R/Bitcoin What if Bitcoin wins? \ stacker news ~AskSN

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416 sats \ 20 comments \ @User21000000 17 Feb AskSN

What if Bitcoin wins?

Thought experiment here. Assume BTC wins, goes to a gazillion and effectively kills off fiat currency. By definition owners who keep holding it aren’t spending it, meaning there is no investment elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be bad if we didn’t invest in other things?

(OP on Reddit. I will post a link to OP so they can see the stackers responses )

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14 sats \ 1 reply \ @alt 17 Feb

The question itself sounds fallacious the way OP has phrased it.

By definition owners who keep holding it aren’t spending it,

This makes sense, you can't invest and save the same unit of money simultaneously.

...meaning there is no investment elsewhere.

This doesn't follow from the first clause. The fact that savers don't invest doesn't preclude the existence of investors, and in fact somebody can be both a saver and an investor.

Therefore OPs question:

Wouldn’t it be bad if we didn’t invest in other things?

is seemingly irrelevant. Yes it would be bad if nobody invested in anything, but there's no reason to suspect that investment would cease entirely on a Bitcoin standard.

The reason people tend not to invest their Bitcoin today is because there are no investments that can generate a positive return in Bitcoin. It is always more profitable to simply save the Bitcoin. Once the whole world is on a Bitcoin standard, it is very likely that Bitcoin's value will stabilise, making it possible for shrewd investors to invest it profitably.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Yes that’s a good view. Once it does stabilise then people will look to invest outside just saving in bitcoin

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @denlillaapan 17 Feb

Constraint of the stomach. Eventually people spend.

Plus, much investment now is for monetization reason, (mal)investment in whatever for investment's sake ... Can't hold money. So less investment might make the world better off, not worse

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Make things stand up by themselves instead of being propped up by investors

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @flat24 17 Feb

I think we will never reach that point of "everyone buy only bitcoin and they don't invest in more."

I consider that greed and greed will always exist, which will lead to other financial instruments or shit products (beach bars) in what people seek to win at the expense of speculation, as is currently the case.

And the Fiat, I do not think it is worth disappearing. 🫠 It is a weapon too powerful for governments, they are going to find a way to maintain their scam in operation. (At the end of the day ignorant people are a majority) Only those who learn from Bitcoin will save us, but that does not mean that everyone will learn.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

But if say it did win surely governments would find a new way to scam you?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @LibertasBR 17 Feb

In my view, Bitcoin will succeed when it is used as a currency by the majority of people, not just as an investment asset.

What makes a currency successful, in my opinion, is its circulation. As long as many still see BTC primarily as an investment and few care about using it as a currency, it is not truly “winning.”

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Once it’s able to be used openly as currency without every thing being a tax event!

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Aardvark 17 Feb

If bitcoin wins and there is no more fiat, then people would invest their bitcoin into projects.

On a bitcoin standard, bitcoin will become incredibly stable. It will still gain value over time, as it is a deflationaey currency, but nowhere near the rate it does now. Therfore, you'd want to invest your bitcoin into projects that yeild a higher return, also in bitcoin.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Any excess wealth people will be able to work on more community projects or businesses would this be a world of no debt? I guess not people will still borrow I guess but borrow Bitcoin? And have to repay it interest would be high due to the quality of Bitcoin?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Aardvark 17 Feb

The interest would be based on the risk of the investment that the lender was taking. It would probably be higher than it is today, because defaulting on a loan is a much lower risk for lenders currently in fiat than it would be in bitcoin.

Side note: I'm announcing a bounty program later today. On fridays I'll be asking what people have done to promote SN this week, and this post will be admissible even though you made it before I formally announced the bounty program.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Nice I have been doing this every week or so sharing a post like this one. Just hope the stackers show the knowledge in the comments so that if any R users do click the link they get bulk value

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @userbob6 17 Feb

Asset managers save money for their clients and save it at the same time. Blackrock holds Bitcoin from all over the place. People buy their shitcoin ETF as an investment in Bitcoin, effectively treating it like a savings.

20 sats \ 6 replies \ @User21000000 OP 17 Feb

Would the bitcoin world mean alt coins are all gone or I guess they will always exist as some will be trying to get more bitcoin by trading them

20 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 17 Feb

No, if there are no protocol changes, it just means that the status quo changes where instead all of the alts being pegged to BTC/USD like they are now, they'll probably peg to something/BTC. Bitcoin divisibility (currently only 1 order of magnitude higher than USD/EUR/CHF coins) will probably cause there to be more alts and more scams/rugs.

We're already seeing an uptick in LTC usage for small purchases, even outperforming BTC according to bitpay stats for a couple of years now (that afaik exclude LN, do take it with a grain or a UT size lake of salt.) The tx volume growth on LTC by itself does however support the hypothesis that there will be an increase in activity on alts the lower BTC divisibility vs everyday product prices will become.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @userbob6 19 Feb

I can't really roll with this assessment, as it fails to take into consideration the fact that Bitcoin is the only asset of the entire universe of assets that is truly scarce. The problem we are running into isn't divisibility, it's really just that we are so early, because hardly anyone is even aware of such a concept as scarcity and how intricately it Is involved in the fundamental economic landscape. The scarcity of Bitcoin is s it's superpowet that the sycophants of fiat hate so much. A bitcoin world means they might and their family might actually have to work for their taking, instead of printing it, which effectively enslaves everyone who doesn't have a printer.

150 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism 19 Feb

Okay, let’s ignore divisibility. 

My assertion (before we talk about divisibility because that is a technical issue) is grounded in the belief that anyone can copy bitcoin (MIT license permits this) and that because it is possible it will be done. That doesn't mean that it's good, at all, it just reflects reality:

Bitcoin has no protection against someone else creating another Bitcoin, so this scarcity only globally exists when there are no bitcoin clones or forks. The difference of our views is that ironically you’re having a more optimistic view of humanity whereas I have a more pessimistic one: I would be (pleasantly) surprised if the whole of humanity (and in theory every intelligent organism in the universe) can forever agree on something.

I think that the only reason that Bitcoin works today is because it’s free (as in speech) and that it’s supposedly censorship-resistant (we don’t have practical evidence that it is in all situations and there are some theoretical scenarios in which it is expected to fail) but overall you have an expectation of your property rights being honored: not-your-keys-not-your-coins. It's the ultimate property law, expressed in code, defended by global consensus (= people choosing to honor the code.) It’s important to remember that consensus ultimately is created by people making choices (also see Eric Voskuil’s chapter on what he calls “Crypto-dynamic Principles”) and that anything is only as secure as what the people are willing to suffer for. Example of why uninformed people will not act in their own self-interest: BSV shills didn’t mind that their cryptographically enforced property rights were weakened 😂

If however it turns out that Bitcoin is fully censorship resistant and every real attack fails, then every clone of the mechanism that ensures this for Bitcoin is resistant to this too, and its users cannot be forced to sell whatever asset they have. If the government truly cannot confiscate or censor your bitcoin, it can also not confiscate or censor any of the bitcoin clones and forks, unless of course the mechanism that is enabling the government to do so is an implementation choice/bug in a specific clone/fork. In fact, I’d argue that censorship breeds forks, because the latter is the only absolute defense against absolute enforcement of the former, and ultimately a feature that protects you. After all, what if Saylor leeches all the sats by printing fiat and refuses to sell them to you? How will you get paid if there is zero liquidity?

I think that Bitcoin doesn’t need to be the only monetary thing to ever exist. It would be a great pump-the-bags event but because of that also socially untenable. One has to just look at the tail end of the history of the global gold standard to see how wars will fuel wars will fuel wars and your enemies and allies will cheat you alike if you’re the guarantor of “the bitcoin standard” - as that means you will always get dumped upon, just like Europe dumped upon the US in WW1.

I hope this makes sense, but I'm interested to hear you argue otherwise, if you do, please provide a rationale of your claim that "the fact that Bitcoin is the only asset of the entire universe of assets that is truly scarce" and how that can be true when BCH also exists, and how what Saylor is doing now can be reconciled with "A bitcoin world means they might and their family might actually have to work for their taking" - as I don't really think Saylor is "working", but maybe I'm old fashioned.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @userbob6 19 Feb

The day the Bitcoin white paper was posted, something miraculous happened.

Satoshi Nakamoto--whoever he is doesn't matter--did not just create or invent Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin as rationalized to represent the portion of "crypto" that includes any forks and clones, as you've described.

At this point today, it's neither here nor there.

What matters is not the thing detailed in it (peer to peer electronic cash system) or it's purpose to give people an alternative to traditional banks (peaceful revolution against money printers) but rather the cryptographic tabulation of a finite money (applied scarcity) to represent the entire planet's body of value. Be it commodities, real estate, hard assets or services. And it's the very transactions performed within it that comprise the funged portions of this money as well as it's security. The genius of this is extraordinary and widely underassessed.

It's a discovery, really. Not just a clever invention.

Far greater than the invention of the world's first perfect money is the discovery of true scarcity. Clone and fork all you want, Bitcoin will always be Bitcoin. And none of the clones or forks will ever be Bitcoin.

This is because no imposter can prove that it's been cryptographically processing transactions since 2009 or before with 100% uptime, more failed attempts at hacking than there are days between now and then, zero successful attempts, inmune to 51% attack, etc.

In my studying, only one thing could bring about it's failure. Ok, two things.

If someone spent coins from the initial million minted in the beginning, Bitcoin would fall like an anvil straight down by the end of the day. Or if someone invents a working time machine.

So long as that never happens--and it's a legitimate fear that anyone placing investment of any kind in it should have--Bitcoin will continue to stand as an immutable rock in the typhoon of swindelers and slavers that swirls around it.

It's a legitimate fear, but as you say, I'm very optimistic that it never will happen. Not because I'm believing in humanity to have a good enough heart--i know damn well if doesn't--just that i think one human could be selfless and stupid enough to swallow the key to such an immense mountain of wealth upon realizing that it might actually save mankind from the thralls of modern slavery.

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