The rise of Bitcoin has in the recent past caught my attention and I am closely following it. It has become clear that Bitcoin requires to be scaled. The more people start using Bitcoin and the faster technology is being created, the busier it becomes leading to high transaction costs. This condition of congestion does not make Bitcoin accessible for daily usage.
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Therefore, one of the most significant things that happened was protocols like Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes coming into existence. As a result, there has been an increase in users as well as demand for the Bitcoin network. Such interest and activity are awe-inspiring but it means blockchain is under great pressure also.
During the past few years, the cost of transactions has climbed from $1.50 in 2022 only to jump almost 9 times higher this year alone. In turn, these increments cause small transactions to fail and thus act as a deterrent for frequent purchases with bitcoins by people who want to buy something regular basis. With such high transaction fees, bitcoin can never go mainstream; systems that process payments quicker and at lower costs are needed instead.
Possible ways forward include the adoption of technologies like the Lightning Network. This network can allow off-chain transactions and avoid congestion that happens on the main Bitcoin blockchain reducing transaction fees. Additionally, other measures such as RGB, Stacks, BounceBit, and Merlin are more recently coming up to assist in relieving network burden.
Bitcoin cannot be for millions until these scaling solutions are implemented. Consider what would happen if only 2% of the world population started using Bitcoin for just ten transactions a year. The system gets overloaded and prices go up drastically. Scaling solutions should be seen not as some sort of desirable improvement but as indispensable to Bitcoin’s future.
Bitcoin can't achieve its peak because there are obstacles that have not been addressed yet even though it has great potential. This makes me optimistic since already members of our community and developers are working towards this goal. There is so much taking place – it’s exhilarating watching how things unfold.
I think that scaling solutions will play a big part in the growth of Bitcoin. If we had proper tools or innovations, bitcoin could be easily accessible by most people enhancing its use among many other possible uses by users at large over time giving rise to an era where affordable digital money can easily replace paper notes in every part of the globe with efficiency being part of the transition process.