Why Bitcoin Deservers Your Attention
A new national consciousness.
Hello,
Bitcoin's recent surge to new heights isn't just a headline; it's a signal. As we witness history in the making, it's crucial to understand the transformative power of Bitcoin and the new national consciousness that has arisen with it.
Most Bitcoiners don’t think of Bitcoin as an investment. It is a breakthrough technology that allows you to move wealth through space and time. It is not about getting rich in fiat terms. It is an exit, not a detour. It is about measuring your wealth in Bitcoin not the U.S. Dollar or Euros or any other fiat currency. Your wealth held and controlled by you. Because of this it is never too late to use Bitcoin to your advantage, just like it’s never too late to adopt electricity or the internet.
Bitcoin represents a shift towards a more decentralized and equitable financial system. If you disagree, I encourage you to check your financial privilege. And if you think you’re going to get solid advice from your boomer finance bro they probably don’t have the requisite knowledge to judge Bitcoin, especially if they think of it in the context of a stock or bond instead of a monetary technology or currency.
Bitcoin is an autopoietic network that is internally stable and can’t go bankrupt, the antidote to the corruption of fiat money. It is an entirely new thing, something that is so profound, so alien, so novel, that most people fail to appreciate it. I don’t blame them, most people know nothing about cryptography or networks or money or open protocols. Consequently, most people are easily fooled.
What is so revolutionary about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is absolutely scarce, Bitcoin’s issuance is fixed in time, Bitcoin can be stored in your head, Bitcoin can be sent at the speed of light, Bitcoin can be verified by anyone easily and cheaply. Every single one of these points is revolutionary in and of itself. We never had a liquid asset that is absolutely scarce. We never had a man-made currency that didn’t have an issuer (central bank), we never had a marketable good that was just words, i.e. learn twelve words by heart and you can flee your country with your wealth intact. We never had high velocity money without having to rely on credit. For the first time in human history we have money that is pure information, something that stores value in bits and bytes directly without having to rely on a trusted third party. And because it is pure information it can be sent to anyone at the speed of light with near-instant settlement. Unfortunately, these features are lost on most people.
Bitcoin is not credit, it’s not an IOU, not a promise, not reliant on any counterparty, not a liability. Like gold before it, it is not backed by anything, it is the desirable thing itself. It is money. Pure, undebasable money.
Bitcoin is useful as a comparison to fiat currencies because it provides a counter balance to the inflationary monetary policies of fiat currencies. This is clear by looking at the Bitcoin chart and comparing it to different fiat currencies. Make no mistake, all fiat currencies are inflating, and in 2020 the US dollar inflated by 30%-40% which is more similar to the inflation rates seen in a third world country or emerging markets.
One of the arguments I often get from traditional finance bros is that Bitcoin doesn’t produce anything of value. This is 100% wrong, and it requires some basic understanding of it's blockchain protocol to understand why. Let’s start with the fact that every 10 minutes a new valid block is produced. Every 10 minutes the whole system increases in reliability and stability independent of price. Inside these blocks transaction data and information is stored. This information is broadcast across a decentralized network of connected computers all running the same Bitcoin software. If anyone of these computers tries to erase or change this data the entire network would see it and that computer would be cut off from the system – this is why Bitcoin is immutable money - and significantly superior to double entry accounting systems.
There is zero ambiguity, subjectiveness, or wiggle room as to what is allowed and what is not allowed in the Bitcoin protocol which makes Bitcoin the single best self-regulated asset. As long as new blocks are coming in there is nothing to worry about. That’s all that matters because with every new block in the chain another chapter of unforgeable history is being written and the core promise of Bitcoin is kept. I will not steal from you, neither through debasement nor confiscation.
If you think that Bitcoin should produce anything else, like yield for example, you are still looking at the world through a fiat lens, bound to the view that you must put your money to work. I emphasize that view, as a stock trader I too was looking (and still do sometimes) at the world through the same fiat lens, but with time it became apparent to me that printing money does not enrich society, but it does just the opposite.
If you don’t believe me, then please respond and help me understand how the increase in paper pieces can possibly make a society richer, and if that were the case, why there is still poverty in the world? Isn’t every central bank in the world capable of printing as much paper as they want? I’m sure you cannot answer this type of question although I encourage you to think through it more.
The most difficult thing is to get rid of the fiat mindset, which requires one to step back and ask some very simple questions about money. Why do we have it? Why do we need it? Why does it have to be scarce? Why can some people print it while most people have to work for it? And so on. These are hard questions. Those who run the money printers don’t want you to ask WTF happened in 1971?
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
This is not a moralistic crusade, this is an eye-opening revelation and exiting the fiat matrix is different for everyone. I hope you understand that when an unelected group of centralized planners print trillions of dollars out of thin air and politically distribute it to a bunch of corporations, lobbyists, and financial institutions this action is equivalent to erasing the economic existence of an entire lifetime worth of care, judgement, and decision making for of billions of people. In the context of the free-market, printing money could not be more anti-free market because printing money subverts everything about what the free market does and why the free market works. Printing money moves money away from the free market and into the political space.
The lens you use to look at Bitcoin matters a great deal. Step back, look at blocks not price, time not yield, base money not credit. Most of all know that money is a technology used to store time and energy, and because bitcoin uses energy it makes sense that the future of bitcoin mining resides with those who find the cheapest most efficient sources of energy. Despite all the shenanigans that are currently going on I’m hopeful that a new national consciousness has arisen. After all you can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
This article was inspired by podcasts from https://bitcoinaudible.com/ and based off the article “Dear Crypto & Fiat Bros” by dergigi.
If you enjoyed this article, have any questions comments or feedback please let me know. If you’d like to be a client and receive personalized help in your journey into bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, please also let me know. Most importantly, if you're looking to start adding Bitcoin to your portfolio here are some places I have used myself.
Kind Regards,
Jeff Tiefenthaler
Jeff Tiefenthaler is the founder of Trading Tech and Consulting LLC.
Jeff is an experienced FinTech entrepreneur, accredited investor, and brand ambassador with two decades of experience trading in US stock and options markets, 15 years consulting for Microsoft brands such as Xbox, Windows and Office. He’s been featured in CoinMarketCap and awarded number one for articles with the highest views, top 10 for projects by Engagement Growth, top 10 for projects by community followers gained.