Source: Coindesk; Compiled by: 0xjs@金财经

On January 2, Muneeb Ali, co-founder and CEO of leading Bitcoin L2 Stacks, changed his X profile from a simple “founding Man @Stacks" updated to "Wartime Founder @Stacks". The change signals Ali's recognition that 2025 is the year Stacks must pivot to focus on going to market and growing its user base, following a major technology upgrade in 2024. These upgrades include the long-awaited Nakamoto upgrade, which significantly increases the project’s speed and enables 100% finality for all Bitcoin transactions.

Ali said Stacks’ new positioning comes as cryptocurrencies are currently in a bull market, driven by the election of Donald Trump, and an environment expected to be more favorable for crypto development More appropriate.

“Biological changes send a signal to the community, ‘Hey, we know these times are different, and you need to act faster and more aggressively,’” Ali said in an interview with CoinDesk. "It's not that there won't be product upgrades in 2025, but I want to say that the product is no longer the focus of the work."

In the interview, Ali discussed what he would do differently with the Nakamoto upgrade if he could changes, his candid views on the Lightning Network’s slow progress in enabling Bitcoin payments, his expectation that the price of Bitcoin will rise by 2025, and his ultimate goal of getting 1 billion people to join the blockchain through Stacks. Ali will speak at the Consensus Conference in Hong Kong in February.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

How is the Satoshi Nakamoto upgrade progressing now?

Muneeb Ali: I still think Bitcoin needs a very, very good L2. One reason is that the user experience of Bitcoin does not change at the L1 level; you will never have fast, cheap transactions on L1. This is 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 is still a need for extremely fast, user-friendly Bitcoin transactions. I would say even Solana does this better than Lightning or anything else. So one of the things we want to do is have a Solana-like L2 for Bitcoin where you can move any amount of money extremely fast and have a great user experience. I think this is a goal we achieved with the Nakamoto upgrade.

If you could, what would you do differently with the rollout of the Satoshi upgrade?Something?

Therefore, the release of the Satoshi upgrade is divided into multiple stages. First, core consensus capital moved in April. Then we introduced fast blocks, but more complex transactions couldn't benefit from them. Then we had another release where more complex transactions could also benefit from it. But looking back, it felt like a trickle release. So people have high expectations every step of the way and then they're like, "Oh, it's not here yet, it's not here yet." So frankly, when it's fully rolled out, I think it takes away Some excitement.

Do you think that by 2025, 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 is 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 now, Bitcoin is far ahead of anything else in terms of adoption. So there was more excitement about Bitcoin L2 about a year ago, but that seems to have cooled down a bit. But I think Bitcoin is so important that people will come back to Bitcoin L2.

How do you think Trump will affect the trend of Bitcoin?

Big. Look at the people he picked, like David Sachs as a leading figure in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. He's a large LP at Multicoin Capital and knows a lot about crypto and Solana, so I think this will have a big impact. The same goes for some of Trump's other advisers. The United States and regulators have actually been working against us for the past four years. Now I think they're actually actively supportive and encouraging, which is a huge shift. This is helpful.

In addition, if the Bitcoin reserve plan is implemented, it will send a huge signal to the world. Even if these plans were implemented only at the state level, like Texas or Wyoming, it 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. While there are some reasons to believe the cycle might not be as intense, I personally still believe it. I would be surprised if we don't see $150,000 by the end of the year, but I do think we could see $200,000. That would be my highest expectation.

When will we see fast and efficient payments via Bitcoin?

We are working hard to achieve this goal. I think the Lightning Network deserves credit - there are a lot of loyal fans using it. But the technology is complex and not easy to integrate, and the Bitcoin community only really supports one project. I think the way to do this is to do it dozens of timesExperiment and see what gets people’s attention. What 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 Network is too difficult to integrate, let other projects give it a try.

If you go to Bitcoin conferences or listen to some of the top people like MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor, you will find that they have an attitude that Lightning Network is the solution and the only solution. They won't talk about any other L2s, which I think has something to do with some of them having their own tokens. The Bitcoin community doesn't like this. But I think they are at least slowly opening up now.

What issues are you excited to discuss at the Hong Kong Consensus Conference?

How do we bring Bitcoin to a billion people? That excites me and drives some of the technology decisions we make. If that's your goal, you'll start looking for L2 almost immediately, because on L1, a billion people can't even own UTXOs. I don’t know if many Bitcoin users realize that a billion people can’t own on-chain UTXOs on Bitcoin alone.

This is perhaps something that people rarely talk about in our industry. People are already embracing Bitcoin through Coinbase and Binance, and possibly even through ETFs. But that’s not what Bitcoin is really about. The essence of Bitcoin is decentralization, self-custody and direct control. We cannot forget this mission.