bitman on Nostr: Sorry to break it to you (and Saylor), but a store of value (SoV) works best when ...
Sorry to break it to you (and Saylor), but a store of value (SoV) works best when it’s also an effective medium of exchange (MoE). Without that, you risk ending up with a sub-par SoV—like gold, which can’t be directly exchanged for goods and services in most cases. Bitcoin as a pure SoV could potentially perform even worse than gold. At least gold has physical scarcity, industrial utility, and a connection to real-world demand, whereas Bitcoin’s main utility lies in transferring value over a communication channel.
But here’s the catch: Why would you need to send value globally if most of it just sits idle in cold storage for decades, contributing nothing to economic activity? That’s counterproductive. Yes, self-custody is essential, but we can’t ignore Bitcoin’s core property: the ability to transfer value efficiently, which stems from its scarcity—not the other way around.
The way forward isn’t by cheering on corporations adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. It’s by focusing on expanding markets and driving merchant adoption in a non-custodial, decentralized way. Each Bitcoiner and merchant should be peers, running nodes and exchanging value directly.
If we don’t prioritize this, fast-forward 20, 50, or 100 years: 99.8% of Bitcoin might sit locked in custodial accounts. Once the explosive appreciation phase is over, the network could lose its purpose without meaningful economic activity. Mining would lose relevance, running nodes would become pointless, the 21M cap would lose significance, and the system as a whole could collapse.
To secure Bitcoin’s future, we need to ensure it thrives as both a store of value and a medium of exchange, grounded in real-world use and peer-to-peer activity. That’s how we win.
But here’s the catch: Why would you need to send value globally if most of it just sits idle in cold storage for decades, contributing nothing to economic activity? That’s counterproductive. Yes, self-custody is essential, but we can’t ignore Bitcoin’s core property: the ability to transfer value efficiently, which stems from its scarcity—not the other way around.
The way forward isn’t by cheering on corporations adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. It’s by focusing on expanding markets and driving merchant adoption in a non-custodial, decentralized way. Each Bitcoiner and merchant should be peers, running nodes and exchanging value directly.
If we don’t prioritize this, fast-forward 20, 50, or 100 years: 99.8% of Bitcoin might sit locked in custodial accounts. Once the explosive appreciation phase is over, the network could lose its purpose without meaningful economic activity. Mining would lose relevance, running nodes would become pointless, the 21M cap would lose significance, and the system as a whole could collapse.
To secure Bitcoin’s future, we need to ensure it thrives as both a store of value and a medium of exchange, grounded in real-world use and peer-to-peer activity. That’s how we win.