TIL Gresham’s law. Briefly speaking, it’s about how bad money drives out good money. Used in the fiat context, people will prefer to get rid of worn-out notes and keep their fresh ones, demonstrating how the currency perceived to be more valuable will not be in circulation so much. As for the Bitcoin vs fiat context, it refers to how people HODL Bitcoin because they deem it to be more valuable than fiat.
Which makes the mindset you Stackers have all the more admirable. You actively use your sats not just on gift cards, but also on merchants that directly accept BTC payments. You encourage newbies like me to check out btcmap.org to seek out local merchants who accept BTC so as to foster a circular economy. Some of you even manage to receive your salary in BTC via bitwage. You are free and independent of fiat.
But the question I have is, if we all know that BTC is scarce and its value will increase in the years to come, how can you bear to let go of your sat stash right now? What was the turning point that made you determined not to hoard your BTC and use it with an open heart?
When I start earning bitcoin, not buying it anymore. Being paid directly in BTC, it change your perspective totally. Slowly you start thinking only in sats when you spend them. The price in fiat will be meaningless.
I know this is quite visionary that for many is hard to understand, they are trapped into fiat mindset forever. They MUST break those chains and look forward.
Also there's another aspect that many are looking wrong:
Few really understand this meme.
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Damn, that's an amazing quote, probably the best one i've seen, ever. It goes beyond being a mere meme.
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I live in Singapore. I checked out bitwage - seems that it has not expanded its services to the Asian markets yet
But what I think I can do to fortify a more-inclusive BTC mindset is to utilise the BTC Lightning Network more often. Swap the shitcoins I get for minimal effort to sats n use gift cards or btcmap.org haha
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I initially had a "cash out into fiat" mindset after the 2021 bull market, and my genius IQ husband simply asked:
"... to do what with it?"
He explained that if we didn't spend the fiat we would just watch it lose purchasing power over time.
Real wealth is measured in the number of sats not dollars. People lose sats by moving it back into fiat and by buying assets that don't grow as fast as bitcoin.
That was my aha moment!💡
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The turning point is a long bend for most HODLers, who develop along the way a mosaic of intelligence as they learn more, gain confidence with custody, and bitcoin becomes boringly dependable. The road straightens, there are no surprises, and every dollar that isn't going towards a near-dated bill is saved in bitcoin. You know your balance is there, just like the current USD price unavoidably is on all the apps you use. First principles become a mental habit, bringing with them a strong sense of what's right and wrong, which is to say charlatans in the space are easy to identify, so are shady BIPs, and bad economic stewardship. Then the asset's price action fades from importance, as does the Bitcoin Twitter crowd, and your mind relaxes, your node is doing what it's designed to do. You open a window, and can hear the birds sing amongst the green contrasts. 🌳
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Beautiful. Almost poetic.
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But the question I have is, if we all know that BTC is scarce and its value will increase in the years to come, how can you bear to let go of your sat stash right now? What was the turning point that made you determined not to hoard your BTC and use it with an open heart?
Simple, spend & replace.
Anything you buy with fiat has opportunity costs since you could have bought bitcoin with it.
Hence if you buy something with bitcoin, you can buy the same amount of bitcoin with fiat afterwards so you did spend bitcoin but replaced it again. Same stack as before. Just as if you bought whatever you bought with fiat.
The turning point was when I realized this.
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When I found out everything was a lie. And all I want is to be left alone and live my life, Bitcoin enables me to do that.
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Grashams law breaks apart when you earn btc as salary and you have to convert to fiat to pay for most thing. Paying with bitcoin then becomes prefered method cos its just faster, eaier, cheaper, better. Anywhere. Plus if merchant keeps it, you get warm fuzzy feeling you helped someone stack.
Noobs buy bitcoin Pros sell fiat Gods buy fiat ;)
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I switch direct deposit back and forth from fiat to bitcoin based on random whims, the opportunity cost is the same for the most part, I earn a set amount of value which I can either spend or save. Sometimes I spend my value with bitcoin, sometimes I spend my value with fiat, always save my value in corn.
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I think the one thing that that pushed me over the edge apart from getting rekt on shitcoins is when I started pricing all my other efforts/investments in bticoin and I could see how badly I was underperforming just hodling and doing my work, I was like why am i reading all this nonsense, trading, buying all these other assets, following all these talking heads and still doing shite lol
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Gresham's law means that, for example, if you have a silver one dollar coin and a paper one dollar (or any metal less valuable than silver) in circulation people will naturally get rid of paper and hoard silver. Are similar in denomination but substantially are different in value.
Doesn't apply to BTC vs fiat.
If we want BTC to grow and succeed we should use it as much as possible and onboard as many as possible. Every additional user makes the network unproportionally stronger.
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Exactly. Gresham's law is most of the time misunderstood, for bitcoin it would mean spending KYC coins and saving the non-KYC
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This is such an astute insight. Thank you
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The clown flue and the following policy approach was the last kick in the ass I needed. To me BTC is the peaceful method to fight back the overreach of this swamp of parasites.
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Education & time. Still getting there too
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