I don’t want your attention because I want you to like me. I don’t seek attention because I want to feel special. Truthfully, I don’t want your attention on me at all, but on the eCash project itself.
I’m not here because I think I’m a great writer. I don’t host Twitter spaces because I think I have a good voice, or because I’m good at talking. In fact, I hate the way my voice sounds, and always have. So it begs the question, why am I putting myself through this? Why work so hard to for your attention?
The reason is because I believe in something: that the world will be much a better place once we all use decentralized money not controlled by the state.
I know that may sound crazy to some of you, but I’m here to get your attention so I can persuade you that it isn’t crazy at all. That what is crazy would be to let this opportunity to finally separate money from the state pass us by and let central bank digital currencies take over.
I’m not saying the governments around the world are conspiring to enslave their citizens through their money. What I am saying is that a central bank digital currency would make it not only possible, but easy to do so. And why would we want to risk that?
I am here because I believe the eCash project represents our best chance of creating a new kind of decentralized money–unstoppable money–and I want as many people to see it as possible.
When Bitcoin first started gaining recognition in the world, it was for this exact reason. People saw its potential to replace the fiat monetary system and significantly increase the amount of economic freedom in the world. All by introducing a form of money that isn’t limited by borders, that can’t be stopped by governments or corporations, while allowing anyone to participate in the global online economy.
But since its creation, Bitcoin has made little progress in this regard. These days, the most influential Bitcoiners are focused on ETF approvals and Bitcoin being adopted not by people, but by governments. Neither of those things is what captured my imagination when I first learned about Bitcoin and how it worked.
I’m not interested in Bitcoin as an asset class, but as a currency. One that can fulfill the mission of becoming unstoppable money. But instead of improving the protocol and making a Bitcoin that’s useable as money, BTC has become crippled and useless.
Now imagine an alternate reality where Bitcoiners took a different path. One that actually relied on a roadmap that solved many of the problems facing Bitcoin such as long waits for block confirmations, the lack of a self-funding mechanism, and a way to scale the network to handle millions of transactions per second. Imagine a network that can be relied on no matter where you are in the world, how much or how little you want to transact, without having to worry about being censored, or being unable to afford the transaction fees.
I want your attention because I want people to realize this alternate reality doesn’t have to remain in our imaginations. It’s what’s being built with the eCash project, a Bitcoin fork that shares the same genesis block as BTC, but without all of BTC’s technical debt and all of that community’s baggage.
eCash is a continuation of the Satoshi project that isn’t led just by its leaders, but by its vision. The vision of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that “would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”.
While there are plenty of cryptocurrencies out there that claim something similar, I see eCash as having all the right ingredients to be the first to complete the mission. The eCash project is doing this by building both the cathedral and the bazaar, so that one day, we the people, can have a form of electronic cash that is so ubiquitous its unstoppable.