Monero as digital cash, not store of value. Yes… makes sense as so.
I can accept leaning more on trust for small amounts and daily usage.
But store of value is the grand goal.
This is how I imagined it going:
disagree:
I think the value btc has today comes exactly from the expectation that will be used as Store of Value.
the major problem with fiat is not that it is a bad Medium of Exchange. it's that is a bad SoV.
SoV is the most important and is the base use case.
(Satoshi's genesis message regards the bank bailout money printing, which destroys SoV, not MoE)
there are 8 billion people in the world.
if every human was to make a bitcoin transaction, they would only be able to make TWO transactions in their lifetime!
bitcoin was not designed to be a MoE. it was designed, and is its most important goal, to create decentralized incorruptible absolute scarcity, to be the ultimate STORE OF VALUE.
Bitcoin adoption will only happen when people choose to store their savings in self custody bitcoin, instead of deposits, stocks, houses.
Then, when they make a large buy, which need their savings, they will move their bitcoin, onchain (not rehypothecated fiat games).
everything else is a distraction and detour from this path. and a delay to adoption.
using bitcoin for small daily purchases (MoE) will come later, as people start measuring things in btc, instead of usd, and already have savings in btc thay can "whitdraw from".
then, only THEN, they will think: "why do I need to go trough fiat? what if I just paid directly in bitcoin to this store?"
this will then be handled in L2 (maybe partly custodian or with another set of rules. will see what happens then... now is too soon to tell).
the way I see it, goes like this:
bitcoin is scarce, secure, decentralized, permissionless -> good SoV -> people protect savings in it -> spend savings when needed -> gradually stop using fiat (first for large purchases, then smaller and smaller) -> blockchain gets filled -> scalling with L2 -> MoE
if SoV checkpoint is not achieved, nothing else will.
I understand it might come as naive according to your framework, and the recent developments confirm that.
So yes: Maybe I was choosing to believe a lie… but it’s hard to let go of such a beautifull dream! :)
Good to have you back!