Is Bitcoin Money? Will Bitcoin be Money?
This is actually a really hard question.
It literally is the one million dollar question.
And a bigger problem is, the definition of money is shifting.
What is considered an asset is also shifting.
So, is Bitcoin Money? Will Bitcoin be Money?
What is the definition of money?
Well, the most basic definition is something like, an intermediary substance that aids in bartering.
Or, can you "buy" things with it?
With that as a definition, you can "buy" things with bitcoin, if you jump through hoops. Usually with someone providing gift cards for sats, or some such. Or, you can talk someone into accepting sats for your purchase from the hot dog man on the beach (actually happened)
What you can buy with bitcoin is luxury yachts, mansions and supercars. Some of these you can't buy without bitcoin. Of course, in this world, negotiation is always the name of the game.
However, what most of us mean when we say money is, can i use it everywhere i go to buy stuff
And, we seem to be a long way from that. But, all of us know how easy it is to make a wallet and start accepting satoshis right now. So, we could literally be 15 minutes away from our dream world.
It appears to me that large corporations, like Wallymart and grocery stores, are very much against accepting bitcoin. They put up so much flak when asked about it. Although it would be easier than everything that they do now. And solve many of their problems.
However, your local farmer can be talked into accepting bitcoin. And your local feed store, but there you need to show them how to convert back to dollars to pay their wholesalers.
Under these meanings, bitcoin is slowly becoming money.
Bitcoin become the world's #1 asset
Ask anyone ten years ago, and real estate, especially commercial real estate was the safest investment. You could finance it with other people's money, and you had a hard asset.
Today, we are looking at the most "highly valued" boat anchors to exist in this financial storm.
Huge commercial buildings are facing immanent death from the dual attack of people working from home and rising interest rates. Companies are downsizing AND have a lot of people working from home. They don't need the big office anymore. Some are waiting till the end of their lease and not renewing. Others are just abandoning their offices. On top of this, with loans needing to be renewed every 5 years or so, all these commercial buildings are going to need to be refinanced, and at the higher interest rates, they are going to be insolvent.
(we will see moves to turn commercial buildings into apartment buildings)
So, what used to be a very highly prized asset, is now gone.
And many of the other assets we prize today, will also be gone.
Most of the derivatives (at the top of exters pyramid) are complete trash.
And this is where bitcoin comes in. Bitcoin is likely to be THE best asset on the planet.
- More valuable (scarce) than gold.
- No storage cost.
- Able to move anywhere on the planet for a low fee (compared to moving anything physical)
- You can find out where every satoshi is. Complete transparency.
- You have a permanent record of payment
You know, the ultimate asset.
So, bitcoin may not become money, but it may become the asset that backs all future "money"
Bitcoin as everyone's savings account
Bitcoin is big and slow. This is why all the alt-coins where created against. More throughput, faster, cheaper. But, that isn't really important when you want is something that is really, really stable. Where you want things to move slowly. For your "money" to be safely stored.
So, if we look at this model, bitcoin lightning network is the checking account, and bitcoin blockchain is the savings account.
This is sorta where we are today. However, i am pretty sure this breaks down as we go bigger, as we get everyone into cryptos. As we start spending milli-sats, micro-sats, and pico-sats… there will not be enough throughput, the discrepancy between large and small transactions will be too great.
A third layer of lightning network may need to be implemented, however, we will probably see other blockchains being used for other sizes of transactions, and cross chain platforms that make swapping different tokens almost autonomous.
It gets really complex, behind the scenes, but will probably be really straight forward for the users.
So, is bitcoin money? Not really? Not yet? It could be?
But, it is definitely looking like it will be the world's #1 asset.
The problem is, is the dollar money? Not really. It is entering its hyper-inflationary phase. It is no longer a store of value, but it is the most used currency around the world.
So, we are really in a bad position. We really do not have any money in the world. And we are sitting on a house of cards. We all know it, and there are forces that want things to go "Their way", so that they will end up in control of the "money" again.
Anyway, keep stacking sats.