Most of the space, and the things that are built around it, are focused on simulating the legacy financial system. Not much is being built to try to burn new areas. Micropayments, while admittedly the thing I was most critical of because of the user experience I have to do think in terms of small transactions throughout the day, it saw almost no real testing or development in trying to solve that UX problem at scale.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any app that makes a real difference. Yes, things like crowdfunding or micropayments in games remove a central point of control that can be used to close the use cases of these apps, but they are still reinventing the wheel. Many projects focus on the cooperation of fiat or stablecoin loans with Bitcoin, rails for paying dollars in Bitcoin, etc. These are important building blocks if Bitcoin is to be used commercially, that is without a doubt, but they are not the only things that are possible with Bitcoin.
In some cases this affects the entire network and protocol if it is followed to an extreme. In the case of Bitcoin collateralized dollar loans, for example, it is inevitable that these things will come into contact with the legacy system. This gives those systems some degree of control over those applications, and (depending on how much work in Bitcoin they create) Bitcoin itself.
Consensus on Bitcoin is not governed by voting, it is governed by participation. That one. those players who actually earn bitcoin from economic activity, and those who trade and generate money for miners. If you don’t do one of these two things, your node has no influence on the network’s consistency, especially during a chain split or conflicting fork. That is the cold truth. Bitcoiners who focus on building applications that use the power or interface with the legacy system provide a system that tries to escape the bar into Bitcoin that the legacy system can use to fight against.
It’s stupid, short-sighted, and a huge tactical error.
The way forward is to focus on sustainable systems that do not require that interaction, that can operate completely independently of the legacy system, while still generating revenue for miners and application users and operators. This is the only way forward in terms of promoting the adoption of Bitcoin without slowly giving up the growing influence on the network and protocol to the specific types of players we are determined to escape from in the first place.
To truly succeed outside the existing system, we need markets for digital goods, services, real products, for new types of applications that legacy players cannot integrate or take for Bitcoin.
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