Source: Coindesk; Compiled by: 0xjs@黄金财经
On January 2, Muneeb Ali, co-founder and CEO of the leading Bitcoin L2 Stacks, updated his X profile from a simple "Founder @Stacks" to "Wartime Founder @Stacks". The change shows that Ali recognizes that after a major technical upgrade in 2024, 2025 is the year that Stacks must shift to focus on entering the market and expanding its user base. These upgrades include the long-awaited Nakamoto upgrade, which greatly improves the speed of the project and achieves 100% certainty for all Bitcoin transactions.
Ali said that given that cryptocurrencies are currently in a bull run, driven by the election of Donald Trump, and the environment for the development of cryptocurrencies is expected to be more favorable, Stacks' new positioning is more appropriate.
"The biological change sends a signal to the community, 'Hey, we know that this time is different, and you need to act faster and more aggressively,'" Ali said in an interview with CoinDesk. “It’s not to say there won’t be a product upgrade in 2025, but I would say product is no longer the focus of work.”
In the interview, Ali discussed what he would do differently with the Nakamoto upgrade if he could, his candid views on the slow progress of the Lightning Network in enabling Bitcoin payments, his prediction that the price of Bitcoin will rise by 2025, and his ultimate goal of onboarding 1 billion people to the blockchain through Stacks. Ali will be speaking at the Consensus conference in Hong Kong in February.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
What’s the status of the Nakamoto upgrade now?
Muneeb Ali:I still think Bitcoin needs a very, very good L2. One of the reasons is that the user experience of Bitcoin is not going to change at the L1 level; you’re never going to have fast, cheap transactions on L1. That’s why a lot of people are interested in the Lightning Network. It’s been around for a while, it’s been adopted, but not a lot. Let’s look at it realistically.
So I think there's still a need for extremely fast, user-friendly Bitcoin transactions. I would say even Solana does a better job of that than Lightning or anything else. So one of the things we want to do is have a Bitcoin L2 like Solana where you can move any amount of money extremely fast and with an extremely good user experience. I think that's one of the goals we're working on with the Nakamoto upgrade.
Would you have done anything differently with the Nakamoto rollout if you could?
So the Nakamoto rollout was in multiple phases. First, the core consensus capital was moved in April. Then we rolled out fast blocks, but more complex transactions couldn't benefit from that. And then we had another rollout where more complex transactions could benefit from that. But looking back on it, it was like a trickle rollout. So people had high expectations at each step, and then they'd be like "Oh, it's not here yet, it's not here yet." So frankly, when it rolled out in full, I think it took away some of the excitement.
Do you think that by 2025, people's interest will continue to shift toward building and programming on Bitcoin as opposed to building and programming on Ethereum and other chains?
I think so. Bitcoin is like one of those things that's kind of in a league of its own; it's never going to go away. Even if you think about what's happening in the public markets and how many public companies are building Bitcoin treasuries right now, Bitcoin is way ahead of anything else in terms of adoption. So there was a lot more excitement about Bitcoin L2 about a year ago, but it seems to have cooled off a little bit. But I think Bitcoin is so important that people will return to Bitcoin L2.
How do you think Trump will affect the trajectory of Bitcoin?
Big. Look at the people he's picked, like David Sachs as a leading figure in crypto and AI. He's a large LP at Multicoin Capital and knows a lot about crypto and Solana, so I think that's going to have a big impact. The same goes for some of the other advisors Trump has picked. For the last four years, the U.S. government and regulators have actually been working against us. Now I think they're actually actively supporting and encouraging it, which is a huge shift. That's helpful.
Also, if the Bitcoin Reserve Program is implemented, that would send a huge signal to the world. Even if these programs are only implemented at the state level, like Texas or Wyoming, that would send a huge signal to the world.
What do you predict the price of Bitcoin will be at the end of the year?
I still believe in the four-year cycle, and I think the current cycle will end in the fourth quarter of 2025. Although there are some reasons to believe the cycle may not be as intense, I personally still believe it. I would be surprised if we didn't see $150,000 by the end of this year, but I do think we could see $200,000. That would be my top expectation.
When will we see fast and efficient payments through Bitcoin?
We are working hard to get there. I think the Lightning Network deserves praise - there are a lot of loyal fans using it. But the technology is complex and not easy to integrate, and the Bitcoin community is really only behind one project. I think the way to do this is to run dozens of experiments and see which ones catch people's attention. One thing I like about Bitcoin L2s is that there are so many different projects being launched and we are finally seeing multiple experiments happening. If Lightning is too hard to integrate, let other projects give it a try.
If you go to Bitcoin conferences or listen to some of the top people (like Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy), you will find that they have an attitude that Lightning is the solution and the only solution. They won't talk about any other L2s, and I think it has to do with the fact that some of these L2s have their own tokens. The Bitcoin community doesn't like that. But I think they are at least slowly opening up now.
What issues are you excited to discuss at Consensus Hong Kong?
How do we bring Bitcoin to a billion people?
That excites me and drives some of the technical decisions we make. If that is your goal, you will almost immediately start looking for L2s because on L1, a billion people can't even own a UTXO. I don't know if many Bitcoin users realize that a billion people can't own a UTXO on-chain on Bitcoin alone.
This is perhaps something that people don’t talk about very much in our industry. People have accepted the introduction of Bitcoin through Coinbase and Binance, and possibly even through ETFs. But this is not what Bitcoin is really about. The essence of Bitcoin is decentralization, self-custody, and direct control. We can’t lose sight of that mission.
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