> So many HODLers in this thread. For the normal person on the street, Bitcoin or Crypto never mattered.

Total copium from alt nerds is never ending, but the truth is neither of you know what you are talking about: Blackrock just added BTC to their $15B fund [0], which isn't much in total market-cap (despite the down market) but is a position to say the largest (and most predatory) hedge-fund sees value in utilizing Bitcoin denominated assets. So, it may have not mattered to you, but you just outted yourself as being no more insightful on financial matters than that 'normal person on the street.'

To be honest, I've been in this for over 11 years now, and the fact of the matter is we have won many battles along the way, but will have only truly 'won' when people like you don't realize you are using BTC at all, the level of financial literacy that it takes to be your own bank and self-custody and maintain financial sovereignty is FAR TOO much for the average person--I'm convinced no amount of simplification wit tech/device solutions will lead to that paradigm shift anymore in order to capture the average part of the bell curve.

What will occur is you will walk in to what looks like your typical bank/retailer which functions with BTC to reduce tx costs and settles on main chain on a periodic basis to fit business needs (and keeping some for strategic/investment purposes for long term duration like Microstrategy as an ancillary source of revenue), resulting in a situation just like how most never ask how does the plumbing work most won't realize how these establishments are running their own MC/LN nodes and probably use State subsidized solar panels for tax breaks via inflation reduction like legislation that then used to heat the building with miners if all goes to plan.

Just like engineers cannot rely on public convectional wisdom to understand the complexity and mechanics of an internal combustion engine, or the gearing ratio in their transmissions they use to get to place to place, our largest hurdle is no longer to inform the masses (I agree the PR has gotten out of hand but mainly by alt scammers and Ivy league thieves like SBF). Rather we need to focus on making the UI/UX indistinguishable from the current model all while running things on the back-end on either Mainchain or LN as needed.

People on hn complain about the 'eternal September' of the online World, I think what's sadder is that after over 5000+ years of debt based currencies that always end the same way even the supposed brightest amongst you are incapable of understanding the implications of the average age of fiat based currencies that have always led to collapse and induce war (see Russia and China) to prop up the disintegration of Society itself--de-investment, zero covid policy, real estate crashes ave put the CCP on the war path but at the core is the tight policy of te yuan on the mainland whih has led to massive real estate speculation and large holding of farm land in Australia wit capital flight.

Financial history is long, boring and tedious thing to study on your own time, but as I found out in 2007 leading into the crash its better to be informed than gullible--most don't realize the importance and take over of Washington Mutual (my bank at the time and the largest bankruptcy in US history at the time) was an expose that proved just how broken the system is and that the FDIC itself is insolvent and that State agencies will break laws in order to serve the large bank's interests whether it was this or the repeal of Glass-Steagall with Goldman Sachs etc...

I'm sure you sopped reading, by now, but if you haven't than it's probably worth your time understanding why tier has been a nearly decades long brain drain from academia, traditional finance, and tech into BTC over its lifetime.

0: https://financefeeds.com/blackrock-makes-bitcoin-eligible-in...