There is something about the stereotype of naive dreamers and idealists, or cold realists and cynics. Stereotypes don’t just come in based on the fundamental, there is a kernel of truth to them, otherwise they wouldn’t have spread virally as an idea in the first place. But they, as well as the worldviews they espouse, are also exaggerated beyond that kernel.
Bitcoin is currently locked in a game of tug of war between naive idealists and jaded cynics.
On the one hand, idealists argue that we have already won. We don’t have to do anything, Bitcoin is magically guaranteed success. They are already taking over the world, everyone will own it, it’s the best value store ever. That’s all he needs to win and succeed. No improvements are needed.
On the other hand, cynics argue that we have lost or are going. For some total overhaul that drastically changes bitcoin, there is no way that Bitcoin can succeed in the world. He will be captured and useless. “Who knows where to start?” is the answer to asking what improvements are needed.
Both of these extremes that dominate public dialogue sweep attention away from two important things, the reality of what can already be done with what we have and how substantially that reality can be expanded with even very small and simple improvements.
As things stand right now, Bitcoin has some degree of resistance to censorship and privacy for much of the world would depend on the custodians. The best we can do in this regard is a lot of small, local Chaumian ecash mines, but running an ECASH mint requires running a Lightning node.
Lightning is complicated and messing up and losing the latest channel status can lose all your money. The design allows your counterparty to steal all your funds if you try to use an old channel state after updating it. CTV + CSFS would give us LN-Symmetry, a Lightning channel type that gives a new way for channels to work. Instead of using an old state allowing the other party to take all your money, LN-symmetry channels would allow them to just “cut out” all the middleman states and spend your old state on the newest one on Chain, ensuring everyone gets the correct amount of money.
That one change (and this is by no means all CTV+CSF enabled) would fundamentally change the landscape of who would be able and willing to run a local ecash mint. The risk of everyone losing money through incompetence would have almost disappeared.
This small new feature would greatly improve Bitcoin’s chances of remaining private and resistant to censorship. Does it reduce self-custody to the whole world? No. Is dramatically improving the value of Bitcoin despite the demands of value maximalists not necessary or possible? Absolutely.
Bitcoiners need to stop focusing solely on the extremes and poles when it comes to possibilities in this space, there is a wide open mostly unexplored field between them. If we really want to know our chances of success, the limits of what we Actually We can’t do with Bitcoin, so we need to explore that field.
This article is a Take. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.