years.  

I am wondering how the hell were they supposedly getting 25% of the population using bitcoin in 2021, when it was barely introduced?  Sure, in 2021 and perhaps even into 2022, every citizen had a right to receive $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021-ish, and maybe that could have been a measure in terms of citizen's claiming their $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021 and 2022?  

Even though I can understand that some of the regular El Salvadorean's might not have easy access to technology, and it also could be true that bitcoin is ONLY being used by small segments of the El Salvadorean population, yet the data of the article sounds a wee bit contrived to the extent that there might be actual attempts to measure bitcoin adoption in consistent ways across the past 4-ish years.

It is probably worth agreeing that the decline in real Bitcoin users in El Salvador has been declining since the hype caused in 2021 after the legalization of Bitcoin as a legal tender and the de facto mass advertising campaigns using the Chivo wallet and $30.
However, the given "survey" seems to me too superficial and falsified, since such a sharp decline in the number of users with such arrays of data, amounting to millions of users (and in El Salvador there are now more than 6.7 million residents) cannot change with such crazy dynamics.
So most likely, all these surveys, with obvious negativity towards Bitcoin payments, are most likely an order from those very oligarchic and political circles in the countries of Central America and the whole world in general, which we are talking about in this discussion of the real aspects of life of the population of El Salvador.

And the real use of Bitcoin has most likely decreased, of course, but not as significantly as the authors of this public opinion poll claim.

[Soft Crem]

.....I believe that there is a genuine negativity toward Bitcoin on the street in El Salvador.  I've come to believe that this is in large part a result of a dedicated effort on the part of 'mainstream media' who are very much in service to the controllers of the 'collective west' (basically the USD-backed financial concerns) and oligarchical local classes which pretty much every country has.  If more people had hands-on experience participating in the machinery of operation they would probably develop a much higher degree of discernment in terms of information intake.  The fallout would probably be good for some and bad for others.  Traditionally leaderships tend to want a complaint and manageable population to 'govern' over...and often go to great lengths to achieve this.

Absolutely right.
Such skepticism towards the new technology is inspired by those very political and oligarchic structures that you wrote about.
And the result of their activity among the masses of the population is quite consistent with such mass processing of public opinion.

Recently, I read in one of the publications of El Salvador that is opposed to President Bukele that the statistics use of bitcoins as a payment method among the population was calculated as follows:
In 2021 - 25,7%,
in 2022 - 21%,
in 2023 - 12%,
in 2024 - 8,1%
Here is this article in this.
Even if this is a correct objective study (which I personally doubt!) then the process of decreasing Bitcoin use has already practically reached a minimum.

And I just think that this is already the minimum use and now this percentage will start to increase. Slower, of course, than it fell over 3 years, but still, the use of bitcoin will gradually increase.
Just do not forget that educational programs on blockchain will in any case bring prepared young people to the payments market.
But, we will see, this also depends on interaction with this very oligarchic group and politicians.
But I still hope for the courage of President Bukele and his concern for the interests of his country and its population.

It does not even make logical sense. It is like the article is just making up data in order to spin some kind of a narrative... It seems that in the form of a survey, they asked people in a supposed representative way whether they had been using bitcoin, and I wonder was the way that they conducted the survey in 2024 similar to the data that they collected in previous years or they mix matching data?

Do they have any other harder data related to if people hold bitcoin or showing bitcoin transactions in the country to the extent to which transactions matter versus holding bitcoin and surely knowing about bitcoin and/or a variety of other ways of measuring involvement in bitcoin could also matter in order to figure out the extent to which Salvadoreans might be getting involved in bitcoin, and I would not doubt that there may well be potential changes in the ways that regular Salvadoreans might have had been involved in bitcoin over the past 4-ish years.  

I am wondering how the hell were they supposedly getting 25% of the population using bitcoin in 2021, when it was barely introduced?  Sure, in 2021 and perhaps even into 2022, every citizen had a right to receive $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021-ish, and maybe that could have been a measure in terms of citizen's claiming their $30 through the Chivo wallet in 2021 and 2022?  

Even though I can understand that some of the regular El Salvadorean's might not have easy access to technology, and it also could be true that bitcoin is ONLY being used by small segments of the El Salvadorean population, yet the data of the article sounds a wee bit contrived to the extent that there might be actual attempts to measure bitcoin adoption in consistent ways across the past 4-ish years.

It is probably worth agreeing that the decline in real Bitcoin users in El Salvador has been declining since the hype caused in 2021 after the legalization of Bitcoin as a legal tender and the de facto mass advertising campaigns using the Chivo wallet and $30.
However, the given "survey" seems to me too superficial and falsified, since such a sharp decline in the number of users with such arrays of data, amounting to millions of users (and in El Salvador there are now more than 6.7 million residents) cannot change with such crazy dynamics.
So most likely, all these surveys, with obvious negativity towards Bitcoin payments, are most likely an order from those very oligarchic and political circles in the countries of Central America and the whole world in general, which we are talking about in this discussion of the real aspects of life of the population of El Salvador.

And the real use of Bitcoin has most likely decreased, of course, but not as significantly as the authors of this public opinion poll claim.

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

[legiteum]

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

El Salvador passed a law in their country basically forcing Bitcoin down people's throats and yet they still aren't adopting it. What more do you want?

Bitcoin is not going to increase in the number of users, it will decrease. Maybe richer people will buy up more of it and make the price go up, and maybe more governments* will help prop up the price, but there will be fewer and fewer individuals in the future actually holding Bitcoin because there are far better products out there now. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to be used for mainstream transactions by ordinary people.

(*And the irony that Bitcoin needs government help to support it's price now is pretty intense  ).

[JayJuanGee]

[edited out]

It is probably worth agreeing that the decline in real Bitcoin users in El Salvador has been declining since the hype caused in 2021 after the legalization of Bitcoin as a legal tender and the de facto mass advertising campaigns using the Chivo wallet and $30.
However, the given "survey" seems to me too superficial and falsified, since such a sharp decline in the number of users with such arrays of data, amounting to millions of users (and in El Salvador there are now more than 6.7 million residents) cannot change with such crazy dynamics.
So most likely, all these surveys, with obvious negativity towards Bitcoin payments, are most likely an order from those very oligarchic and political circles in the countries of Central America and the whole world in general, which we are talking about in this discussion of the real aspects of life of the population of El Salvador.

And the real use of Bitcoin has most likely decreased, of course, but not as significantly as the authors of this public opinion poll claim.

Of course, you can do what you like, yet I doubt that it is even helpful to agree with the premise of the article, since if they are not even measuring from good data, then the article is full of shit and they are merely trying to spin matters, which you seem to be agreeing that they are spinning, even though you seem to also agree with the their overall premise that BTC usage is decreasing in El Salvador.  I consider it problematic to even allow them that much leeway.

Sure, many of us would like to believe that if the underlying study is coming from an academic institution, then they are going to present accurate data, so they are not just making shit up... .. but still it can be difficult to give them benefits of the doubt when it seems that they are saying that these apples are very similar to these oranges, and sure there are ways to read them with some level of integrity since they are surely comparing two kinds of fruit that may well have a lot of similar attributes.... but there also seems to be quite a bit of lacking of integrity when various aspects of spin are contributing to how they are framing the comparisons, even if they might not be factually inaccurate once we accept their stupid-ass definitions.. and I am not going to go there to accept their stupid ass definitions when we see that there are so many other ways to reframe some of the ideas and even ask some questions in regards to how they arrived at their conclusions in the first place, even though they have the advantage of having the data and we don't but their data still is just not adding up..

You know the expression that it takes way more time and energy to rebutt disinformation (lies) than it did to propagate the lie in the first place.. .. and so I find little comfort in agreeing with any morsel of truth that might exist in their baloney presentation of decreasing bitcoin adoption levels in El Salvador.

[edited out]

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

Price going up surely attracts attention to bitcoin, and so those who got in earlier are more advantaged to those coming to bitcoin later,  yet those coming to bitcoin later will still be advantaged, yet they will end up having some less advantage due to some of the upside having had already happened.

In other words, bitcoin is designed to pump forever, so people can choose when to get in or not to get in, and so in that particular sense bitcoin markets itself. .and those who do not identify the underlying attributes or they feel that they need to be marketed to in order to better understand, king daddy bitcoin is not going to have any sympathy on those folks and the folks who got in early have no obligation to persuade others to figure it out and to see the light.

So yeah.. many bitcoiners may well have been telling no coiners and low coiner that they should get some bitcoin.. and it seems that there is not a lot that can be done except perhaps point at the BTC price and say:
  
coiner: "look, that has been what I have been trying to tell you."  

No coiner low coiner might say:  "well it looks like I am too late"

Coiner:  "perhaps you should get started and stop delaying your entrance into bitcoin, since it is never too late, and the longer you wait, the higher that you will probably have to buy."

No coiner / low coiner:  "I will think about it.  maybe I will wait for a dip?"

A dip might come, and a dip might not come.  So the situation repeats, and it seems that part of the solution for any low coiner/no coiner is just to bite the bullet and get started and stop wiffle waffling around with their waiting tactics.. waiting for something that may well not end up happening, and they largely end up being in a worse situation the longer that they wait.  

So what more marketing is needed, than "price go up," and "price continue to go up"?  If you don't figure it out and start to buy bitcoin, no one else (besides yourself) is going to save you.  Is there an obligation for the coiner to hold the hand of the no coiner /  the low coiner or try to persuade them further than merely telling them that they better get started as soon as possible and that waiting is not a good idea (or strategy) when it comes to bitcoin?

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

El Salvador passed a law in their country basically forcing Bitcoin down people's throats and yet they still aren't adopting it. What more do you want?

Some folks were helped by El Salvador's passage of their bitcoin as legal tender law that went into effect in August 2021.  Some people choose not to get involved in bitcoin.  The law could be read as a forcing, as you suggest, yet I doubt that you are even close to giving any kind of genuine and/or accurate reading of what the law was allegedly forcing.  You may well need to back up your claim a wee bit moar better.

Bitcoin is not going to increase in the number of users, it will decrease.

How is that?  I think that the data shows that with the passage of time, bitcoin has been increasing in all of its various network effects (those outlined by Trace Mayer) including more users, so why expect that bitcoin adoption is not going to continue to increase into the future.

And, no I am not going to provide data to support my assertion that bitcoin adoption continues to increase with the passage of time. You actually have the burden to provide evidence and logic for your extraordinary claims that seem to defy an abundance of real world facts that I have no need to show you such overwhelming information that is available to anyone who is actually attempting to engage in a genuine discussion based on real world facts and real world logic, rather than your ongoing fantasy coming from counter-reality assertions.

Maybe richer people will buy up more of it and make the price go up, and maybe more governments* will help prop up the price, but there will be fewer and fewer individuals in the future actually holding Bitcoin because there are far better products out there now. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to be used for mainstream transactions by ordinary people.

(*And the irony that Bitcoin needs government help to support it's price now is pretty intense   ).

Sure it is true that Bigger and BIGGER players are focusing on accumulating bitcoin, and they also seem to be gobbling it up too... which logically seems to imply that fewer individuals are going to be able to have as much of it, and even if the same quantity of people are able to have bitcoin, then the fact that BIGGER players are gobbling up a lot of the bitcoin, then that likely means that the smaller players would not be able to have as much of the bitcoin, proportionately speaking.. yet you still seem to be getting ahead of yourself in terms of your proclaiming that you know the ramifications of the BTC price going up and BIGGER players hoarding the bitcoin.. and sure there also might be a lot of battles related to self-custody versus custody of third parties, yet you are still making a lot of presumptions about abilities to transact (or inabilities to transact), and I suppose you want to proclaim your scam coin as part of the solution, yet at the same time, you seem to be presuming bitcoin to be broken prior to it even being broken.  

Right now, as I type this post, I see onchain bitcoin transactions going through in the ballpark of  1-10 sats per vbyte,^** and in the last week we have had a lot of times that the transactions have been going through at the lower  end of that range, which surely does not show any kind of an immediate problem in regards to transactions going through at affordable rates, including that in the past week we have also had a lot of BTC price movement too, which could also have various attributions in regards to short-term BTC price movements - so no need to go down that road.. except to be just pointing out that your presumptions in connection with onchain bitcoin being supposedly broken are not supported by actual facts and/or logic, except for your seemingly ongoing pie in the sky wishes about some unsubstantiated talking points that you want to continue to spout out without providing actual fact-based logic to back up your ongoing nonsense claims.

Edited - added this note about 30 minutes after the original post-time..

**Just to give some ideas 1-10 sats per vbyte translates from about $0.10 (or 10¢) to perhaps $2 per transaction whether sending at the high end of the transaction fee range or the low end of the transaction range, and that would be for onchain BTC transactions with one input, and with current BTC prices in the last week or so bouncing between $90k to $106k.  As I mentioned previously, a one input transaction could have multiple recipients for the same transaction fees, and the amount of the transaction could have outputs that are very small such as less than $1 and could have some of the transactions $millions of dollars, and such a transaction would have the same fee, so long as it is starting from one input  - like an address (UTXO) that were to have several million of dollars (such as an address having more than 100 bitcoin in it) could send to thousands of recipients at the same time.  You could also have an address that ONLY has something like 0.25 BTC ($25k-ish) and it could send to $2.50 each to 1,000 recipients for the one transaction fee that in the last week would have had been between $0.10 and $2, and perhaps if the person is really anxious to want the transaction to go through in less than an hour, then maybe he would purposefully include a larger fee, such as a $5 fee or something like that, depending on what the actual fees are at the time that the transaction is broadcasted.. which frequently, we can get a pretty decent idea to estimate the fees of the past hour or so, and then even guess what the fees are and choose the fee that we believe will go through quickly.  Many of the current bitcoin wallets also estimate fees so that users do not have to, so they will allow the user to choose high priority, medium priority, low priority or even to customize the fee, which also can be an advantage, and users need to practice in order to get used to transacting bitcoin directly between each other in order to have some better ideas in regards to actual potential bottle necks that might exist at various points rather than giving credibility to bullshit propaganda (coming from dweebs like legiteum) suggesting that bitcoin does not work, whether we are referring to on-chain bitcoin transaction or maybe in some cases we might want to transact on 2nd or 3rd layers of bitcoin (or bitcoin related products) that would more likely end up having some custody and/or privacy trade-offs - even though developers continue to work on various ways to attempt to improve user-friendliness of both 1st layer and 2nd or 3rd layers or even some of them are trying to make these applications to be more peer to peer rather than custodial (and working on open sourced rather than closed source, even though there may well be mixed bags in regards to development and the kind of software (or hardware) that might be available at any given time).. so the answer is not always clear when the field is continuing to be developed, with even many ideas that we are still in early days, even though bitcoin has been actively transacting for more than 16 years.. hahahahaha tick tock, next block.. more or less every 10 minutes.

[legiteum]

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

El Salvador passed a law in their country basically forcing Bitcoin down people's throats and yet they still aren't adopting it. What more do you want?

Some folks were helped by El Salvador's passage of their bitcoin as legal tender law that went into effect in August 2021.  Some people choose not to get involved in bitcoin.  The law could be read as a forcing, as you suggest, yet I doubt that you are even close to giving any kind of genuine and/or accurate reading of what the law was allegedly forcing.  You may well need to back up your claim a wee bit moar better.

El Salvador passed a law forcing the government there to promote Bitcoin using compelled taxpayer money. Today, Bitcoin's price completely revolves around what the US president says about it on any given day. So much for Bitcoin being some kind of hedge against governments .

Bitcoin is not going to increase in the number of users, it will decrease.

How is that?  I think that the data shows that with the passage of time, bitcoin has been increasing in all of its various network effects (those outlined by Trace Mayer) including more users, so why expect that bitcoin adoption is not going to continue to increase into the future.

I agree it has grown, but I think new products are only just starting to take hold. This market is still new, but the direction seems pretty clear to me. When a market leader like Bitcoin actually loses traction against competitors, it's time to wonder why. When you investigate and find those competitors have far superior products in every way--except for the present-day market cap--then the trend seems very likely to continue.

Imagine saying, in about 1986, that General Motors will always be the biggest company in the world because... they are the biggest company in the world. The biggest one always always stays the biggest, they said.

Well, that's not always the case. Perhaps this is why Bitcoiners are now trying to get governments to use force and compel citizens to stop using other products--because they are losing in the free market.

(That said, what most Bitcoiners missed about the 2024 US elections is that the major donors, under the guise of "Bitcoin", were actually brokers and non-Bitcoin makers who have a financial interest in hawking their own products over Bitcoin: the actually Bitcoin community just get conned, I think ).

Maybe richer people will buy up more of it and make the price go up, and maybe more governments* will help prop up the price, but there will be fewer and fewer individuals in the future actually holding Bitcoin because there are far better products out there now. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to be used for mainstream transactions by ordinary people.

(*And the irony that Bitcoin needs government help to support it's price now is pretty intense  ).

Sure it is true that Bigger and BIGGER players are focusing on accumulating bitcoin, and they also seem to be gobbling it up too... which logically seems to imply that fewer individuals are going to be able to have as much of it, and even if the same quantity of people are able to have bitcoin, then the fact that BIGGER players are gobbling up a lot of the bitcoin, then that likely means that the smaller players would not be able to have as much of the bitcoin, proportionately speaking..

You see, your only interest--which is the same as most current owners of Bitcoin--is that Bitcoin goes up in price so you are richer. That is very natural. Hence the only thing you are concerned about is more rich people buying more of the asset you hold. But this is a very narrow focus, I think.  Imagine shareholders of a public company telling the CEO, "just get the stock price up right now and ignore everything else". That will work great... until it doesn't.

In the long run, the winner of the digital currency wars will be the product(s) with the most individual users. There's no way that ends up being Bitcoin since it simply doesn't scale.

[JayJuanGee]

In order to increase the use of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin and its saviors need to be more aware and give proper advice on how to increase the use of Bitcoin.  Benefits of Bitcoin must be confirmed.  This can increase the number of Bitcoin users.

El Salvador passed a law in their country basically forcing Bitcoin down people's throats and yet they still aren't adopting it. What more do you want?

Some folks were helped by El Salvador's passage of their bitcoin as legal tender law that went into effect in August 2021.  Some people choose not to get involved in bitcoin.  The law could be read as a forcing, as you suggest, yet I doubt that you are even close to giving any kind of genuine and/or accurate reading of what the law was allegedly forcing.  You may well need to back up your claim a wee bit moar better.

El Salvador passed a law forcing the government there to promote Bitcoin using compelled taxpayer money. Today, Bitcoin's price completely revolves around what the US president says about it on any given day. So much for Bitcoin being some kind of hedge against governments .

*Note: By the way, I added a footnote to my above post after my earlier post and by the time I read this (your) responsive post.

Sounds like you are spinning what you want to see in the world rather than really attempting to grapple with reality.

Yes.. leaders of governments have been elected by the people and they have discretion regarding how to spend public (tax payer) money, and also discretion regarding various ways to deploy government resources, how to communicate ideas or policies or plans, and not everyone is going to agree with what various governments (or their leaders) are doing, and even sometimes some governments do not represent the interest of the people very well.

Sure there could be governments attempting to pump or dump bitcoin, and whether that is helpful to bitcoin or constitutes an attack on bitcoin remains quite difficult to figure out in advance.  Even if you are perceiving governments to be controlling bitcoin, I doubt that you are characterizing the actual situation of what we actually have going on in the world today (in regards to bitcoin) in a way that really helps to better understand and/or appreciating how bitcoin currently fits in the world and in world politics, and surely the fact that ongoing bitcoin adoption means that friends and enemies (and really everyone) will likely sooner or later end up getting into bitcoin or being touched by bitcoin-related matters.   Bitcoin continues to be adopted and to advance and network effects continue to grow.. as I already mentioned above, even if you want to characterize the growth of bitcoin as  if it were merely being promoted by a few fringe governmental players who are supposedly gaining control over bitcoin and over bitcoiners (or whatever it is that you are trying to suggest to be happening from your ongoingly deluded and seemingly out-of-touch perspective).  

Whether any of us like the direction of various governmental responses, policies or connections to bitcoin or not seems to be a bit of a side point, and surely on an individual level we can choose to fight bitcoin, support bitcoin or try to stay away from bitcoin or to promote our own shitcoin, and surely each of us have choices that we make in regards to whether to allocate any time, energies and value into bitcoin and if so then how to go about such allocation into bitcoin if we were to go down that path.

Even if there seems to be a lot of current bitcoin hype, not everyone is acting on the hype that they are witnessing, even though the BTC price seems to currently be experiencing a lot of UPpity price pressures (as I type this post, and in the past week, too), and there seems to be a considerable amount of hype around Trump's swearing in to office within about 19 hours (noon eastern time), and there is anticipation regarding a large number of executive orders that he has pre-announced, so there are likely good reasons for BTC prices to be moving a lot in anticipation, yet we still would not necessarily know if the BTC price will continue to pump or if it might dump, so short-term BTC price movements can be quite difficult to figure out, even though surely we can see a lot of buzz (and hype) going in recent days and perhaps lasting through this coming week, whether BTC prices end up fluctuating a lot or not is still to be seen, yet I personally try not to play any of these kinds of hype scenarios in terms of my own BTC portfolio management and other investments that I have.

Bitcoin is not going to increase in the number of users, it will decrease.

How is that?  I think that the data shows that with the passage of time, bitcoin has been increasing in all of its various network effects (those outlined by Trace Mayer) including more users, so why expect that bitcoin adoption is not going to continue to increase into the future.

I agree it has grown, but I think new products are only just starting to take hold.

You sound like a marketer, and sure maybe you are correct and maybe not.  I personally believe it is way better to figure out some kind of a bitcoin plan (and to execute it) instead of getting distracted into supposedly new products that you believe are the next best thing.. blah blah blah.  I imagine that your own product (shitcoin) is in the mix of "great" products that you consider to be better than sliced bread (and bitcoin too).

This market is still new, but the direction seems pretty clear to me. When a market leader like Bitcoin actually loses traction against competitors, it's time to wonder why. When you investigate and find those competitors have far superior products in every way--except for the present-day market cap--then the trend seems very likely to continue.

Good luck with those dumb-ass ideas.  I have heard them over and over and over through the years in regards to various shitcoin pumping talking points...and frequently they come out at fairly interesting times to distract innocent folks from their bitcoin.. which yeah, too bad and so sad that people fall for these ongoing baloney talking points and end up with less bitcoin than they should have had if they had remained focused on bitcoin accumulation and/or bitcoin holding.

Imagine saying, in about 1986, that General Motors will always be the biggest company in the world because... they are the biggest company in the world. The biggest one always always stays the biggest, they said.

Well, that's not always the case. Perhaps this is why Bitcoiners are now trying to get governments to use force and compel citizens to stop using other products--because they are losing in the free market.

Bitcoin is a protocol not a company, and to me it seems that governments, institutions, rich people are coming to bitcoin rather than bitcoin going to them.. It is not like bitcoiners have a choice regarding who comes to bitcoin, including that any of us holding bitcoin for a long time are likely going to have to suffer through these newbies pumping the fuck out of our bags, and hoping that we do not get too distracted away from the power of bitcoin that comes from self-custody, open source-ness, and various ways to transact directly and without third parties.  There are probably other aspects of bitcoin, and surely running a node and mining are important too, so hopefully those can continue throughout the world and in ways that are not overly centralizing -even though so many big companies and governments are getting involved with mining and node running too.

(That said, what most Bitcoiners missed about the 2024 US elections is that the major donors, under the guise of "Bitcoin", were actually brokers and non-Bitcoin makers who have a financial interest in hawking their own products over Bitcoin: the actually Bitcoin community just get conned, I think ).

Sure.. Trump has a lot of shitcoiner ideas, and a decent number of shitcoiners around him, so it could be interesting to see the extent to which shitcoining and/or bitcoining comes out through whatever governmental acts might be communicated and/or put into policy or even proposed as legislation rather than executive actions in the coming week and even further out in the first few months of the administration.. and surely there will also be battles going on in government too.. It is not like Trump has any abilities to not be controversial or even to end up fucking things up more than he helps... but who knows?  I am not going to proclaim to know, even though surely there remains anticipation to attempt to match up differences in regards to what is being said and what is being done, which surely could result in pumps or dumps and those pumps/dumps might affect other coins or crypto projects besides bitcoin.

Maybe richer people will buy up more of it and make the price go up, and maybe more governments* will help prop up the price, but there will be fewer and fewer individuals in the future actually holding Bitcoin because there are far better products out there now. Bitcoin is too slow and too expensive to be used for mainstream transactions by ordinary people.

(*And the irony that Bitcoin needs government help to support it's price now is pretty intense  ).

Sure it is true that Bigger and BIGGER players are focusing on accumulating bitcoin, and they also seem to be gobbling it up too... which logically seems to imply that fewer individuals are going to be able to have as much of it, and even if the same quantity of people are able to have bitcoin, then the fact that BIGGER players are gobbling up a lot of the bitcoin, then that likely means that the smaller players would not be able to have as much of the bitcoin, proportionately speaking..

You see, your only interest--which is the same as most current owners of Bitcoin--is that Bitcoin goes up in price so you are richer. That is very natural.

You are making a strawman.  The mere fact that I am pointing to BTC price movements does not mean that I am interested in that, even though I am talking about it as a factual matter.

Hence the only thing you are concerned about is more rich people buying more of the asset you hold. But this is a very narrow focus, I think. 

The only thing that I am concerned about? How would you know that?  Sure I have a lot of posts out there, but so what.

Frequently I attempt to describe matters in terms of "is" rather than "ought"

So if I am talking about what "is" or what I believe "might happen," that does not necessarily signify that I am talking about what I want to happen or what I prefer to happen.

You seem to be making shit up when you are proclaiming what I want based on what I said about what happened, what is happening or what might happen.  

Also, frequently I suggest people get bitcoin based on what is happening rather than what I believe ought to happen. In the end, people can choose for themselves, and they will be responsible for the consequences of their choices..

Imagine shareholders of a public company telling the CEO, "just get the stock price up right now and ignore everything else". That will work great... until it doesn't.

In the long run, the winner of the digital currency wars will be the product(s) with the most individual users. There's no way that ends up being Bitcoin since it simply doesn't scale.

I am glad that you have bitcoin-related matters figured out...or at least you believe that you do (to the extent that you are even being truthful in your ongoing nonsense.. it can be difficult to believe that you even believe your own ongoing nonsensical proclamations).

Anyhow, perhaps I am hopeful that not too many people choose to follow your likely-to-be-wrong proclamations about the future of bitcoin or the likely need for an overwhelming number of normies to get started in bitcoin earlier rather than later.. for their own good... but yeah, sure, there are going to continue to be no coiners and low coiners who do not protect themselves and they fail/refuse to accumulate bitcoin and/or to hold it.  In the end, people can choose for themselves, and it is their choice how to allocate their time, energy and finances and whether that includes bitcoin in the mix or not.

[legiteum]

El Salvador passed a law forcing the government there to promote Bitcoin using compelled taxpayer money. Today, Bitcoin's price completely revolves around what the US president says about it on any given day. So much for Bitcoin being some kind of hedge against governments .

Yes.. leaders of governments have been elected by the people and they have discretion regarding how to spend public (tax payer) money, [...]

[/quote]

LOL, so is that what you are going to say when popular sentiment around Bitcoin turns negative, and governments outlaw Bitcoin instead, and send the price down 95%?

You live and die by what governments do now. So much for Bitcoin being some kind of hedge against government control. Now the price is dictated by the US president, which is control you handed to them voluntarily in exchange for temporarily pumping your investment portfolio.

Y'all area cheap date .

I agree it has grown, but I think new products are only just starting to take hold.

You sound like a marketer, and sure maybe you are correct and maybe not.  I personally believe it is way better to figure out some kind of a bitcoin plan (and to execute it) instead of getting distracted into supposedly new products that you believe are the next best thing.. blah blah blah.  I imagine that your own product (shitcoin) is in the mix of "great" products that you consider to be better than sliced bread (and bitcoin too).

Inventing "some kind of bitcoin plan" is not going to change its basic nature, which is slow and expensive by design.

Imagine saying, in about 1986, that General Motors will always be the biggest company in the world because... they are the biggest company in the world. The biggest one always always stays the biggest, they said.

Well, that's not always the case. Perhaps this is why Bitcoiners are now trying to get governments to use force and compel citizens to stop using other products--because they are losing in the free market.

Bitcoin is a protocol not a company, and to me it seems that governments, institutions, rich people are coming to bitcoin rather than bitcoin going to them..

Individual Bitcoin holders are organizing to support political candidates who promise to use taxpayer money to increase the price of Bitcoin. These are governments who are being bought off with campaign donations.

(That said, what most Bitcoiners missed about the 2024 US elections is that the major donors, under the guise of "Bitcoin", were actually brokers and non-Bitcoin makers who have a financial interest in hawking their own products over Bitcoin: the actually Bitcoin community just get conned, I think ).

Sure.. Trump has a lot of shitcoiner ideas, and a decent number of shitcoiners around him, so it could be interesting to see the extent to which shitcoining and/or bitcoining comes out through whatever governmental acts might be communicated [...]

"Live by the sword, die by the sword" is the old saying. Bitcoiners begged the government to come help them make money, and now everything revolves around what the government does.

[...]
In the long run, the winner of the digital currency wars will be the product(s) with the most individual users. There's no way that ends up being Bitcoin since it simply doesn't scale.

I am glad that you have bitcoin-related matters figured out...or at least you believe that you do (to the extent that you are even being truthful in your ongoing nonsense.. it can be difficult to believe that you even believe your own ongoing nonsensical proclamations).

Right back at y'all. You are surely a Bitcoin maxi's maxi. Every other product on the planet that is not Bitcoin is "shit". Very impressive consistency, I guess .