Update August 2024: While I now have many more thoughts on this topic, these posts are time-capsules of my thinking. I'll preserve my original thoughts without edits to maintain authenticity. That being said, my perspective can be summed up in the first paragraph in this article by Jesse Myers.
Also read this for “bitcoin vs crypto”.
A friend recently heard I’m in the process of divesting of all other crypto assets, and just holding bitcoin at this point. Here are a few of my reasons:
- Start with the problem - fiat
- There are a lot of problems to solve in the world, but fiat is one that bitcoin is trying to solve. Fiat is a big global problem, and deeply unfair, for a myriad of reasons… but for the purposes of keeping things succinct, here’s one of them - we’re are all collectively living on credit card debt. Every month instead of paying it down, we’re making interest-only payments. Then, we take out moreeeee credit card debt. This is essentially the situation of almost the whole world. It’s a big fucking problem. Skim through these charts for when we switched off the gold standard and took a rocket launcher to the idea of living within our means.
- Money touches everything
- If we can fix money, we can fix a lot of problems. Financial inclusion, hyperinflation, remittance, the list goes on. Most people are not living in a place of financial privilege (dollar, euro, yen, etc.). Do other cryptocurrencies fix other problems? Yes, maybe so, but I’m putting my attention towards this one.
- I’m not that smart
- A lot of crypto is frankly over my head. So only focusing on really deeply understanding one single thing, it just makes things easier.
- US Government has officially blessed bitcoin
- At any given moment, the SEC may deem Etherium or any other crypto asset as a security, which would be a problem for holders. But with bitcoin, they’ve already deemed it a commodity/asset, and now we’ve got the ETFs.
- Truly decentralized
- The more I understand bitcoin, the more I trust there can really never be any kind of rug pull. There was no ICO or VCs that are pumping millions of marketing dollars into trying to grow it. It just does what it does, without anyone backing it. It’s its own organism. Like, who would promote the internet? The internet just exists. It doesn’t need a marketing team.
- Scams
- Many (if not most) are scams. How do you know which is which? The answer is research. And I don’t have that much discretionary time.
- The elegant architecture of miners and incentives
- The proof of work mechanisms are crazy the more I look into them… more than I have time to write about at the moment.
- One of my primary goals is being able to sleep well at night
- Deeply understanding bitcoin and having assurance that I’m not going to get a rug pulled on me gives me peace at night.
- What about Etherium? See below:
Written April 2024