Let's face it gang, Bitcoin is everywhere.
You can find it in the news
You can find it in your shoes
You can find it at the lake
You can find it with a rake
You can find it here and there
You can find Bitcoin Anywhere!
well, almost.
But you get my point, right? Even though the whole of crypto is still a minority, Bitcoin is the most accepted, well known and longest standing cryptocurrency.
Part of the reason is its strong first mover advantage. you see, many scientists and cypherpunks made incredible research and development prior to the creation of the bitcoin genesis block on January 3rd 2009.
Check out this cool image I found on X:
On the day Bitcoin was born, something amazing came to life!
The first fully decentralized, peer-to-peer "electronic cash" network where users could earn bitcoin by securing the network and once mined, they could send it freely over the interwebs, directly to their friens' wallets without regard to governments or corporations. Of course, bitcoin has never been and still isn't perfect today. Its strong focus on security at the cost of everything else means transferring bitcoin on chain can be slow and sometimes quite expensive which is why other developer teams have come up with alternate protocols and even consensus mechanisms like
- Proof of Stake (PoS)
- Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)
- Proof of Authority (PoA)
- Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)
Bitcoin's scalability problem even drove developers Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja to develop the Lightning network, which came out in 2018 with the goal of reducing the cost and time required for bitcoin transactions. Even with the Lightning network, the whole bitcoin thing is STILL not perfect! but it's used in a lot of places
- Barrio Bitcoin in Guatemala City
- Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador
- Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica
Just to name a few.
At the same time, the cryptosphere has been tarnished by bad actors and their outright scams such as Sam Bankman Fried fo FTX, Alex Mashinsky of Celsius and Do Kwon of Luna, which has lead many Bitcoin maximalists to say
See? I told you. Anything that isn't bitcoin is a shitcoin.
It's super annoying because it's simply not true. It's actually more like 19th century propaganda spreading word of the dangers of using electricity!
Yes. This is an actual poster from the year 1900 to scare people away from using electricity.
Protocols like @dashpay and HIVE work VERY well, they're just not as well known as Bitcoin is. But hey, I can't change toxic maximalists and I'm not even going to try. What we CAN do, however, is harness the power and fame of bitcoin and use superior protocols to get bitcoin into the hands of people in a faster, cheaper, more decentralized way.
There's talk about the problems with the Lightning network all over the internet.
Check out these comments from bitcointalk.org:
I think in a lot of ways Lightning is a failure, most Bitcoin maxis are in denial. I just a saw tweet from a maxi telling people to use custodial lightning wallet - this is centralization. this is what we're trying to avoid. Goes against everything Satoshi envisioned
I stopped running a Lightning node because it's not user friendly, I lost funds, my channels got closed. it's not reliable enough to make payments (unless connected to large centralized nodes) & I don't trust it's privacy
When you become a router on LN you become a MSB(money service business) which then means you are suppose to register as a MSB(payment facilitator for a commission/fee) to continue offering services as a router. Just wait until those regulations kick-in properly and governments enforce trying to locate LN routers. Watch how quick CEX's drop LN partners that are not registered as MSBs due to regulations CEX have to abide by via their business partners that facilitate value routing.
Then you will see why LN is a failure to offer a system of moving value that escapes government regulation inside the network
Hive fixes all of this.
While not strictly middleware in the enterprise sense, it definitely acts as a bridge between a number of different systems, facilitating communication and improving functionality, and with @vsc.network coming out soon™, it might be an opportunity to consider this narrative for the HIVE protocol going forward. Could HIVE lead in the "bitcoin middleware niche"?
You know...
Yes, I can send you bitcoin, I just use a different protocol under the hood.
You don't even have to say it like that. You don't have to say anything.
Just send.
Hive is the protocol that does magic under the hood.
It's a thought.
Are Hive and Bitcoin a match made in heaven and we just haven't talked about it enough?
