This article was submitted by Henrik Kugelberg
Is Bitcoin dead? Every now and then – in fact more than three times per month since it’s conception – Bitcoin is pronounced DEAD or dying in media outlets.
That’s more than 460 times proclaiming the death of Bitcoin as if it were a fact according to The Bitcoin Obituaries. Why does this happen?
Defenseless but relentless
Of course this wasn’t, isn’t or will not be a fact since Bitcoin is such a remarkably resilient innovation.
What is worse is that normal press ethics do not seem to apply to Bitcoin. Just like the internet, Bitcoin (BTC) has no (known and official) creator to defend it, no official spokesperson and no lawyers … Most “coiners” will say that this is also the point; Bitcoin does what it is supposed to without a central point of decision or failure.
A limp comparison
The internet was of course also proclaimed a fad, a suspicious place for exchanging dangerous information like the terrorist cookbook and now as a tech responsible for the bad bad social media (SM). Any view with a few more nuances was deemed suspicious or even evil.
Some 20 years later life without internet is hardly conceivable anymore by most in the western world and closing it down or trying to control it is seen as an enormously repressive step.
The internet is a startup
I believe internet is still a startup and a testing area. We can’t say what it means to grow up mirrored and mirroring yourself on SM in the form SM has now. We don’t know how SM will change and we don’t know if the Metaverse – the full blown immersive online world – will be another mixture of good and bad – since it is built and used by people it probably – like most man built things – will be grey, neither all good nor all bad.
“People are dumb WE have to protect them”
The phenomenon is of course one where an enlightened elite sense a loss of control of the societal discourse and what the man in the street will actually know and think.
The Swedish publicist turned media mogul company Bonniers clearly stated this notion in their internal more than 100 years old proclamation:
“You cannot underestimate the common folk.”
Internet places responsibility outside itself. As a parent the struggle is very real: I CANNOT control what my kids will see and read when they get a phone and that is certainly very uncomfortable. If I were an authoritarian despot I would be terrified.
BITCOIN IS MUCH “WORSE”
BUT Bitcoin is a bigger threat to control than the internet, I totally agree.
That is if you are into preserving the status quo, if you benefit from the (broken) financial system, if you base your future plans on a system of galloping debt increases that WILL and MUST crash from time to time causing even larger debts, massive suffering and political unrest.
Bitcoin is an enormous threat to banks as widespread knowledge about it would cause bank runs all over the world.
Why is a large scale bank run devastating for both banks and governments? Simple: the assets you “have at your bank” are not lying around but have been lent out or invested at 40% and higher bank profits.
Pretty quickly the banks would have to say: I am sorry but we can only pay out a fraction of your money at this point. AND they will be aided by government crisis legislation.
Bitcoin is finite in the real sense of the word
Bitcoin is the only publicly available and traded finite asset in the world. Actually finite.
The limit of 21 million Bitcoin is hard-coded into the system and cannot be changed no matter what. Some 3 million Bitcoin are also estimated to be gone forever because of careless handling in the early days. On top of that there are the Satoshi wallets containing 1,125,150 BTC. That leaves roughly seventeen million for the rest of us.
Gold and the others
How about gold, diamonds, lithium and other valuable minerals, aren’t they finite?
NO.
To illustrate this let’s go to Uganda June 5, 2022.
Uganda just proclaimed a new gold ore finding that can be turned into “320,158 tonnes of refined gold.” In todays value that is almost $18 trillion – there are only $2.07 trillion U.S. dollars in existence today.
This gold discovery is not priced in on the gold market by the way …
Bitcoin volatility is like static on the radio
It is very tempting for all public voices to feel good and thrive when Bitcoin fall 20-60% in a matter of weeks, the power quire goes:
– Bitcoin is dangerous to the man in the street, see what happened to an investment made in the summer of 2021. We the elite must protect the common man by all means.
Simple counter argument: zoom out, apply a logarithmic scale and see an ever increasing price. Or look at every year lows.
For financial traders Bitcoin is also an amazing investment BECAUSE of the extreme volatility. He who can find the buy and sell points is bound to be happy.
Over time the Bitcoin value increases like clockwork.
“Bitcoin is dead, criminal, Ponzi, road to ruin …“
In my six years of Bitcoin life high-end finance people have warned people of Bitcoin WHILE stacking piles for themselves. Ever so often the market collapses have signs of manipulation and every drop large owners increase their holdings.
The most flagrant perpetrator of this semi treacherous behavior has been JP Morgan Bank: their CEO made many warnings and condemning statements while the bank at the same time was buying Bitcoin. They were also building their own cryptocurrency JPM Coin, used for remittances and sending funds between their own branches.
And now BlackRock are teaming up with Coinbase, why? High rollers want in.
Watch what the big guys do – not what they say.
Bitcoin is neutral, relentless and careless
Bitcoin was put into motion in 2009 and is still just doing what it is supposed to even in the turmoil of the new Roaring Twenties.
People will use it in good ways and bad; be scared and hope for its death; be excited and see idealistic visions; trade it in hope for big returns or simply ignore it until it affects society in a bigger way.
The point is Bitcoin calmly goes on with its chores and all around it the world changes from the waves created from this marvelous Nobel Prize-level invention.
