Hold on for dear life.
HODL is the greatest meme in the history of Bitcoin.
Without the OGs holding through 80–90% drawdowns, Bitcoin would have failed.
The HODL meme helped establish Bitcoin as a store of value.
But I think it may now be one of the biggest barriers preventing Bitcoin from going to the next level of adoption.
Last week I spoke at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong about this idea, with the goal of inspiring HODLers to get in the game and participate.
Over the past two years, I’ve traveled around the world trying to understand what Bitcoin adoption actually looks like on the ground.
And I’ve met people who aren’t just holding Bitcoin.
They’re building businesses with it, getting paid in it, teaching with it, creating communities around it.
In Bulgaria, I saw people building local circular economies and experimenting with Bitcoin mining. In Africa, I met people using Bitcoin as a tool for economic opportunity. In Indonesia, I saw a growing community organizing, educating, and building around Bitcoin.
What I’ve discovered is a rapidly growing, decentralized cohort of people using Bitcoin to participate in a global market that doesn’t require permission from a central authority.
And that changed the way I think about adoption.
One hill I will die on: Bitcoin doesn’t need more spectators. It needs participants.
We can’t expect Bitcoin to become a global medium of exchange if we never actually use it as one.
We can’t build a parallel economy by simply holding an asset and waiting for someone else to build it.
At some point, we have to move more than our money.
We have to move our time, energy, skills, and businesses.
That’s the shift I wanted to explore in my talk:
From owning Bitcoin → to building on Bitcoin.
And ultimately, from being a consumer of the network to becoming part of the network.
Because the next phase of Bitcoin adoption isn’t about getting more people to buy Bitcoin.
It’s about getting more people to build on top of it.
Thank you to everyone at Bitcoin Asia for giving me the opportunity to share these ideas.
And to everyone I’ve met along the way who is already building this future:
keep building. 🧡
Kyle Huber 