Bitcoin is not about making money
In my blog I talk about taking back control of your life. We are all more or less in control on our life but we are also all dependent of others for many things. To some extend it’s not necessarily bad to depend on others, I’m not pretending that I would love to live in the middle of nowhere, in a house I build myself and eating food I grow on my own (I’m not such fan of vegetables anyway), to relay as less as possible on others. Living in community and exchange with others is a good thing and is most probably in the human nature somehow (I’m not a historian, a biologist nor a psychologist by the way so take it as it is). I’m not saying either that we should refute anything a government can decide and stop paying taxes to live in total freedom and anarchy. However I have the feeling that we are more and more dependent on a handful of corporations and governments that are getting larger and larger while extending their power exponentially. The largest companies in the world are making shitload of money by controlling your data and much more. They pretend to be providing a free service to user but with all revelation made these last years you have to lie to yourself to still think it’s the case and that you are just a simple user. They are using their money and power to work hand in hand with governments that are eager to control their population even more while printing unlimited among of money to cover the ever growing debt without any solution in sight.
If money is power, why the most powerful countries are in debt?
One of, if not the most influential country in the world, is printing so much money that it has to increase its debt limit once again. Keeping its supreme title of country with the largest debt in the world. As of today the debt of the United States of America is over 2.3×1013 USD, that is 23 millions of millions of dollar, or 23’000’000’000’000 USD. Well I’m not living in USA, even if they have a direct or indirect influence on everyone in the world. Still Switzerland is at the 11th place of this infamous ranking with 1.8×1012 USD equivalent (according to Wikipedia), just about 10 times less than USA but with 38 less people as well… In fact almost every countries in the world are in debt except a handful like Macao and Lichtenstein. I’m not sure what it means as a direct consequence but that’s for sure a lot of debt!
At the same time, in order to get paid for our work, pay our housing, food, energy and everything we need (and don’t need), in a currency controlled by our (a) government, we are more or less forced to use several intermediaries that are taking big chuck of fee for the service. It’s funny that I can get a free credit card that is even giving me back 1% of my purchases as a cashback (Cashback cards, get 40CHF free on your first card with my affiliation code: FC40X2NUW. Thanks for support). Imagine how much money they are taking to the shops for there payment service. And imagine that your big bank asking you 3 to 15 CHF per month for your account plus 80CHF per year for the credit card is also making that much money and is not even giving you back 1% of it. There are so many money involved in the background that some new banks are making their entire business living only on these fee and are able to offer you a complete bank account for free with the lowest exchange rate on the market on forex (another money making, hidden fee, scam from banks and card providers). Like the Swiss Neon (best free bank account in Switzerland and best card for payment abroad and in foreign currencies. Use my code to get 20 CHF free by opening an account: 5G554P) or the UK based Revolut (affiliate link – Revolut offer free disposable virtual credit cards, one time fee 5 CHF physical card and multi-currency account with instant and free international bank transfer). Of course I’m taking part of this system and try to reduce the fee I have to pay to use it. But at some point when most users will move to cheaper banking and card services, what more can they do? If they are making so much money on fee, you are paying it while buying your groceries, clothes and everything. In small shops and business you can of course pay cash and probably negotiate a small discount, or in the opposite they ask you to take part of the card fee cost when not paying in cash. But do you think Coop, Migros and H&M are willing to give you 2-3% discount for paying cash? You can try.
Here I’m not even talking about how much you pay in fee to invest your well earned money in the stock market. While you are more or less forced to if you have some saving, otherwise your money will be worth less every day due to inflation and even negative interest rate on your bank account. The banks also decide how you can use your money. Want to withdraw 10’000CHF today? Most probably you can’t without asking them. Do you want to invest in cheap US ETF indexing the world stock market? No, sorry you are not allowed but we offer the same in 5 products that will cost you 3 to 10 times more. And even to have a bank account in the first place, not everyone is allowed to, even in Switzerland. In fact most people in the world doesn’t have access to a bank account. Banks and payment providers are just one part of it. You have to prove your residency? Pay a fee. Proof of solvability? pay again. You need to register officially that you own a parcel of land? Pay a fee. You have to certify any document whatsoever, pay a lot to a notary that is mostly selling his very expensive reputation by his signature and stamp.
Cryptocurrency is about taking back control of your life
All of these can be solve in a better way. A more direct way, with much less intermediary. Much less fee to pay on each side. A decentralized and trust-less way, free for all to join and use. You want to send any among of money to anyone in the world for a small fee? Bitcoin can do that. You want to certify a document that anyone can verify any time in the future without trusting anybody? You can do it yourself on the Ethereum blockchain. You want to sell your art online without intermediary taking most of your revenue for the service, do it on Ethereum or Polygon (because at the moment it’s a bit too expensive on Ethereum, victim of its success).
In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto has created Bitcoin. This was a response to the global crisis ongoing in an attempt to give back the control of money to the people. But Bitcoin is much more than a digital currency, it’s the creation of digital scarcity. Bitcoin is coded to be rare, to reach a maximum of 21 millions BTC in some future, around year 2140 by today estimation. There is not enough Bitcoin for each human to own one. But it doesn’t matter as Bitcoin can be split from it’s main unit, BTC, to it’s smallest decimal one satoshi or sat. Bitcoin has 8 decimal and so 1 sat = 0.00000001BTC or 1 BTC = 100’000’000 sats. So there will be plenty enough satoshis for everyone on earth to use it. And it wouldn’t be against the core principle to add more decimal if it would ever be needed, as long as the total supply cannot be increase. Programmed with capped and controlled supply, Bitcoin is rare while fully digital.
As Satoshi Nakamoto stepped out of the project while being still today anonymous and off the radar, the community has taken governance of Bitcoin in a complete decentralized way. This remove any central point of control or failure and spreading the trust on the network that is backed by something that is hard to produce, proof of work, which mean energy consumed. While being at the top of the controversy for its energy consumption, Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies, use the proof of work to secure the network and removing the need for trust in any single individual or entity in the system. This is the price to pay for trust-less security, that might be in fact much less energy consuming than the global banking and payment system when you take into account every actors and individuals involved to make it work. I know, it might still be a difficult concept to understand and to accept.
Bitcoin is valuable by how it’s made but it’s not made to be valuable
Bitcoin was made scarce in the purpose to be both a store of value and a mean to exchange value, thus to do payement. It’s by the core essence of Bitcoin that the most people want to use it as mean of exchange, the more they will want to get and own. The more people think it has value for it’s scarcity, the more they are willing to use it as a store of value as well. So there is a double incentive that tend people to use it more and hold more of it, making the demand higher as long as more people want to be part of it. As the supply cannot grow on demand, the result is that the price is going up with adoption. Until enough volume of the world monetary wealth and transactions have moved into Bitcoin. Unless a majority of the user suddenly or slowly decide to move out to another system, that would be better or not, for a reason or another.
It’s not clear if Satoshi Nakamoto and whoever was involved early in the project had in mind that it could end up as it is today. Maybe they though about it, not necessarily imagining how far it could go. But they didn’t care, it was about removing power from central authority, allowing anyone to be part of it. And as soon as Bitcoin could be use to buy a Pizza or a video games, early adopter did use it. Even if the Bitcoin spend could worth millions later, it is not important, it was about using it without anyone in control and be free.
Many people misunderstood or didn’t took time to understand what is Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies about. The hype around the price is misleading from why it was created and why people should adopt it. Price is only a side effect (that could be positive and negative) of the value of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies by their principle of digital scarcity, empowering of people and reshaping of the communities.
If for these reasons you want to part of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency community in general, it’s not too late to invest some money in it. By holding 0.002658BTC (114CHF as of the day I wrote it) you can be sure mathematically to have more Bitcoin than the average people on earth. And with 0.28BTC (12’000CHF) you will be already in the top 1% richest Bitcoin holder in the world. While it’s a lot of money for sure, it’s still quite accessible to many Swiss investor, probably much more affordable that you would have think about investing in Bitcoin. So buy today if you really want to be a part it tomorrow, for the best and the worst.
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Disclaimer I’m not a financial advisor, nor a professional in any kind of industry link to finance, cryptocurrencies nor tax legislation. I’m just giving my personal opinion and life advise about topics that I like and experiment by myself on my free time. My articles could always have mistakes, inaccuracies or lead to misunderstanding of a more complex topic. I cannot by any mean be liable for any loss or issue you could have by following any strategy or using any app or product that I mention in my articles. Using any kind of investment product, cryptocurrencies, smart-contracts, app or tool always come with a certain risk. Before engaging your data, time and money in any activities, always do you due diligence and get informed by yourself about the implications and risks.
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