Bitcoin is a revolutionary form of digital cash that has provided the world with a new vision about money and the decentralization of power. The feeling of being one’s own bank, of being in control over the currency, has spread like wildfire around the globe. People suddenly understand the basics of finance again, what it was like on the early days of capitalism when money was something you actually stored and controlled.
The feeling that the present day financial system is all too virtual has made investors skeptical. How can central banks “print” trillions of dollars without it having consequences? How can a central institution control the economy by simply choosing to print more money or drain money from the markets through interest rates? How does this virtual economy relate to the physical goods we consume on our daily lives?
Cryptocurrencies have revived these questions and many more. If the population has the power to regulate, mint, spend and invest a new form of currency, then why do we deposit so much power in the hands of so few with our traditional money? Millenials look at the legacy economy and ask where’s the blockchain? How can I verify these transactions made by big banks and corporations? When the answer is “no you can’t audit these transactions” new generations do not understand how we’ve gone so long using such an opaque system with such little transparency and accountability.
Bitcoin is not just a cool technology that was masterfully crafted from solid cryptographic principles. It’s an idea, a concept. People can suddenly audit every transaction, monitor every issuance of money, everyone gets clear rules about inflation and monetary policy. Humans can’t manipulate Bitcon’s algorithms, they’re set in binary code and they’re agreed upon everyone. The rules of Bitcoin are self enforcing, they’re hard coded in C++ and cannot be changed unless agreed upon by the community. Bitcoin is democratic, open and transparent. Perhaps too transaparent.
In the decades ahead we’ll look back and we’ll ask ourselves how we could’ve gone so long using a financial system that lacks accountability and transparency. How could we have allowed centralized institutions to invent money for such few people for so long? How could we have allowed new generation’s buying power to be eroded so much by centralized institutions who took that value for themselves by printing money indiscriminately? How could we have accepted to work more and more for the same purchasing power, just so that centralized institutions could print money at will to pump their own accounts artificially?
The end of the gold standard in the early 1970’s was surely a step towards a more modern financial system. After all, why should one particular mineral resource be the standard? Why not uranium? Why not carbon and diamonds? The only reason to have a gold standard was the rarity of gold, its durability and resistance against the effects of time and speculation. People want gold for many reasons. If there was no demand for gold, it’d be but a soft metal that isn’t really good for most mechanical applications. Folks who’ve never dealt with real gold don’t realize that pure gold can be bent using your bare hands, it’s soft to the touch, if you bite it it’ll leave a dent. Gold isn’t a very strong metal, but it’s gold and people want it. It’s rare and there’s demand for it. These are the requirements for anything valuable: it’s got to be rare, last long and there has to be demand for it. Bitcoin fits in perfectly.
But we don’t want to go back to the gold standard. We’re actually moving towards the Bitcoin standard! Bitcoin is so much more abstract than gold. It’s not a single mineral, it’s not possible to hide it, it’s transparent, public, its monetary policy is hard coded into digital contract written in C++, it is rigid in its rules and cannot be manipulated by politics. Bitcoin is better than gold in every single financial aspect. Gold might have its application in health, luxury and electronics, but Bitcoin wins hands down when it comes to finance.
Which brings us to another reason to buy Bitcoin: it’s an excellent store of value. Every rich person has expensive paintings and artwork. Is it just for the decorative value? Is it just for the brief moments where you show that beautiful Carrara marble sculpture to your other rich friends? It’s not. Art is a great way to store value. It is high value density, you can store hundreds of thousands of dollars in a square meter, hang it on a wall and most thieves have no idea the most valuable item in your home isn’t the Ferrari on the garage. Here, Bitcoin also wins hands down. One tiny little hardware wallet, stored in an unsuspecting location, can store more money per square inch than all the paintings in the world combined! Bitcoin is liquid, can be bought and sold in an instant, it requires no sophisticated processes to be turned into cash, no auctions and receptions, no social graces to attend. Just flip the Bitcoin over at any exchange and bam, cash.
Why buy Bitcoin? We could go on and on with infinite ideas why you should hold some Bitcoin. There’ll only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Think about it, not every millionaire will be able to own a full Bitcoin! There are actually a lot more millionaires than there are Bitcoins. By the pigeonhole principle there will be many more people that are unable to buy a Bitcoin than those who are able to. The future will be dealt in Satoshis, not Bitcoins. People will own fractions of a Bitcoin and those tiny fractions will be worth a lot of money, whatever money comes to mean in the future. When Bitcoin reaches its pinnacle, “money” value per Bitcoin will not matter because Bitcoin itself will be the circulating currency. A lot of new investors don’t seem to grasp this concept but the end goal is not to have millions of dollars in Bitcoins, but for Bitcoin itself to become the circulating currency so that you don’t need to exchange your cryptocurrency for US Dollars!
It’s an interesting period where we’re seeing the average people, The People, question our financial system. The People are asking questions, they’re curious about finance once more. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general have sparked a new interest in monetary policy. Millenials demand more transparency, they demand to know why their money is worth less and less while there’s more and more concentration of wealth in the hands of so few. Anyone who’s mined their own Bitcoins at home will be asking how we could have gone on so long without a transparent system like Bitcoin. Big banks are joining the revolution, the legacy financial system has realized that the transparency brought by cryptos is irreversible. The financial system will adapt or perish and we suspect that they’re well on their way to adopting Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
We hope this opinionated and subjective article has given you a new perspective on money and finance in general. Owning Bitcoin isn’t just owning a piece of the future, it’s a statement. Not only that, but it can also be a very fun and financially rewarding journey into the future of finance.