More apps now let people spend BTC and stablecoins at regular stores using Visa, while merchants receive fiat.

It's definitely making crypto easier to use but we're still relying on traditional payment networks.

Do you see this as a step toward mainstream adoption or does real adoption mean merchants accepting crypto directly?

Curious what everyone thinks.

Google searches for Bitcoin are near a 5-year low. In the US, the week ending August 1 got a Google Trends score of 18 out of 100, which is the kind of grade that gets you a polite email from a teacher 😬

Then in October, global searches for "bitcoin" and "BTCUSD" hit multi-year lows, so the timeline is not imagining it. Even the relative who explains Bitcoin to everyone at family dinners has gone suspiciously quiet.

Before anyone writes an obituary, a reminder of what Google Trends actually measures. It measures curiosity. It does not measure ownership, trading volume or on chain activity. And a lot of the biggest money, ETFs, pension funds and OTC desks, has never typed a search into Google in its life. Those desks have better things to do than check whether "bitcoin" is trending.

So Bitcoin is not being forgotten, it is being left on read. The coins are still there, the blocks keep coming, and the only thing that went quiet is the search bar.

No price talk and no predictions here, just vibes and a Google Trends score.

1 upvote if you still supported the BCH community in 2017.

Bitcoin is still sitting under Marco resistance dating back to 2021. There’s much more pain to come.

In 2009, Bitcoin answered an old puzzle. Generals surround a city, they can only communicate through messengers, and some of them may be traitors. Proof-of-work made lying expensive, and digital signatures made every message verifiable, because only General A could have sealed a message in A’s name. For a long time, the solution held, and the puzzle seemed closed.

It reopened because the traitor changed. The old traitor was a dishonest general who had to be outworked. The new one is a quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm, which can derive a private key from a public one. The machine is coming, and a traitor could sign in any general’s name, leaving the blockchain with no way to distinguish the forgery from the original.

The cryptographic fix exists, since quantum-resistant signatures are already known. The unsolved part is the council. Bitcoin has no commander, so the generals themselves must choose the new scheme, persuade millions of holders to move their coins, and decide what happens to the coins whose owners are gone for good. Some of the earliest coins are locked directly to public keys, with nobody left to move them. Freezing them breaks the promise that no one can touch your coins, while leaving them vulnerable allows the first quantum thief to take them. Every path requires trusting someone, and eliminating the need for that trust was the very reason the system was built.

That is the second Byzantine problem, and it is about agreement. The deadline is set by a laboratory, and the generals can only hope to finish arguing before it arrives.

What was true in 2017 is true today.

BTC won't be money for the masses unless it is scaled to accommodate a huge volume of transactions. Its developers have refused to do this for the last 9 years (more, if we add the blocksize war years from 2014-2017).

The recent XBT fork even downgraded the transactional capacity by about two thirds, making it even more impossible to become a useful global currency.

There are still blockchains that fight to give the people what they need:

Decentralized sound money without gatekeepers, aka p2p electronic cash.

In the short term, we will see the rollout of CBDCs and the introduction of even more absurd restrictions on the use of physical cash.

Banks are still fighting Satoshi's invention, but oddly they are increasing the need for it like never before.

I have installed a new AI mod bot. It should help keep the price noise down. If anyone thinks it has done anything wrong, please let me know.

the US government can not and will not allow equities to crash in real USD terms for a protracted amount of time, it is now a matter of national security that they don’t

they have gone all in on AI and so any faltering in debt servicing that occurs there will be backstopped by them, **bookmark this post**

I’m not talking about the Fed put

This is more like the DoD put

The US gov sees civil unrest spreading across Europe due to the unaffordability crisis they are experiencing there, a collapse in equities will reduce tax revenue to the extent that they will be forced to cut spending, if they cut spending it will lead to riots because the poorest are hit hardest by austerity measures, and the poorest have the least to lose

This austerity will be exploited by the US’ enemies to great effect if allowed to occur

unaffordability riots in the US won’t be like the riots in Europe because the police in the US will use deadly force and it will appear more like a civil war than simple rioting

the US in the unique position of being able to export inflation to the rest of the world via the USD so the expansion of the money supply caused by the backstopping of the AI build out won’t be as big a problem domestically as it will be out there

They might refer to it as “nationalization of AI” or something similar but when you hear it, it means they are going to print covid level money into the system and equities will pump as more and more people realize that the market itself is backed by the US government

this backstopping serves the dual purpose of monetizing the $40T they already owe and continues the dominance of US AI superiority because AI in its current form is not profitable and won’t be for some time

hard assets like bitcoin, gold and commodities will rise commensurately and will be the true and correct indicators of the rate of inflation caused by the above

tinfoil hatter rant over

I lost some bitcoin earlier in the year.
(Stored Incorrectly)
I’m starting Over from 0.00 this is my progress. I’ve learned so my from my mistakes after 6 months of grinding I think I’m ready to start stacking again.(26M)

Paytaca announces a $500 PUSD BLAZE identity bounty, BCH BLAZE hosts a CashTokens Studio workshop, ParyonUSD backs the 1-minute block proposal. And more.

Just an interesting observation. Take a look at my post and count how many "training wheel" responses I got. Then count how many sub 100 karma acc vs 100+ karma accounts replied.

https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/1xfw0an/does_paying_with_crypto_through_visa_count_as/19rolomt4oshw/

Also, is anyone else getting replies from sub 100 karma accounts to 3 month old posts lately? Some even to deleted topics O.o

I’m curious to know how other people are handling their purchases.

Are you all in on bitcoin and only DCA-ing bitcoin or are you putting any money into stocks/etfs?

I’m want to buy as much bitcoin while it’s still low but obviously this means I don’t end up putting what I originally had planned into my ETFS/stocks.

I DCA bitcoin and I have been DCA-ing a very small amount into stocks/ETFS in comparison but I’m wondering if I should just put it all in on bitcoin.

My goal has been: HODL bitcoin for at least 10 years - however my goal with stocks has been to eventually use that for a deposit within the next few years. (Don’t tell me to put into HISA because they don’t do what the stock market does, and this is minimum 3 years away).

Thanks for opinions and advice - I’m aware this is only a reddit thread and that it’s mostly shitposting, however it has actually helped me and I’ve enjoyed being part of the community.