To write about Bitcoin in a short paragraph is like talking about the Internet in 1995 before the Internet became a global information network.
There is another problem in talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best form of money that has been invented so far. But most people don’t really understand money although everyone uses it. And so while we don’t understand money, we have to understand the potential of Bitcoin ‘as money’ and now rather than a page, I need a book. Luckily one is already written, The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous, which I highly recommend.
I have been in Bitcoin since 2014 now and have experienced a lifetime’s journey in the last 5 years. If there’s one thing I would like you to take from this article is that you simply cannot ignore Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not an ‘option’, an opportunity, like a stock which you might consider investing in, an asset you might look at. The Internet was not something which you had the ‘option’ to use. It became The Network. No one today has a choice about the Internet. We all have to use it.
It’s only a matter of time when you will be forced to use Bitcoin. Why?
Because Bitcoin is the Internet, the Internet of money, the Internet of storing value.
Before the Internet, we had different channels for information. Telephones and radio for voice, newspapers for text, television for videos and so on. The Internet continues to absorb all of these channels to become The Information Network. This is because the Internet is the only network which is not controlled by any entity, country or organization. It is decentralized. And so anyone can innovate, develop products on the Internet without anyone’s permission. Over a period of time, this innovation became exponential and no other network could keep up and all innovation now happens on the Internet.
National currencies are controlled by central banks and since there are no limits on their creation like in the case of gold and Bitcoin, they are inflated away by excess creation. This has been going on since before 1971, when the USD exited the gold standard. This year due to Covid19, the creation of USD was so unprecedented that it became visible to everyone. When I spoke about this in 2015 in my YouTube video, link in the footnotes below, no one understood it.
And so in our current USD world, just like pre Internet, we use different channels to store value. Because USD is not scarce and is infinite, we are forced to store value in other scarce assets like stocks, real estate, precious metals, art and so on. As Bitcoin becomes more scarce, it will absorb the store of value of all other assets returning them to their utility value and increase Bitcoin’s market cap to the amount of money in the world. Bitcoin will become the Internet of storing value.
And at that point, Bitcoin will not be a choice, it will be money, the Internet of money.
To get started on your bitcoin journey, read the amazing book The Bitcoin Standard. You can also check out the Bitcoin 101 playlist on the YouTube channel Sunny Bitcoin or visit sunnybitcoin.com.
Note from Ariel Shlien
Check out this link to a speech given by Sandeep back in 2014 when Bitcoin was under $1,000. The explanations and insights provided are excellent, easy to understand and looking back, have been proven highly accurate.
YouTube video: https://youtu.be/pmU28mgihB4
For more information, please contact Ariel Shlien at ariel@surefirecapital.com