Freedom is the “Killer App”

Since Bitcoin became a functional cryptocurrency, many people have said that the next big step in order to achieve massive adoption is the invention of a “Killer App”, meaning the implementation of an app with such an appeal to the average person that worldwide adoption of the Bitcoin protocol would naturally follow.

Money is a serious affair for states. You can sing a song against goverment and still be free. You can even kill another citizen and still not get indicted. But you can’t create money (without government’s blessing) and still think that you will got away with it. I imagine big technology firms trying to take a slice of the money bussiness, but facing so much legal intricacies with federal government in the US, or the communist party in China, or the ECB in the European Union, that the simple thought of it is almost immediately dismissed.

Bitcoin is Bitcoin’s killer app.

Money and value not being related to any goverment’s will is the killer app.

But most of people has no time or interest in understanding this during good times. Only when things go sour and government’s financial failures emerge, common people start to ask about “alternative stores of value” and even then, caution is the norm (and this is not bad), so people tend to look at what known and trustworthy entities recommend.

And what they found is almost none of such entities talking about Bitcoin. But not for the reasons you could think of. Is not a lack of interest, is an excess of fear. Very few established brands will have the guts to defy the power of government to create money. Either we choose government officials with the will to reduce the state power, or we will have to wait until the moment when crisis got to a tipping point that will made decentralized currency inevitable. If the issue of government power over money is salient enough, the chances of the first (and less dangerous) option moves upwards, and everybody (except autocracies) win.

The only thing that will encourage massive use will be the entry of “reliable” companies in the ecosystem (I know this is anathema to some purist in the bitcoin ecosystem, but I am not writing this to describe the perfect end to the story, but the achievable end to it). And these companies will not risk to alienate big states against them, so will not get their hands on the technology unless they are guaranteed the freedom to experiment and innovate without putting at risk their profits facing angry governments.

If this will ever happen or not, depends on us. Will we ever raise the issue to the place it deserves? That is the killer question.