Bitcoin is going parabolic. Euphoria has set in.
We’ve just crossed the all-time high. From here we typically see a 2x-3x in price. The wild price predictions of $1M per Bitcoin aren’t crazy at all.
There are two camps of people. Once you understand both sides the mystery of Bitcoin makes sense. Bitcoin goes from looking like a get-rich-quick scheme to a solution for a big problem. Let me explain.
50% of society still don’t understand because they refuse
Last week, I received an emergency text message from my bank.
I nearly pissed my pants. My face went red. “Red alert: possible fraud. Inbound call in 60 seconds.”
The text message sounded like a scam. But my bank actually did call. They sounded very worried. The stress quickly went away. They noticed a transaction on my account. I’d bought $10,000 of Bitcoin.
“Mr Denning, sir, we need to ask you some urgent questions.”
They then interrogated, intimidated, and harassed me for half an hour for buying Bitcoin. What’s unique about this situation is they’d done this eight other times in the last six months.
How do I know? Well, every time this happens they send me a text message with a warning. There are currently eight text messages in the group of texts from my bank’s fraud department.
I quickly became angry with the bank guy on the phone.
“Sir, I can go to the ATM and withdraw my life savings, then go to the local casino and gamble the lot on red and nobody from the bank calls me. How come you don’t make an emergency call to me then?”
Silence.
I told the banker what I knew. The bank was only calling me because if they don’t warn me about investing in Bitcoin, then if I lose money they’re liable. The bank was calling to cover their ass, not mine. Typical.
After all these phone calls from my bank, I finally cracked it. I told the bank I was leaving and withdrew all my money a few minutes later.
Some parts of society still don’t understand Bitcoin, so they simply treat it like a criminal activity due to their lack of understanding. What they should be doing is getting an education so they don’t get left behind.
If you meet someone who is negative about Bitcoin, remember: they don’t understand it.
Bitcoin solves a problem all of us secretly have
Bitcoin used to be an asset you speculate on.
It was fun. It had a story. It was a cult. In recent times everything has changed and most people still don’t get it.
All of us earn money in our country’s currency. If we keep our wealth in that currency then it’ll be eroded away by inflation and currency devaluation. This will happen slowly so you won’t notice it right away.
In fact many people never notice.
We give up our time to work. That creates value. We then need to store that value for future consumption.
To understand the problem you just have to look at financial institutions. Pension funds, VCs, angel investors, mutual funds, banks all have one job — get you a return on your money in exchange for a fee.
If they don’t make you money, you take your money off them. Makes sense.
It’s getting harder to make a return on financial assets. After you factor in taxes and inflation, there’s often not much left over. In fact, many investment firms aren’t even keeping up with inflation.
Everyone in finance is chasing a financial return for their clients.
If you’re an individual who’s made a bit of money (like I have), you have the same problem. You need a place to store your money and make a return on it. The traditional options just don’t work well.
Stocks are tied to countries. Bonds are tied to countries. Real estate is tied to a country. If the country has problems then so do you. You lack control.
Digital assets like Bitcoin don’t have country risk. They are borderless. They are liquid (easy to buy/sell). Bitcoin stands out because it’s scarce. There’s a limited supply and that supply is known to everyone.
At the start Bitcoin’s features were theories, not givens. But now the technology has been around since 2008 and got significant adoption, everything has changed.
What’s driving Bitcoin’s wild price increases
Up until 30-something days ago, Bitcoin’s price was driven entirely by the general public (retail investors).
In 2021 we saw a huge run up in price. A kind of mania erupted. Then everything crashed. People lost faith in Bitcoin. Everyday people drove all of this craziness.
At the start of this year Bitcoin ETFs got approved. An ETF is just a fancy name for a wrapper placed on Bitcoin that allows it to be sold in investments apps like Robinhood and Charles Schwab. It also allows financial advisors, pension funds, banks, and Wall Street to buy Bitcoin.
Before these ETFs you had to buy Bitcoin and store it in either a crypto exchange or a USB stick. When Bitcoin exchanges went bankrupt people lost all their Bitcoin. And people who stored Bitcoin on USB sticks lost their passwords.
The original way to access Bitcoin just wasn’t secure enough for anyone outside of moms and dads to buy it. So no one except a few crazies (Elon) did. That’s all changed.
Now everyone can access Bitcoin, especially the people who can barely turn on a personal computer. This has led to a huge increase in the demand of Bitcoin.
It’s not speculation. It’s adoption.
Bitcoin solves a problem.
Here’s the thing: you only understand the problem Bitcoin solves if you have money to invest. All the haters and trolls you see on X who diss Bitcoin don’t get it because they’ve never faced the store-of-value problem.
When you make more money than your expenses you suddenly have a secret money problem. That is, where do I store my money and have it grow on auto-pilot?
As you become wealthier, you start to think “How do I not have my money tied to a single country?”
Bitcoin isn’t racist
In all other financial markets you are limited by access.
There’s not a lot of transparency. Many investments are only accessible if you’re a high-net-wealth individual or have friends in high places.
Bitcoin is the people’s money.
Bitcoin doesn’t care whether you are black, purple, Jamaican, or wear a rainbow flag t-shirt to work. Bitcoin doesn’t have political beliefs because no one country created it. There’s no Bitcoin founder or Bitcoin company you can sue. Bitcoin has no employees and no opinion on DEI.
Bitcoin isn’t woke or anti-woke. It doesn’t care about what wars are going on in Europe or whether red, blue, or Donald Duck wins the US election. None of it matters and that’s why Bitcoin matters.
Bitcoin lets you exit the culture war.
Why $1,000,000 per Bitcoin
In the 30-something days Bitcoin ETFs have existed things have gone nuts.
Roughly 80% of Bitcoin owners haven’t sold their coins in over a year. People buy and hold an asset that is already scarce.
The financial institutions have entered Bitcoin and are trying to accumulate some to sell it to their clients and make a profit.
There isn’t enough.
Tools like Glassnode let you see how much Bitcoin is available to buy on exchanges. All of us can publicly see how much money is flowing into each of these new Bitcoin ETFs owned by the likes of Fidelity and Blackrock.
If you do 5th-grader math like I have, which is simple supply and demand, the only conclusion you can draw is there isn’t enough Bitcoin based on the current record-high demand.
In a few months, Bitcoin has the halving. I won’t get technical other than to say the daily supply of new Bitcoin will be cut in half. Retail buyers are not fully back in yet either.
One of the largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase, has about 100M users. Only about 10M are active right now. Yes, financial institutions have had 30-something days to sell Bitcoin, but most haven’t even got started.
They’re still stuck in meetings and shining their shoes.
A $1M Bitcoin price at the end of this cycle almost feels low.
The price of Bitcoin doesn’t matter
Wait, what?
Yep, what’s going on here is far bigger than “number go up.” Bitcoin is a movement. It’s a change of rules. It’s a rebellion against banks. It’s even a rebellion against government control.
Bitcoin changes how we think about investing and even money. It changes the structure of ownership and removes country borders. Bitcoin is the establishment of a digital society, a digital economy.
That’s the big-ass point all the Bitcoin critics have missed.
Just like the internet wasn’t about web pages or illegal Napster apps and torrents … Bitcoin isn’t about a currency that can be used by criminals.
Bitcoin is a permanent change of the rules. Bitcoin is a vote for a different future. Bitcoin is a change of how democracy works.
Bitcoin removes race and replaces it with proof-of-work. It is my hope you can be blessed by the gift of Bitcoin.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
