Those are the attributes of BTC, yet many treat it as an investment product i.e. Michael Saylor has not acquired millions of BTC to facilitate payments. At the same time since BTC was created there has been significant innovation in the payments space that have made it easier for cross-border payments, and payments more broadly.
I guess that was my point - its not as narrowly defined as payments only. On payments, I agree that there has been plenty of innovation relative to payments outside of the bitcoin network itself (even if a lot of it might also implicate blockchain tech).
Trust and censorship are nuanced, the fast majority of people trust central governments or trust them enough not to adopt Bitcoin. The need for government backstops and interventions is still needed in financial markets.
It certainly covers trust and censorship resistance better than many other options - although we don't need to look at things as black/white. There are times and places where there's greater need not to trust third parties or where censorship resistance is more important and other times/places when those things are not as important. It's good to have the optionality.
As regards backstops/interventions relative to markets, I agree. There's no reason why the best of all worlds can't be harnessed for the greater good. Nobody should look to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
At the end of the day, Bitcoin as a payment system has a novel technology use but it is still just payments. It can't really be compared to the internet.
Payments is just one string to its bow. As regards comparing it to the internet, I'm sure there's someone somewhere who has - but I haven't seen that here (other than a comparison of the market development relative to bitcoin and the internet). I see it as an extension of the internet, a continuance of internet development.
It isn't pigeon holing when the very premise of Bitcoin is as a payment system, as the first line of the whitepaper outlines....."A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow onlinepayments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through afinancial institution."
This has come up before. Why should it be boxed in by a whitepaper? The argument seems to go that it was designed for x, it's not doing x sufficiently, its failed at x - hence its a failure and any use of it for other purposes reflects that failure. I don't see it that way. Firstly, its been debated as to whether payments was its sole intended purpose since we know very well that its founder(s?) referred to its store of value properties. Its often happened with innovations that they've found other use cases over time. Look at AI right now. Nobody truly understands the entire effects that tech will have in all cases.
As a payment system it doesn't look like it is gaining much traction, perhaps in part because it has changed to be predominantly an investment product. That is my view, I think it is already failing as a payments system.
I see it differently insofar as there is cross-over between the various use cases - they are and will continue to serve to compliment each other in many ways insofar as achieving further network effect and growth is concerned.
The technological aspects of the technology 'blockchain' can be replicated by USDC/USDT with the stability of fiat backed currency which is why stablecoin payments are growing.
Stablecoins are a definite innovation - no question. If bitcoin was a one trick pony (payments), that might be a problem. It's not so I don't think it is - and with that, I'd imagine that there's no reason why both can't continue to progress.
