Volatility IS a bug, not a feature :)

[JaanusRaim]

https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20131126/

one snapshot from the distant past.... THIS is volatility
       
                  %1h        %24h       %7d
Bitcoin     1.88%       15.73%      59.68%
Litecoin   8.68%        67.69%    156.67%
XRP        0.63%        59.54%    313.49%
Namecoin -1.73%     92.86%    620.76%

[Wind_FURY]

The mathematically controlled Bitcoin supply prevents that Bitcoin will have an extremely low volatility. So fiat-like values are probably impossible.

But it should not be much higher than gold's volatility in "normal times" (not taking into account the 1980s or the 2025/26 bubble).

But who are you to say what "should" or "should not" be? No plebs like us could simply order the market to have lower volatility than Gold in "normal times", no? Proposing that in itself is laughable.

That can be achieved by behavioral changes in the community: using DCA instead of hoard-and-sell, adopting it as a currency, not believing anymore in "get rich quick" but in "a stable asset which is likely to grow slowly to moderately".

 

OK, if you believe those behavioral changes in the community are possible. But the psychological nature of the market, ANY market including Bitcoin, has shown that what you propose is impossible. Those DCA buyers are also susceptible to Panic-Selling and FOMO.

[d5000]

Given that there are now $trillions going through stablecoins everyday, saying they "solve no problem" doesn't exactly agree with the marketplace.

These "trillions" are mainly used to move coins from exchange to exchange, for DeFi stuff and other "financial" types of usage. See this study.

A note: The study differentiates "payments" (0.7%) and "transfers" (29.3%). "Transfers" at the first glance looks good but:

transfers consist mainly of high-value movements into and out of DeFi protocols and for internal treasury applications (Ved 2026; Ingham 2026).

So a large part of the transfers can be added to the financial categories ("Exchanges", "Finance" and "Infrastructure") which together make up around 50%.  Thus we'd have about 65-70% of financial usage. The most relevant non-financial usage is "cross-border transfers among corporate branches across countries" (also part of "Transfers") which could make up around 10-15%, unfortunately the study isn't giving a clear number here. And then there is the "idle" category, which also groups together coins held in saving wallets, but also includes "lost" stablecoins.
 

some stablecoins have ZERO fees.

That can only apply to completely centralized stablecoins (on private blockchains or non-blockchain networks), as in all other cases you pay gas fees or other transaction fees. They're often small, but they add friction which you don't have at PayPal (from the consumer's perspective) nor with cash or credit cards etc..

You don't get to tout the benefits of Bitcoin and then add the L2, which negates the benefits you tout, and then talk about them together as if the combination magically solves a problem when it doesn't.

The L2's I'm talking about here are those that provide a so-called "unilateral exit". See the definition at https://www.bitcoinlayers.org/glossary#unilateral-exit.

This means that you actually do have the final word in custody, and so you can't be censored. Both Lightning and Ark provide this feature.

I'm not talking about Liquid, RSK and similar stuff. I do see some potential for a special type of sidechain where unilateral exit is not possible but instead the exit mechanism works based on incentives (Threshold tBTC, Nomic, the future plans for Stacks ...) but here indeed you have more counterparty risk.

And if you want to say, "but the L2 doesn't add any risk", then why have Bitcoin in the first place?

Because if you consider the problems Satoshi wanted to solve relevant, then you need a strong base asset on decentralized foundations. These decentralized foundation cannot be provided by 1) non-blockchain payment ledgers nor by 2) semi-centralized fast blockchains. And thus we need the "slow" L1.

And Bitcoiners love volatility because... that's the whole point.

Some do, some not.

people buying their coffee in the morning with Bitcoin...

Is a completely irrelevant category of payments.

[legiteum]

Given that there are now $trillions going through stablecoins everyday, saying they "solve no problem" doesn't exactly agree with the marketplace.

These "trillions" are mainly used to move coins from exchange to exchange, for DeFi stuff and other "financial" types of usage.

Just because you personally don't find the usage interesting, doesn't mean it isn't useful.

Stablecoins are doing $trillions in transactions. They are not "useless" as you implied. From a utility standpoint, they are doing thousands of times the volume as Bitcoin does. They are not a fad, they are not going away, etc.

some stablecoins have ZERO fees.

That can only apply to completely centralized stablecoins (on private blockchains or non-blockchain networks), as in all other cases you pay gas fees or other transaction fees. They're often small, but they add friction which you don't have at PayPal (from the consumer's perspective) nor with cash or credit cards etc..

I wasn't going to get into the technical details (not that any of their users care either), but suffice it to say that there are stablecoins with zero fees and millisecond-level clearing time. This is a useful product and hundreds of times faster than any credit card or app like PayPal that uses the traditional banking system to perform its transactions.

The only products that offer true "decentralization" is Bitcoin and a few other PoW (not PoS like Ether etc.) and you have to use that product natively, not with an L2, and you need to use it purely with self-custody, not through an app, an ETF, or a broker, or anything like that.

In other words, there are very, very few users out there these days using a decentralized system. And guess what: nobody cares. The products solve the problems they want to solve.

The L2's I'm talking about here are those that provide a so-called "unilateral exit". See the definition at https://www.bitcoinlayers.org/glossary#unilateral-exit.

This means that you actually do have the final word in custody, and so you can't be censored. Both Lightning and Ark provide this feature.

Ark and Lightning are... their own system. They are not Bitcoin. If you list all of the things you think makes Bitcoin amazing and unique, you will find these systems don't have that. In fact, they are systems you would probably deride as "centralized".

The reason L2s are fast and efficient is because they are more centralized, don't use PoW, etc. But without that, then it isn't Bitcoin. You might as well use Robinhood, which uses an Oracle database to keep track of your BTC holding amount. It's no different. Robinhood buys or sells your Bitcoin a few minutes after you click the button, and L2s might do it a few seconds after (presumably), but the principle is the same. You are no longer using a decentralized system.

All you have to do is think of the problem in fundamentals: the system is either truly "decentralized" the way Bitcoin is, and with that it is very slow, very expensive and impossible to scale, or it's fast/cheap/scalable and it's not as decentralized. There is no magic software that can bend the laws of physics.