Bitcoin had two problems limiting it's adoption: (1) difficult to use and (2) it had a very low network effect. (1) was solved by lightning.
I've thought about the things I spend money on: my mortgage payments, groceries, petrol, clothing, furniture, ISP, electricity. I can't use bitcoin for any of that. The only place I can use it (ignoring nostr for a moment) is to pay for email service, VPN service (which I almost never use), That's what, $20 worth? Nowhere near enough for me to want to accept bitcoin... if I accept it, I can't spend it directly, I have to exchange it for the local currency first. Nostr zaps improve that situation a little bit, but not by very much. How much am I going to pay out in zaps as tokens of appreciation?
Network effect is slow and difficult to grow when you are far below critical mass, as I believe bitcoin still is. So for those of you desperately wishing for bitcoin to take off, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Getting sellers of basic services to accept bitcoin is the biggest thing that could move the needle. Getting friends to install lightning wallets and zap each other probably won't move the needle much.
Mike Dilger /
npub1ac…9p35c
2023-10-05 19:47:13
Author Public Key
npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35cPublished at
2023-10-05 19:47:13Event JSON
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"content": "Bitcoin had two problems limiting it's adoption: (1) difficult to use and (2) it had a very low network effect. (1) was solved by lightning.\n\nI've thought about the things I spend money on: my mortgage payments, groceries, petrol, clothing, furniture, ISP, electricity. I can't use bitcoin for any of that. The only place I can use it (ignoring nostr for a moment) is to pay for email service, VPN service (which I almost never use), That's what, $20 worth? Nowhere near enough for me to want to accept bitcoin... if I accept it, I can't spend it directly, I have to exchange it for the local currency first. Nostr zaps improve that situation a little bit, but not by very much. How much am I going to pay out in zaps as tokens of appreciation?\n\nNetwork effect is slow and difficult to grow when you are far below critical mass, as I believe bitcoin still is. So for those of you desperately wishing for bitcoin to take off, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Getting sellers of basic services to accept bitcoin is the biggest thing that could move the needle. Getting friends to install lightning wallets and zap each other probably won't move the needle much.",
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