Thread

I'm sympathetic to your perspective and held the same one for a long time. I consistently have to check myself even now. Those who are struggling, and I'd include myself in this, are not struggling because of a failure of Bitcoin, but because of personal finance. Spending less than you earn is the only place to start. Only then can you invest the difference in a new system that will measure deflation and reward a low time preference. Bitcoin will always 'go up' when measured against pieces of paper over a long enough timescale.

In general ai agree, however when the barrier to sound finance (without significant lifestyle compromise) is raised every year there are smaller and smaller percentages of people who can maintain the balance. Additionally in considering 60+ retirement age people there are 'fixed income' options, but all are risky and losing purchasing power from what I can see.

You can pay for some bills using bitrefill or the bitcoin co.

Yes there are many work arounds, but the suppliers of a vast majority of goods and services are requesting fiat (for now). That transition could happen faster than many anticipate.

I mean, that is fiat that you’d be giving them. Or are you referring to cash?

Yep but you’re still paying in fiat. It’s not a p2p transaction.

And this is exactly why I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint. I did a pod last year with Jeff and have written articles using the Titanic as an analogy for this very position. You can recognise Bitcoin as the lifeboat, but if you're underwater on the bottom deck of the Titanic and you can't breathe, then a lifeboat won't save you in time. That's why I'm a big believer in reading the likes of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and 'The Richest man in Babylon' as a starting point. You've got to pay yourself first and save something (in bitcoin) for your future self. It's existential. You'll then start to see the polarity of the two systems, as one gets worse and the other gets better. And clearly, fiat inflation will make life more and more difficult in this system, but Bitcoin will reflect this, literally like a mirror image. It has to. Both paragraphs you've written are absolutely true. And it will get worse and worse. So the question should be which system are you going to give more of your energy to if you know this? Honestly, I tread a horribly fine line in my day to day life and have witnessed it as a small business owner getting progressively more difficult for several years. But transferring what energy you can into Bitcoin, both literally and financially, is the only thing I believe you can do. I just see it as a priority, not as something to do at the end of the month.

I agree with everything you said there. I also wrote an article using Titanic as a metaphor. Personally, I put as much of my time and energy in the new system as possible. My whole life revolves around Bitcoin in most ways, which is great. However I think telling people not to measure bitcoin in dollars is ignoring the current reality we are living in. For example, if Bitcoin consistently lost fiat value year over year nobody would want to own it. It would have minor advantages over dollars (self custody/ censorship resistance ect), but I think NGU is fundamentally essential to bitcoin's success. Claiming otherwise ignores economic reality. Maybe that's not Jeff's point or yours, but that's what I'm hearing when I hear someone way to stop measuring bitcoin in dollars.

That is exactly it Matt. Lag time + greed and fear. As a small indicator of what you’re talking about - many PE funds in real estate have halted redemptions because if the assets were marked to market -insolvency would reign. While the market “waits” for more liquidity….ie - money printing. Trying to measure it in shorter time horizons, against an increasingly chaotic insolvent credit based system is what keeps us stuck. In time, it will be clear.

💡thanks Jeff

This is absolutely understand. There's a difference between measuring bitcoin in fiat and measuring fiat in bitcoin. In a free market everything has relatively value to everything else and there is no moat against opportunity cost. What matters is where one places their focus.

Well, the price of steak in banker's permission slips went up 22%... I think Bitcoin is giving true signal. We also have to factor in the fact that destruction, waste and chaos are inflationary forces even for hard money. The real deflation is when the world actually gets richer in real terms, while the money stands firm. All the destruction of fiat malinvestment... waste, destruction and chaos will sap out real wealth gains for now. Bitcoin is more like a lifeboat when the fiat world is still crumbling. But it truly takes off as a deflationary rocket when real wealth creation takes over again. We're in our benedictine phase. Charlemagne is yet to come.