This picture is the very definition of clown bankers that have no idea what they're talking about.
Regardless of Bitcoin’s future ascent, or descent, the long-dated monetary liabilities of individual Americans are denominated in U.S. dollars.
Tackling their collective, fiat-based societal retirement challenge head-on leads to an interesting and important question: “what do you have to believe to be true for Bitcoin to be your vessel for savings?”
The answer: point to point – meaning, from today until your long-dated liabilities (e.g., your retirement spending) start coming due – and regardless of USD paper currency volatility along the way – you only have to believe one thing; that USD will depreciate relative to Bitcoin over that time period, as it has ~80% in the last two years (2018-2020) alone.
Remember that the most important trades are the ones we make with our future selves, that our search for eversounder money is an individual, intuition-based optimization, and that, instinctively, we know our survival depends on durably storing of our life force.
In this context, is it any surprise that millennials voting with their dollars, and with more distrust for traditional institutions than their forebears, have already made Bitcoin “the millennial savings account”?
-- an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
The State always grows. Participating in the democratic process only empowers it as devotees reward it through votes in exchange for entitlements.
Bitcoiners reject this. Understanding that the only winning move in politics is **[to not play](https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/an-honest-account-of-fiat-money-2018 )** - they abandoned the rules with a totally independent monetary system.
Bitcoin challenges the State’s most treasured privilege: **the ability to finance itself through inflation and seignorage**, as well as other repressive tools a large fraction of the world lives under - **capital controls** and **local exchange rate manipulation**.
This predictably enraged the State-dependents.
It is no coincidence that Bitcoin’s most hysterical critics overwhelmingly benefit from the state:
- academics, beneficiaries of the rampant government-guaranteed student loan bubble
- (ex-) politicians, who always turn their political clout into personal wealth
- journalists who were disrupted by the internet and reduced to simply peddle State messaging
- economists, forced to peddle Keynesian narratives for grant and tenure
- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of A Most Peaceful revolution, originally posted at
https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcon-a-most-peaceful-revolution
If you go on a rowing machine and row as hard as you can for an hour, you’d barely get a kilowatt-hour – 29 cents.
We got to where we are by channelling 10,000x more energy.
People used to hunt whales in order to get kerosene to burn a lamp. Then comes oil - 1000x more efficient
Oil was like fire - a primary energy network which allowed us to radically accelerate how quickly the economy produced new wealth/innovations
Bitcoin is practical money.
Ethereum is fantasy finance.
People used to hunt whales, boil their blubber to create kerosene.
Kerosene acted as an energy battery, allowing you to transport it and use the energy wherever.
Similarly, Oil then came and changed the game - it was a much better battery.
Non-intuitively, the cereal companies that introduced things like cornflakes were also in their own right energy battery companies. They figured how to stabilize food energy into a container that didn't bleed energy. They sold stabilized energy.
yo! #plebchain
Empire had to control their religion back in the day.
You can’t have somebody else own your religion because then they also tax your populace - England didn't want to have to send payments down to Rome.
The Catholic Church in the Venetian empire terminated with the Doge in Venice - not to the Pope of Rome.
There's a reason we call it the *Roman* Catholic Church - there were many others!
Venice started declining when they lost control of the church - they couldn’t afford it.
Even the US has “In God We Trust” on the dollar bills.
-- an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove
Unless Bitcoin becomes heavily manipulated or human nature changes, a new monetary asset that regularly grows in both popularity and usefulness will always be volatile.
To complain that nobody will use Bitcoin because it’s volatile is to say
> “Bitcoin’s adoption rate is so astonishingly fast that it will never be popular!“
If Bitcoin were _less_ volatile, would it have an even _more_ rapid adoption rate?
Bitcoin’s price has to go up as more people start using it, and if a _lot_ of new people start using it, then it has to go up _fast_ (that is, be volatile).
Unlike everything else, a higher price for Bitcoin does **not** reduce its utility - you just trade with smaller amounts.
In fact, a higher price makes it **more useful** because more people want to use it.
There is no reason to think that Bitcoin will stabilize in terms of other currencies. Once Bitcoin starts killing the other currencies, it will still be volatile, which will still indicate its success.
-- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of I Love Bitcoin's Volatility (2014) accessible here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/i-love-bitcoins-volatility
Money is, and has always been, technology. Technology for making our wealth today available for consumption tomorrow.
People assume there is a sharp line of distinction between what is money and what is not.
That’s false. Instead, throughout history, various monies (**plural**) have always existed simultaneously along a continuum of soundness, subject to competitive monetary network effects.
A non-exhaustive list:
- beads
- shells
- cattle
- salt
- silver
- gold
- cigarettes in all prisons
- tampons in women’s prisons
- gift cards
- airline miles
The key point is that monies are **a) always plural**, and **b) ever changing**, ideally slowly, to facilitate the development of civilization.
- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
The trillions of dollars of central bank-driven low or negatively yielding financial instruments demolish the dreams of savers and retirees, prohibiting an enormously large and growing group of individuals from meeting their retirement wants, wishes, and — tragically — even needs. Free money has consequences. Because it is not free. No matter how well-intentioned, runaway global money printing, and the resulting financial repression, is society’s largest global challenge.
-- an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
Today we think of a brand as a logo or as reputation. But it's more - it's certification too.
Back in the 1900s when cereal was invented, the top brands like Kraft/Hershey's/Post Cereal were trusted for their safety - that they won't poison you.
Stabilized starch being a new invention, it was important for people to be able to trust the brand.
In other words - branding is trust.
Similar branding can be observed in history - the reason we had coinage and bills stamped by the government was so that they can be certified.
The Florentine Florin was perhaps the strongest brand of gold coins in history as it was never devalued for 300 years straight.
In that sense, the Bitcoin brand is incredibly strong.
It is built out of code and cryptography so that you can reliably trust that it's going to do what it does every time - a hyper-sanitary ledger with no room for human error in it.
Further, it is superior to conventional brands because it doesn't have a single owner - a bad CEO can't come and ruin the brand!
Most of all - despite its perfect track record - you don't need to trust, you can verify.
-- an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove
Bubbles do not raise the utility of the underlying asset - a house remains the same physical asset regardless of the price.
Contrarily, Bitcoin increases its utility as the price rises due to network effects.
higher price → more marketing → more adoption → higher price → etc.
Unlike a simple asset bubble mania, the more people begin using a medium of exchange - the more its utility rises and the more valuable it is in this function for its users.
-- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Bitcoin Hypermonetization: Bubble Talk (2013), originally posted in https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-hypermonetization-bubble-talk-2013
Beyond the fundamental unfairness of both its temporal and, ultimately, uneven distribution, central bank money printing leaves the fidelity of an economy’s relative price signals in tatters.
-- an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
Bitcoin has 4 simple rules:
1. No confiscations
2. No censorship
3. No inflation
4. Anyone can verify rules 1-3
- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of Unpacking Bitcoin's Social Contract (2018), originally posted in https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/unpacking-bitcoins-social-contract-2018
Your finances are not your own - they are scrutinized and require approval at every step. If you operate slightly outside the mainstream, you risk getting your savings confiscated with no recourse - https://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/03/civil-asset-forfeiture-7-things-you-should-know
Gold has been a reliable store of value because of its scarcity and historically low annual supply growth of only 1-2%/year. There has never been a “gold hyperinflation.” Indeed, gold has held its value over the centuries, while hundreds of other monies have come and gone.
However, gold’s supply is not impervious to its demand. If, hypothetically, gold went to $100,000/oz tomorrow (up more than 50x overnight), we can be sure enormous resources would immediately shift to gold mining, and the miners would find some way, somehow, to accelerate its supply growth, driving its value down.
In contrast, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s annual supply growth, which asymptotically approaches zero over time, is now down to about 1%, on par with the historical annual growth in the supply of gold. While far from perfect, gold is Bitcoin’s closest real-world analogy.
However, the ultimate supply of Bitcoin is fundamentally limited by the design of the protocol itself and cannot be increased regardless of its value or the level of demand. Bitcoin is the first store of value in history for which its supply is entirely unaffected by increased demand. From this perspective, Bitcoin is better at being gold than gold – it’s even more salable across time.
-- an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter
**Bitcoinism** is an emergent philosophy, embodying a consistent set of many values:
- fair issuance
- austrian economics
- cheap validation (accessibility)
- voluntary opt-in (no coercion)
- individual self-reliance
- appreciation for strong property rights
- libertarianism
These are not *features* of Bitcoin - they are Bitcoin.
The values **are** the system, [the code simply **automates** the values](https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/unpacking-bitcoins-social-contract-2018). Bitcoiners are serious about retaining the foundational properties because to alter them is **to kill the system**.
Alternative projects hold their values very weakly - they pride [innovation over consistency](https://time.com/6223034/ethereum-merge-sanctions-flashbots/).
