What about ths question:

Bitcoin may be the greatest medium of exchange (MoE) in digital (for one, message, offer and acceptance and the value is sent together, and final); and it may someday become a UoA.

But can it's store of value (SoV) be sustained without continuous net positive buying using fiat money?
(Albeit, the fiat system is doing all it can to help by sending flight capital to it.) What I mean is that if people substantially stop buying it bc world political and banking situation stabilizes (unlikely), what happens to price.

I do see another utility: That value (w/finality) and the message can be together now. This never was possible before.

(Saw the article at ZH.)

No “miner” stands between you and Bitcoin participation. Consider that a node effectively connects to all miners, and note that you can mine yourself, trivially, but it very unlikely you can be your own ISP. There are no “IP addresses” to be allocated by institutions at the Bitcoin “second layer of the internet” nor DNS registration formalities.

It sounds to me like you are conflating running a Bitcoin node with mining. The latter is not trivial, not anymore – and requires a non-trivial investment in an ASIC miner and the infrastructure to host it (if only to isolate the sound they throw off). By contrast, you could run a full node on a Raspberry Pi.

I would also say that it is within reach for someone with even moderate technological chops to run “their own ISP” since it’s easy to get a residential broadband connection and from there you could run your own webserver, your own email server and anything else you can think of. It’s called “the sovereign computing” movement and it’s gathering steam.

Great input but I think you might be missing the analogy which is, this is another evolution of tech that functions just like what we already know. The internet does not work without ISPs. Bitcoin, the network, does not work without miners because there is no way to facilitate transactions (blocks); especially for the average users.

To make it clear, here are the answers from Chat GPT when asking if Bitcoin will work without miners and if the internet relies on ISPs.

– "No, the Bitcoin network relies on miners to function. Miners play a crucial role in the operation of the Bitcoin blockchain, and their activities are essential for validating transactions, securing the network, and adding new blocks to the blockchain."

– "The Internet relies on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to function. ISPs are organizations that provide the necessary infrastructure and services for users and businesses to connect to the Internet. "

Everyone can mine but it's financially a bad decision for most at this point. Additionally, without miners, the validated transactions from nodes will not be put into blocks, and without blocks being created the nodes would not be able to validate them.

Yes, you could say that nodes are like ISPs but between the two it takes miners to make it work just like for the internet to work you need an ISP (for most people).

Mining pools are already a form of centralization and you're seeing the same with LSPs on the lightning layer because it's too costly and time-consuming for the average user to figure out how to route a payment or troubleshoot a failed payment. At this stage failures are still relatively high. All of these things will be figured out, just like they were on the internet.

Much of these layers are laid out in old classic networking/security books like Counter Hack – https://www.amazon.com/Counter-Hack-Reloaded-Step-Step/dp/0131481045/ref=asc_df_0131481045/?adgrpid=60258872537&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnrOtBhDIARIsAFsSe52ijqxqebD1kcQsLMr7UPKCbdI71Rq4C5YVuv2yIho3kl15w6HUVRIaAr86EALw_wcB&hvadid=312176709100&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl&hvlocint&hvlocphy=9010952&hvnetw=g&hvpone&hvpos&hvptwo&hvqmt&hvrand=8185361773339714633&hvtargid=pla-490478970177&linkCode=df0&mcid=4dea59ed8f5c3bd7b407b0269111147a&psc=1&ref&tag

The description of "Miners" "that act similar to ISPs" is incorrect and utterly misleading. It is inconsistent even within the article where it says "without the need for an intermediary."

No "miner" stands between you and Bitcoin participation. Consider that a node effectively connects to all miners, and note that you can mine yourself, trivially, but it very unlikely you can be your own ISP. There are no "IP addresses" to be allocated by institutions at the Bitcoin "second layer of the internet" nor DNS registration formalities.

The risk of installing public profit seeking companies as some kind of gatekeeper and critical service for Bitcoin is obvious, and wrong.

Bitcoin needs mining, and every holder should do some as a service to their own security and consideration for the network.

Bitcoin needs mining, it doesn't need shareholder beholden, profit optimising, large scale commercial miners. The proposition that they are the unique source of Bitcoin's security ignores the known perils of centralised gatekeepers. That risk needs to be constantly front and center for all aspects of Bitcoin.