Tuesday, 21 December 2021

So many posts & videos about offline onboarding of BCH merchants and users -- so where are the results?

BCH adoption is healthy. I am not 'bearish' about it, and there is nothing going wrong with it. But it has essentially been flatlined since early this year, and yet I keep seeing post after post, literally every day in here, about how this or that meatspace merchant or user is being 'onboarded' into Bitcoin Cash.

If all these 'onboardings' are genuinely creating more users, then where is their usage? Where is the steadily increasing traffic? It has been over a year now that 'physically onboarding the developing world' has been such a focus here, and I am not seeing the rubber hit the road on this.

Now look at online. There was a huge spike in transaction counts in relation to the site noisecash (which by the way also involved the developing world), and then when they started batching, the traffic went back down to 'nornal'. This effect alone massively dwarfed any detectable onchain effects of physical onboarding in the developing world.

I think the conclusion is clear: Meatspace onboarding, at least in the developing world, is a big fat red herring. Cryptocurrencies are an online technology and their main advantage and value proposition is for online commerce, not as much for in-person trade. Even the anti-censorship advantages of cryptocurrencies are neutralised in-person because you could just wear a mask and sunglasses, which is perfectly acceptable these days, and use fiat cash, which can't be traced back to you. In-person censorship resistance is not a problem that is crying out to be solved.

I am not saying don't try to onboard people in meatspace. I am saying that strategy is clearly not having much effect, and the idea of some that it should be focused on exclusively or heavily prioritised was clearly not right. No biggie. Just adapt to the realities and focus more resources elsewhere, right?

submitted by /u/powellquesne
[link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/rktal7/so_many_posts_videos_about_offline_onboarding_of/

No comments:

Post a Comment