Jason is getting quite a lot of flak for this…but he’s not wrong?
Bitcoin is not great for transactions
It’s not great for smart contracts
The user experience is still intimidating for most
And Bitcoin isn’t capturing the public’s imagination any more
This last point is key, because in the absence of the utility and demand drivers above, it’s the only thing that can drive value
But if not everyone believes, then it doesn’t work
Bitcoin is now simply a sentimental play - people who got in early like it, new entrants and rationalists do not
There is good news, though
The good news is that there is much life beyond Bitcoin, and this is why I am still excited about ‘crypto’ as an asset class
And by ‘crypto’ I mean Ethereum
Bitcoin was the idea, Ethereum is the execution
The dead cat continues to bounce.
What is Bitcoin, 17 years later?
It’s not great for transactions or smart contracts; the user experience is still intimidating for most, and it’s no longer capturing the public’s imagination.
If it comes up at the dinner party, it's followed by a hearty “remember that!”
It’s a boring store of value, trusted as that—which is its biggest value.
It's boring.
Folks expect bitcoin to be stable and that it’s no longer a way to get rich quick.
Institutions embracing and accumulating it took $btc from punk rock to Muzak.
Advocates went from pirates to suits in orange ties, awkwardly sharing cringe memes — just like the cool kids do!
If Bitcoin were going to reach mass adoption and an important use case, it does better than anyone else, it would have by now.
Bitcoin feels like the CD in the age of Spotify, the DVD in the age of Netflix — a bridge technology that folks who invested in “their collection” keep saying is the better experience.
Perhaps bitcoin is vinyl, cool memories and fun to drag out and put on display, but a technology that served us to get to where we are now.