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it's time for bitcoin to start competing (aka how to cope with the ethereum ETF, and my predictions for bitcoin)
yesterday was the most important day in bitcoin's recent history. yes, i actually believe that. way more important than bitcoin's own ETF approval. and way more important than predetermined halving dates.
yesterday the cultist dogma of saylor and his low iq laser-eye friends died.
people who only exist on twitter may not know this, but some of the largest bitcoin holders in the west, who i had the extreme displeasure of interacting with offline in the last year, ACTUALLY BELIEVED the conspiracy theory that ETH is an unregistered security and would never have a spot ETF.
(saylor even proudly said that on-stage and on-camera just a few short weeks ago at his own conference)
they ACTUALLY BELIEVED that bitcoin's victory is preordained, that it will never have any competition, that there is no second best.
they ACTUALLY BELIEVED that any change or upgrade is haram because bitcoin is perfect as is and will never have any other competitors.
they ACTUALLY BELIEVED that wall street only likes pet rocks with no vision and no roadmap.
all of that died yesterday, as rumors came out that an ethereum ETF is likely to be approved as soon as tomorrow.
let me be very clear. for the bitcoin maxi regime, this is a devastating blow. i am not referring to the broke laser-eyes on twitter. i mean the very leadership of the cult. those are people who have a lot of vested interest in preventing what just happened. and they lost.
they're licking their wounds today, but the damage is done. they're not coming back from this. their fandom will abandon them. all of their plans were foiled one fair morning and nothing will ever be the same.
this leaves bitcoin at somewhat of a pickle.
the strategy so far has been to count on regulators to stifle competition, and that strategy has now fully failed.
most bitcoin holders are not bitcoin maxis, but they do have to live with the failures of the maxi regime. the lack of vision is going to become a problem now that bitcoin has to compete on equal grounds against the rest of the crypto assets.
a network that doesn't will suffer a lot of outflows. and as it currently stands, bitcoin barely flexed its innovation muscles at all in years. if it wasn't for the orange tsunami started by ordinals last year, i'd say we would've been in dire straits right now.
thankfully casey rodarmor did offer bitcoiners a glimmer of hope, and there is a small ecosystem starting to innovate around bitcoin in the last 18 months.
here are my predictions for what's going to happen with bitcoin in the next 24 months:
1. we're going to see the vast majority of bitcoin stakeholders rally behind "bitcoin season 2". this will happen faster than people think, probably in a matter of weeks.
once the ethereum etfs become a done deal, bitcoiners will be feeling the heat. they will not turn to podcasters again. they will turn to builders. builders bring about progress and new narratives, and that's what every bitcoin holder is going to want to see to stop the outflows from bitcoin etfs to ethereum etfs.
expect to see bitcoin stakeholders such as mining pools, bitcoin VCs, exchanges, etf issuers etc toss the old laser-eye narratives and fully support bitcoin season 2.
2. ordinals going mainstream: i expect a big push from most bitcoin stakeholders, including those who previously opposed them, to make ordinals way more popular. as the digital version of luxury goods, bitcoiners will see ordinals as a trojan horse similar to ethereum NFTs in 2021, and many public-facing narratives will shift towards the collectible use case, at various price points.
after a period of early adoption, NFTs eventually helped onboard a generation of new ethereum users in the previous cycle, and I expect bitcoin whales will give in soon and attempt to use this narrative to onboard new bitcoin users as soon as the ethereum ETF goes live. the competition over flows is going to be fierce, and the bitcoin whales would not want to lose.
3. cross-chain BTC: one thing that early ordinals adopters learned last year, is that trading is a lot more satisfying when the price is BTC, as opposed to some shitcoin.
sure, we can trade whatever we want in the casino, but when the final reward of a successful trade is more BTC in your wallet, there's something really special about that.
those who tried it with ordinals swear by it, and as ordinals become more mainstream -- see (2) above -- many more will be exposed to that concept.
meanwhile, chains like solana are vulnerable: there is no real reason for people to denominate their casino winnings in SOL, even if they use solana for infrastructure.
BTC and ETH will increasingly be seen as the most established and desirable assets in crypto for long term holdings, and as such i think an opportunity will open for encouraging the use of BTC the asset as the preferred asset on other chains like Solana, BNB, etc.
basically, a replacement for stablecoins. bitcoin has a real opportunity to capture mindshare in this area, as ethereum is unlikely to focus on it and will instead focus on its own L2s.
i think it's very likely that within 12-18 months, most phantom wallets will be denominated in BTC while operating in solana.
4. turbo-charged bitcoin wallets: this brings us to wallets. one of the things i learned about early bitcoin season 2 adopters is that they really care about layer 1 bitcoin assets.
they like BTC itself and they like ordinals. and maybe runes.
they DO NOT like assets on so-called "bitcoin L2s". if they'll use L2s, they'll do so transparently, without knowing it happened, and only with L1 assets like BTC itself and ordinals. no one wants assets that only exist on "bitcoin L2s".
i think this presents an opportunity to rethink wallet UX, something that ethereum clearly got wrong. bitcoin season 2 wallets will focus on the assets, not on the networks. users will be able to use their BTC or ordinals transparently across networks (be it mainnet, lightning, "L2s", "rollups", solana, etc). this is what the ethereum L2 UX vision was, but never happened. bitcoin has an opportunity to do this right faster than the competition.
5. consensus upgrades. if anyone had doubts before, yesterday's events should have removed them. an ethereum ETF is the most bullish thing imaginable for the OP_CAT upgrade.
stakeholders were already rallying behind it, but now with bitcoiners under the gun again, any last holdouts should be removed quickly. OP_CAT is a very simple and non-disruptive upgrade, and thankfully it's already well-researched and well-tested.
i expect activation will be swift to allow builders to start experimenting with CAT-based off chain constructs that will allow bitcoin to compete better, without risking any of its fundamentals.
after this small change proves to have positive impact, i expect we'd start seeing more frequent consensus upgrades to allow bitcoin to continue to innovate into the future.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
so, it this an emergency? is bitcoin screwed? not at all. but all the signs are showing that bitcoin stakeholders are sick and tired of the status quo and they're ready to put up a fight.
yesterday was the most important day in bitcoin's recent history. and an orange tsunami is coming.
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