I cursed Bitcoin for three years—“you can’t do anything other than trade it”—and now my face hurts a bit
Let me say something embarrassing: for a while I kept telling people that Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative is just a fig leaf—what can it actually do besides holding and waiting for it to go up?
A friend rebutted me, saying the Lightning Network can be used for payments, and I shot back: isn’t WeChat Pay/Alipay good enough? Someone else said Bitcoin is the safest; I scoffed: what’s the point of “safe” if it can’t put food on the table?
Then these past two days, Babylon taught me a lesson.
Over in the Lightning Network, I’m now genuinely using it with real money. Last month I went to Hong Kong on business. A café had a sticker saying “supports Lightning payments.” I scanned the QR code—funds arrived in about two seconds, and the fees were basically negligible. In that moment, I suddenly understood—Bitcoin isn’t incapable of payments; I just hadn’t gone to use it.
But what really made my face hurt was Babylon. It made Bitcoin do something I’d never even thought of: turn that “safety” into something you can sell. Does the PoS chain need credibility backing? Fine—Bitcoin will stand behind you, but you have to put real money on the table, and if you do evil, they confiscate. As a holder, my coins just sit in my wallet doing nothing, yet I can still get a share of the revenue from a security service.
The Lightning Network turns Bitcoin from a gold bar into cash; Babylon upgrades Bitcoin from cash into an insurance company. One is a payment engine, the other is a security engine. Bitcoin suddenly has two legs—going from “only something to hoard” to “can act and can earn.”
All those things I used to say about it being useless—I look back now and realize it was my own shortsightedness. Bitcoin isn’t useless; its usefulness is only just now being unpacked piece by piece.
#baby $BABY @BabylonLabs_io
Let me say something embarrassing: for a while I kept telling people that Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative is just a fig leaf—what can it actually do besides holding and waiting for it to go up?
A friend rebutted me, saying the Lightning Network can be used for payments, and I shot back: isn’t WeChat Pay/Alipay good enough? Someone else said Bitcoin is the safest; I scoffed: what’s the point of “safe” if it can’t put food on the table?
Then these past two days, Babylon taught me a lesson.
Over in the Lightning Network, I’m now genuinely using it with real money. Last month I went to Hong Kong on business. A café had a sticker saying “supports Lightning payments.” I scanned the QR code—funds arrived in about two seconds, and the fees were basically negligible. In that moment, I suddenly understood—Bitcoin isn’t incapable of payments; I just hadn’t gone to use it.
But what really made my face hurt was Babylon. It made Bitcoin do something I’d never even thought of: turn that “safety” into something you can sell. Does the PoS chain need credibility backing? Fine—Bitcoin will stand behind you, but you have to put real money on the table, and if you do evil, they confiscate. As a holder, my coins just sit in my wallet doing nothing, yet I can still get a share of the revenue from a security service.
The Lightning Network turns Bitcoin from a gold bar into cash; Babylon upgrades Bitcoin from cash into an insurance company. One is a payment engine, the other is a security engine. Bitcoin suddenly has two legs—going from “only something to hoard” to “can act and can earn.”
All those things I used to say about it being useless—I look back now and realize it was my own shortsightedness. Bitcoin isn’t useless; its usefulness is only just now being unpacked piece by piece.
#baby $BABY @BabylonLabs_io