The original promise of Bitcoin was that it would free people from dependence on a banking system many consider corrupt, unethical, arbitrary and unaccountable. 12 years on, can it be considered anything other than a failure?

Sure, phenomenal performance as a speculative asset and made many people rich - that doesn't replace a financial system though. Volatility = poor and risky store of value, as well as a difficult-to-use medium of exchange/

/(due to constant fluctuations, numbers mean so little - you just have to mentally operate in fiat and constantly convert back and forth)

I'm asking these questions because I was (and still want to be) a believer in its original promise. I want to be free from an arbitrary banking system that can sanction and cut people off as easily as social media apps do. Is there still hope?

Paging @gladstein and @La__Cuen who I trust to care, please tag any other smart non-dogmatic people who care about this space - I want to hear thoughts, solutions, applications etc.

Making my line of thinking more explicit - as a person who runs a human rights NGO and deals with activists every single day, what can I _do_ or tell others to do? I can pay people inside authoritarian states censorship-free, converting to FIAT at both ends, but that's it.

And as an NGO head, I can't want to make an annual budget of $__ and then wake up one morning and find I have Y% of that available. Which means I'm locked in FIAT banking, dependent and vulnerable. That's what I thought Bitcoin was going to fix.

I want to commit to this idea and technology (including w resources), what do I do? I feel those developing this stuff don't see people like me, only speculators who tweet #HODL all day.