Bitcoiner 2029: another ten years

What follows is an imaginative and imaginative account of how the world could look in 2029 and how Bitcoin could evolve to revolutionize the economic, monetary and free market systems. Unfortunately, the machines of the time were not invented in this speculative future, so we could not verify the accuracy of the narrator's experience – please take the following story with a healthy grain of idealistic salt.

As I walked on the asphalt, the West Coast's lively, high-pitched winter weather broke me. The sun set over the western bay in a splendor of sherbert splendor. About twenty miles away, I imagined the golden glow of the Golden Gate extending over the bay, that bastion of the twentieth century industry merging with the background gradually dimming the impalpable light of the day.

I was immediately reported to my first crypto conference in the Bay Area about 11 years earlier – right on the edge of the cryptic craze of 2017. A nascent industry, we found ourselves positioned in an ecosystem that was challenging the economic norm with fever and hard persistence. Bitcoin was a revolution and we were accelerating a movement that would upset the monetary realm as we knew it. It was an emotional moment; we were building the future.

Now, the same waves of excitement that I experienced in 2017 turned into the euphoria of triumph. The future we imagined: we had built it.

An act of randomness, the consequence of this triumph greeted me as I descended from the asphalt in the warm and aseptic fluorescence of the SFO airport. Hailing at the door like a faithful old guardian, with peeling paint and brittle for the lack of care, a disused currency exchange booth sat like the dismantled relic of a different time.

The sight evoked memories of my childhood when my father took care of the fees charged for currency conversion at these stands.

"12 percent?" he would say incredulously. "It's a real theft! He should have done it in advance in the bank, of course, their rates are still bad," he always admitted.

I laid my hand on the linoleum countertop.

"You had a good fight, old man," I murmured, giving the cabin a sympathy.

A janitor in earshot looked up from the tiling floor and gave me a dubious look, with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm sorry, I'm just remembering," I replied awkwardly.

Gathering my composure, I headed for the baggage claim, picked up my baggage and proceeded to the rideshare section of the terminal. I opened my Decentralift app and requested a car.

Waiting for my passage, I looked at the news of the day on my BitLive app.

The New York Times : 3 January 2029: "In the new year, POTUS, Congress Wrestle With New Economy"

The Wall Street newspaper : January 3, 2029: "Investment banks face bankruptcy while Wall Street's debt crisis worsens"

Bitcoin Magazine: January 3, 2029: "The mining war in China and Russia with the West is about to become more channeled"

Millennial Daily: 3 January 2029: "The European Parliament convenes the emergency session in the shadow of the global economic recession"

Times: "Pressures: Parliament on the verge of overcoming the law on encryption in place of the adoption of the European Union"

I paid 1,000 sats for the NYT is the headliner, and I even bombarded for Times also the article, mainly for sentimental reasons.

Waiting for my passage, I opened the NYT article and started reading.

President Ables, recently elected and the Democratic-controlled Congress, continue to look at the barrel of a currency crisis while the Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan continue to bow under the pressures of bankruptcy.

These closures are the culmination of a change in the financial paradigm that began when Congress passed the "Cryptocurrency Recognition Law" of 2027, the legislation that classifies cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as legal tender under US law. The law was dictated by the growing demand for bitcoins and other private currencies from US employees and a wave of adoption when major brands such as Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Nike and others started accepting bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as the only payment method.

The Congress will meet with the President and the Federal Reserve, as well as the CEOs of the nation's largest private banks, on Thursday to discuss the crisis and intervene on a relief plan.

"The COIN law was a kind of security plan, which equipped the United States with the most powerful mining operation on the planet, and we actively liquidated parts of our precious metal reserves in favor of bitcoins and other cryptids" President of bank commission of the Vicente house González he told the New York Times.

"However, Thursday's meeting is of paramount importance and we also recognize the need to help these financial institutions to improve our economy and our components, while we are facing a paradigm shift in monetary policy".

The representatives of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and the Federal Reserve declined the New York Times comment request.

"A long time to come," I murmured to myself.

A European change was also under way, with the European Parliament having just voted to recognize bitcoin as legal tender. The legalization was, in part, encouraged by the actions of member states such as Germany, France, Norway and Spain which approved individual legislation to give the status of cryptocurrency as legal tender, while the popularity of the euro continues to get worse.

The rest of the EU will still have some recovery to play, I reflected. The Scandinavian countries (taking a cue from Canada) have started creating giant mining farms in the early 20s, making good use of the abundance of renewable energy that these countries have produced with hydroelectric dams. There is no doubt that it will cut what González called "the most powerful mining operation on the planet".

Not to mention that the resources of Russia and China have been poured into mining industries and the escalation of what is turning into a multinational and decades-long mining war. Now that crypt is becoming the monetary standard for international trade, this is not your grandfather's commercial war. What will happen will make the embargoes of Trump's era appear like a training exercise.

I was almost halfway through the article when my Decentralift stopped. "Mike Tesla Model Mike Black Mike B. has arrived." My phone played.

Using my Watchlet smart watch, I scanned a QR code outside of the rear door handle, the smart RSK contract immediately unlocked the door and jumped in.

"Welcome to Mike B.'s self-driving car, Colin Harper!" the car scratched, my name was distinguished by that strange, too mechanical accent when AI jumps from its library of fixed phrases to something as variable as the name of a new passenger.

"Thank you for choosing Decentralift today.Thanks to your dedication to responsible ridesharing, you've saved 2.14 grams of CO2 emissions."

As the self-driving car continued, a decade of perspective became my rear-view mirror. The first go-around, my Lyft fare was about $ 35 from the airport to my accommodation at the Red Victorian. This time, my Decentralift was 14,000 sats.

I reviewed the ratings of Mike B.'s reputation on the Decentralift app. Mainly good – an evaluation of 4.2. A common problem: motorcyclists have complained that Mike's car had a disquieting smell, a miasmic mixture similar to chlorine and fragrant pine scents. Many have found it overbearing. My guess was that Mike was a bit of a bully of the OCD, probably obsessively cleans his car to free it from the invisible remains of strangers strangers who use his vehicle every day.

A copy of Time The magazine sat for free time reading in the back pocket of the driver's seat, and the very humanizing gesture struck me as ironically ironic from an autonomous vehicle. "From the renegades to the revolutionaries: as the first evangelists of Bitcoin have built crypto-empires in the shadow of the suspect", read the cover.

About ten years ago, some outsiders could have defined our work as revolutionary, and some might still call us revolutionaries. Most of those willing to give the industry a pat on the back and a gold star were those who were already working on it. Even those who thought there was a good job to do were rather skeptical.

But for many, we were rebels – or worse: anarchists, marginalized, basement dwellers, drug dealers, scammers, dark web hawkers, money recyclers, degenerate gamblers, tax evaders. Our currency was baseless, our intentions were unscrupulous, our technology had been overestimated and our vision was dangerously against the current.

So, the New York Times He published articles such as "Everyone is getting rich and fun and you're not"; now on the front page there are stories about how bitcoins and crypts have started to overthrow an almost centennial fiat economy. Thus, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller called it "an interesting experiment, but … not a permanent feature of our lives"; in 2028, Satoshi Nakamoto was the first anonymous person who received the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Outside the right window, a strip of bitcoins and billboards connected to cryptography advertised the same companies that the revolutionaries had built.

"No Internet – no problem! Run a full Andromeda node directly from your mobile device to send and receive payments anytime and anywhere using Blockstream's Bitcoin Satellite.For more information, visit blockstream.com/satellite."

Another card marked with the slogan "Your data, your content, your value … Recover your online independence with Bitlive". On it, a knight dressed in a code-shredded binary wielding a Bitcoin shield, defending against a dragon, exploding the shield with a breath that seemed to consist partly of the legal language of the Terms of Use.

I chuckled a little to myself, recalling the inexhaustible list of ICOs and token projects that sought to solve the problem of monetizing content. I did not need a token for that. The irony of the fact that the billboard, in part, is a stunt for the industry replaced by BitLive has also struck me as good entertainment.

The rest of the record was full of physical memories of the progression of space. They continued to roll, going out to exit, in the form of billboards and company names emblazoned on the tops of skyscrapers. At one point, Zug, in Switzerland, had earned the nickname Crypto Valley for the density of cryptic companies attracted to the region for its accommodating legislation. Silicon Valley had reached, along with many other cryptographic hubs: Toronto, Canada; Vaduz, Lichtenstein; Seoul, South Korea; and other.

Our "distant" visions were materializing.

Renegade to the revolutionaries.

I reached the Intercontinental just before 18:00.

"Thank you for choosing Decentralift today, Colin," buzzed artificial intelligence. "Do you want assistance with luggage?"

"No thanks," I replied and grabbed my carry-on bag.

Upon entering the hotel, I checked the details of my reservation on my watch and went straight to my room on the 21st floor. Next to the elevator was a banner for conferences, one of many on display throughout the hotel.

" Welcome to Bitcoin 2029: the Premier Bitcoin conference Below was an impressive list of speakers, some very respected old standards, other exciting new voices.

Andreas Antonopoulos was coming out of a sweaty sabbatical. This was the first conference he would have been keynoting since 2026. Samantha Styles, who had made his name during the 2025 Hard Fork Wars, spoke of "Crises in Consensus and the Importance of Decentralized Governance". Elizabeth Stark, Colter Simpson, Gail Tenpenny, Adam Back, Preethi Kasireedy and Jun Li were giving technical demonstrations. Roger Ver was also speaking, after returning to the Bitcoin community following the 2018 Bitcoin Cash Chain Split and a five-year journey of introspection.

Reached the 21st floor, I found my room and opened its door with my Watchlet. The room offered a large view of the city. Observing the vast urban landscape, I noticed a massive crowd of protesters concentrated in the gardens of Yerba Buena. The crowd was pouring from the adjacent Moscone Convention Center, spilling over Howard Street and clogging its way at the expense of any potential traffic – and to the detriment of participants at the World Banking Expo, which was taking place in the convention center.

"Maybe Caleb is among them," I wondered.

Cousin Caleb remained in my mind as I left the hotel to go shopping. A donation crypt center directly outside the entrance to the Intercontinental has made its situation even more moving. I headed for the burnt orange box, no bigger than the abandoned ATMs (bitcoin or traditional), whose omnipresent uselessness was still full of cities all over the world.

These donation centers date back to the early '20s, the project of an anonymous yet resolute group of crypto philanthropists, but it was not until the recent monetary / debt crises that they started to spread in numbers from a day to the 39; another.

They were built to redistribute the cryptic wealth to the nocainists and those who do not have adequate access to bitcoins, people like Caleb. Caleb invested money in the ecosystem, he simply put it in the wrong places. Like many others, he accepted his salary and turned the card into stablecoins. But he did not buy anything like Dai or a currency supported by algorithms – he put his money in fiat-collateralized coins.

Cue the rapid devaluation of the dollar and the international monetary crisis. The hyperbutination was great for those of us who saw it coming, but it was painful for others and there is a lot of work to do to smooth out the economic disparities.

I predict that we will see many more protests like the one that will hinder the World Banking Expo in the next decade, I thought, scanning my Watchlet to give 0.0025 BTC to the cause.

As I entered the Locavore supermarket near my hotel, it made me grateful every service it was exclusively online yet. Some IRL experiences can not be beaten, I thought.

Collecting my groceries, I checked the tracking information for each item on the blockchain. Now, it was easy to understand if a store was misrepresenting the origin of a product and whether its attributes, whether organic or not, were correct or not. Locavore rarely hesitated in its mission to provide "transparent and locally sourced food", but I checked it anyway – it was always fun to weave the network of farms where food came from.

Exploring the corridors, some items shared a bitcoin and a USD price tag; others have completely removed their USD price tags. I was a little shocked to see the denominations in USD, but I rationalized that a gradual reduction of the dollar was probably a responsible move by the store.

I proceeded to the cashier.

"Welcome, valued customer". The tone of the self-checkout chips debunked in his automatic voice. After I finished scanning my items, he asked me if I wanted to round off my purchase to donate to Crypto Giver, the same organization behind the donation boxes. Acquiescing, I paid and I returned to my hotel.

I went to the bar to get a beer and get ready for a panel that I was moderating: "What they meant two decades for adoption". At the end of the 10s, Bitcoin's utility was exposed in countries like Venezuela, Iran and Turkey. But the sudden assault of the Second Great Depression would have given the first world a taste of what a decentralized monetary system meant for an economy rooted in rampant inflation and chaos ravaged by debt.

Maybe you think I'm hyperbolic, but it was not until a global economic crisis was at the height of (or more extreme) of the Great Recession that the bitcoin could really be tested on the battle. Satoshi created it in response to an ubiquitous market disaster, but it would take another disaster (partly stimulated by the same problems as the first) for the currency to function holistically as Satoshi intended: a global currency without permission freed from centralization, the control of a monolithic entity could prosper for the people as a hedge against inflation and monetary instability.

I ordered a fort when these thoughts came to my mind and penetrated my notebook. The bar used the Andromeda satellite network to allow me to pay from my card without having to connect to the Internet, which still makes me think while I think back to the early days of Lightning.

Finishing my stout, I thought of some of the changes that had seen the last 10 or 15 years: from layer 1 to layer 2 solutions, from light wallet clients to light nodes on smartphones, from Lightning to Andromeda, from basic payments to contracts smart every day. What was originally the case with digital money and a deflationary economy had taken root in the free market and turned into an ubiquitous and decentralized economy.

During my first trip to San Francisco, the bitcoin was known only through the hype and still considered a marginal technology. Now, it was changing the way we interacted with everything: donations, groceries, hotel reservations and rideshares. He had grown bigger than the skeptics could imagine and even bigger than what his first proponents could dream of.

Leaving the bar, I headed for the speakers' dinner at 7:30 in Cheekwood, the first restaurant in the United States to start accepting cryptography only as a method of payment.

Just like the first to adopt space, Cheekwood was mocked by food critics and their media. It would not have lasted the month, they mocked. "Probably the most idiotic decision in the history of catering in San Francisco," wrote a critic.

But it prospered, and has since become a watering hole for crypto enthusiasts.

It was all too appropriate, therefore, that we chose to break the bread at Cheekwood on the eve before the conference. Far from a last dinner, the meal personified everything that the industry had gone through in its twenty years of existence: ingenuity, mockery, perseverance and victory.

The decentralized future had won.