The power of hodl

crypto.inferno (67)in #bitcoin • 5 years ago

This is a neat little example of the power of holding onto a scarce asset for a period of time – all the better for coming from Apple co-founder Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak.

Woz has always been intrigued by bitcoin, and is a big believer in blockchain tech. He considers BTC ‘pure digital gold’ and is very positive about the potential of platforms like Ethereum – as you might expect, being an early pioneer of personal computing.

There are direct parallels to the rise of personal computing and crypto. Apple I was the beginning of the personal computer moment, much like bitcoin was the beginning of the crypto movement. In 10 years, personal computers were fast becoming a regular part of life. By 1986, one in seven homes in the UK had a personal computer and the majority of schools had a BBC Micro. Ten years later, email was becoming a part of our everyday interactions; in another ten years, full-scale e-commerce and media streaming had come of age; in another ten, smartphones had almost saturated the market.

It’s the same with crypto; in ten years time, we won’t even be talking about blockchain – it will just be part of the furniture of our technological infrastructure, like TCP/IP (the communication protocols the internet runs on).

People don’t use Apple I computers any more, but here the direct comparison breaks down because there’s no reason Bitcoin shouldn’t continue in its current form – solutions like Lightning Network enabling scale and speed without changing the core protocol. The conservatism of Bitcoin’s miners is, in this instance, its great strength.

And anyway, that doesn’t mean the Apple I isn’t valuable. One of the only 79 surviving models, a working Apple I from 1976, just sold for $375,000. Its original price: $666.66. That’s a 56,000% increase. The reason? ‘So few of these boards are known that the scarcity gives them high value.’

HODL your BTC for 40 years and you might find out just how powerful scarcity can be.

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