From the Philippines to El Salvador: the HODL Paradox
summary
A pilot boots a Lightning-based payment network on Boracay with Pouch, onboarding 250 merchants and a branded office, but six months later less than half still accept Bitcoin because tourists and locals rarely pay in BTC; similar rollout in El Salvador shows legal-tender status but persistent transaction scarcity. The claim: hardcore “HODL” culture suppresses real-world spending, hurting merchants, Lightning liquidity and developer revenue, so adoption requires hodl plus spend plus replace practical incentives.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction to the talk
- 1:24Bitcoin adoption challenges
- 3:07Case study: Boracay
- 6:10The decline of adoption
- 8:54Global adoption obstacles
- 12:26The hodl paradox
- 14:01Revisiting the hodl meme
- 16:06A call to spend Bitcoin
- 22:58Conclusion and announcements
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