Does Bitcoin Need a "Final Boss" Problem to Solve?

[sohidulsk99]

Every great innovation in history faced a “final boss” problem before it became unstoppable. The internet had to fight censorship. Gold had to fight storage and transport. Now I keep asking myself: what is Bitcoin’s “final boss”?

Is it scalability?

Is it regulatory pressure?

Is it energy debates?

Or is it simply time and adoption?


I sometimes feel Bitcoin already defeated many “mini-bosses,” but the biggest challenge is still waiting.

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

[Lida93]

Has the internet won against censorship from the authorities/government? Cause I still see government shutting down certain platforms online for censorship reasons

Bitcoin has faced many challenges and still facing it in a world controlled by centralized authorities. I think the major problem of bitcoin isn't scalability, neither is it about energy debates, time and adoption. Its major challenge is the centralized system. Having a decentralised currency existing in a centralized world, how do you think it would be viewed by the authorities?

[Joy_learns_crypto]

There is no innovation that is not facing a problem, when an innovation solves a problem there would be another problem or problems to be conquered.
There is no final boss problem for bitcoin and many people face different problems with bitcoin some face the problem of it being illegal, some the problem is about taxation and other can adoption.
We should not look for a final boss bitcoin problem but figure a way out of the problem we directly face.

[happybitcoinph]

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

Why bother to think that? Just let those challenges, problems, issues, tests, or whatever you call them, come in.

Bitcoin has been standing strong since its inception. Just go with the flow, mate.

[famososMuertos]

"Final Boss!!   ... Ok, From that perspective, there's no reason to see it that way. I get it, it's your perspective, maybe influenced by the environment you're used to, but it doesn't have to be. In fact, the challenges you mention may seem to be defeated, but they often respawn after a short time.

The 'game' still has a long way to go before reaching the first level, and maybe a Final Boss will appear in the year 2140—the end of the first level, which has 100 stages.  

[Darker45]

It depends on how you look at it. You can look at it from the perspective of why Bitcoin turned out successful after all the previous attempts in decades to develop an e-currency. What set Bitcoin apart from its predecessors like DigiCash, E-gold, and others was its solving the Byzantine Generals Problem or double-spending. In a way, this was the final boss that Bitcoin vanquished which made it successful today.

In another perspective, you can look at it in a futuristic manner. Here, we can only speculate. Your guess is as good as mine. For me, however, the final boss isn't on your list. The final boss is probably coming from the fact that Bitcoin is simply a technology that could go obsolete as we progress.

Quantum computer is an issue today that somehow concerns Bitcoin. There'll surely be much more powerful discoveries and innovations in the future that might one day render Bitcoin a thing of the past. All good things must come to an end. So, let's enjoy and make the most of it while it lasts.

[pooya87]

I think it is and was the FUD.

And that fight is not going to be in the future, but it was fought from day one. FUD can be a lot of things; we have seen from day one that those who feel threatened by Bitcoin spread a lot of misinformation about it. They try to stop or at the very least slow its adoption down. FUD like "bitcoin is fraud" spread by the banksters to "bitcoin is rat poison" to corrupt oligarchs.

[Marvelockg]

I sometimes feel Bitcoin already defeated many “mini-bosses,” but the biggest challenge is still waiting.
What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

This will tend to suggest that the problem you think bitcoin will eventually face has not come up yet, right? if that is ever the case, then i doubt one can think of any of such issue that we can not see at the moment.

bitcoin is not a perfect invention that is void of challenges and so far, the issue of attempt to regulate it has been at the forefront and will continue to be a major challenge because as adoption increase, institutions and firms will make attempt to regulate it or at least dictate what becomes of it. the internet still has a lot of limitation but yet, because of it other advantages, users have learned to cope with it and it relevance still stands even in the future. you do not expect resistance from known an unknown sources but bitcoin will still thrive amidst such resistance.

[davis196]

s it scalability?

Is it regulatory pressure?

Is it energy debates?

Or is it simply time and adoption?

I would vote for scalability. This is what stops Bitcoin to become a widely accepted global payment network. The BTC blockchain gets clogged pretty quickly and the transaction fees/confirmation time increased pretty fast. I don't see a solution for this problem.
I also don't see any regulatory pressure against Bitcoin in almost all developed countries around the world.
The energy consumed for Bitcoin mining doesn't matter, if it doesn't pollute the environment and it doesn't help for increasing the overall energy costs for the companies and households.
Time and adoption simply isn't an issue or an obstacle. If more people see the benefits of Bitcoin, they will embrace it. Unfortunately, scalability kinda slows down the mass adoption of BTC.

[d5000]

Scalability and volatility. Possibly also fungibility.

Scalability, because it is not trivial and all current solutions, including Lightning, have drawbacks. It isn't the same to send a LN transaction than to send an on-chain transaction, and that holds adoption back. We have 300 million Bitcoin users but only 50-60 million active addresses, which means the overwhelming majority uses Bitcoin "the wrong way", with their coins on a centralized exchange.

Volatility, because it is generated by the current usage patterns. People buy Bitcoin to make profit, and some short it to make profit. Volatility is currently one of the main reasons people use (=buy) Bitcoin. But it holds back the adoption as a global currency. It is improving though.

Fungibility, because chain analysis companies try to track down every Bitcoin user with more and more sophisticated pattern recognition mechanisms. And governments of course help them with that task, requiring exchanges to report their users' addresses. But a non-fungible Bitcoin where everybody can censor you because they don't like you can hardly be a currency and would be the opposite of the original cypherpunk idea. Maybe CISA could lead to a CoinJoin explosion and thus to a solution to this problem.

[kotajikikox]

Every great innovation in history faced a “final boss” problem before it became unstoppable. The internet had to fight censorship. Gold had to fight storage and transport. Now I keep asking myself: what is Bitcoin’s “final boss”?

Is it scalability?

Is it regulatory pressure?

Is it energy debates?

I think that these ones you mentioned can be fought against. Bitcoin is still continuously being developed. Scalability issues and energy debates might be solved over time. And as per regulatory pressure, lots of governments are being more accepting of bitcoin now so I do not think we have to worry much about that.

I sometimes feel Bitcoin already defeated many “mini-bosses,” but the biggest challenge is still waiting.

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

It might not even come but if the entire world goes through a crisis and all countries collectively go through an economic decline where inflation hits everyone hard, that will be the ultimate test for bitcoin. How can bitcoin serve in such a crisis should it happen?

[BitGoba]

Every great innovation in history faced a “final boss” problem before it became unstoppable. The internet had to fight censorship. Gold had to fight storage and transport. Now I keep asking myself: what is Bitcoin’s “final boss”?

Is it scalability?

Is it regulatory pressure?

Is it energy debates?

Or is it simply time and adoption?


I sometimes feel Bitcoin already defeated many “mini-bosses,” but the biggest challenge is still waiting.

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

Gold coins stopped being used as a medium of exchange because it had many flaws. For example, it was not sufficiently divisible, so silver and copper coins were used for smaller payments. People also began counterfeiting gold coins, and it was difficult to verify what metal was actually inside. Because of this, bankers managed to replace gold with paper banknotes.
Bankers were people who dealt with lending money and exchanging coins. The word “bank” comes from the word bench, while “bankrupt” comes from the expression “broken bench.” Such people are even mentioned in the Bible. And those money lending and exchange coins businesses were mostly done by Jews. They managed to remove gold as a medium of exchange gold,silver coins  and push through their own paper money, since people deposited their gold coins with them and, in return, received paper notes.Since it was easier for people to use paper notes instead of going to withdraw their gold, the bankers’ notes began to circulate as a medium of exchange. When bankers realized that almost no one was actually withdrawing gold, they started lending out their paper notes with interest instead of gold itself. This is how today’s monetary system was born.

One of the biggest challenges for Bitcoin is precisely that people still don’t understand what money is and are unfamiliar with its history. Most people grew up in the bankers’ fiat money system, and it’s hard for them to grasp why Bitcoin is a better form of money and to break free from decades of reliance on bankers’ money.This means that even when the technology works perfectly, education remains the greatest “final boss”  because people need to understand the basic principles and history of money in order to fully embrace Bitcoin.

[Zlantann]

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

The future is unpredictable, so pinpointing Bitcoin's biggest challenge will be difficult. Since Trump joined the Presidential race, Bitcoin has been politicised in many countries. The proposal for the establishment of Bitcoin reserves has become popular. If the same people who are promoting Bitcoin now start attacking it, it will be a big test. The FUD will be massive which might lead to massive attacks. But as usual Bitcoin will survive it.    

It might not even come but if the entire world goes through a crisis and all countries collectively go through an economic decline where inflation hits everyone hard, that will be the ultimate test for bitcoin. How can bitcoin serve in such a crisis should it happen?

The world has gone through several economic crises since the creation of Bitcoin. During the COVID-19 crisis, Bitcoin served as a viable hedge against inflation.

[CryptSafe]

I think it is and was the FUD.

And that fight is not going to be in the future, but it was fought from day one. FUD can be a lot of things; we have seen from day one that those who feel threatened by Bitcoin spread a lot of misinformation about it. They try to stop or at the very least slow its adoption down. FUD like "bitcoin is fraud" spread by the banksters to "bitcoin is rat poison" to corrupt oligarchs.

Obviously, the fight has been on right from day one of Bitcoin's inception, and currently, Bitcoin is winning them all, as the same people and institutions who spread the FUD are still the same people who are the whales wanting to bag everything, and still want to control the market because they have seen and made a good profit from the Bitcoin they are holding. Maybe they could have taken over everything if they had their way to do so, which is never possible and can never happen.

[viljy]

I do not agree that the "final boss" is defeated for the Internet. The Internet is partially controlled and there is censorship. This is by no means a victory over the "final boss". The same is true for gold. His transportation has always been and remains fraught with difficulties. The storage problem is even more acute.

Since the gold of many countries is stored in the United States, that is, in fact, these countries cannot dispose of their gold, since even the audit of the gold reserves has not been carried out for decades. And the States never intend to return this gold. Or, for example, when De Gaulle demanded that dollars be exchanged for gold for France, Nixon abolished the gold standard.

For bitcoin, the "final boss" may be a global shock, which, for one reason or another, will cause a drop in hashrate (disabling some miners), which will make finding a block more difficult by orders of magnitude, since the complexity is recalculated every 2016 block, and, for example, not every block. If it takes hours or even days instead of an average of 10 minutes, this can become a very big problem.

[Despairo]

Final boss should be the biggest disadvantage that might ruin Bitcoin.

Is it scalability?

High fees will encourage the price to rise, so not something need to be worried.

Is it regulatory pressure?

It's 50/50, but people can still use Bitcoin without permission by government, so there's a way to get out.

Is it energy debates?

There are few alternatives to generate renewable energy.

Or is it simply time and adoption?

It's not a problem.

I think the final boss would be centralization, we're getting closer to that. Mining are more centralized since many small miners get away, the coins are more centralized because centralized institutions e.g. ETFs, government including centralized exchanges hold Bitcoin.

Unfortunately most people not aware with that.

[betswift]

^ It's a problem that piles up little by little, imo, as for now, retailers hodl more BTC than centralized entities, but time changes everything, we will see about that.

[OcTradism]

Now I keep asking myself: what is Bitcoin’s “final boss”?

Bitcoin blockchain and network is decentralized and there is no such a decentralized final boss.

Is it scalability?

Don't let you obsessive about scalability, as Bitcoin Cash scam team took advantage of scalability demand and made their scam fork. Years later, with better scalability, their Bitcoin Cash blocks have never been filled and Bitcoin Cash blokchain has been used less than Bitcoin blockchain.

Is it regulatory pressure?

You can not stop it so let it be and don't mind about it. Fortunately, Bitcoin is decentralized so regulations can not kill Bitcoin.

Is it energy debates?

Energy FUDs, you can read about them
End the Bitcoin energy FUD.
Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument.

[Mahiyammahi]

Is it scalability?

Is it regulatory pressure?

Is it energy debates?

Or is it simply time and adoption?


I sometimes feel Bitcoin already defeated many “mini-bosses,” but the biggest challenge is still waiting.

What do you think the ultimate test for Bitcoin will be? And how close are we to facing it?

Tbh I think Bitcoin’s final boss is validity at scale. It’s survived lots of mini bosses like forks, exchange hacks, and skepticism. But in the meantime the real test will be whether it can stand firm against co ordinated regulation, public pressure over energy, and  challenge of scaling without losing decentralization. Time is also a hidden enemy  itself if Bitcoin doesn’t stay relevant, it risks fading quietly. IMO, the ultimate will come during a major global crisis. can Bitcoin prove itself as a neutral, trusted settlement layer when the world actually needs it? That’s when we’ll know if it’s unstoppable or just another experiment for sure

[tbct_mt2]

I think it is and was the FUD.

And that fight is not going to be in the future, but it was fought from day one. FUD can be a lot of things; we have seen from day one that those who feel threatened by Bitcoin spread a lot of misinformation about it. They try to stop or at the very least slow its adoption down. FUD like "bitcoin is fraud" spread by the banksters to "bitcoin is rat poison" to corrupt oligarchs.

FUDs don't stop appearing but so far many FUD attempts fail to kill Bitcoin and can not slow down its growth rate over years since 2009. Reading all past FUD attempts against Bitcoin would be too time consuming and can make us feel mixed of boring and exciting feelings by understanding about basics of FUD and Bitcoin strength.

For anyone who have interesting in reading and exploring about Bitcoin FUDs.
https://endthefud.org/
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/