A catalyst that could ‘standardize’ Bitcoin

today “People who have followed Bitcoin for the past 13 years have already figured this out, but I am presenting it as a new realization.”, I wanted to write about the revelations about adoption, standardization, and normalization of Bitcoin that I experienced last week. While I was thinking about what it would take for Bitcoin to receive a massive adoption push in the United States, I could think of one of the not-too-distant scenarios.

And contrary to what you may think, this has nothing to do with regulation, taxation, accounting standards, or anything else routinely incorrectly talked about as the ebb and flow of Bitcoin adoption. As I learned firsthand last month when I finally started researching Bitcoin, none of that really matters. The decentralized nature of the network means it doesn’t need any of these things to thrive. I mentioned this last week in an article called “Why I Use Bitcoin.”

But what I also pointed out in the same article was that Bitcoin will survive. If people want to survive. Those who understand networks understand that up to 20,000 global nodes mean that the network will continue to exist no matter what politicians, jurisdictions or regulators around the world try to interfere with it. This is part of the elegance of the network.

Nevertheless, I think to myself: “How can we accelerate adoption enough for us to start moving now? almost Bitcoins are not returned. Critical point of severe escape velocity?” The answer was right under my nose.

When I wrote the article title “Why I Use Bitcoin” last week, it was one of those titles that instinctively came to me. Sometimes I spend hours thinking about which title will catch the most attention, and other times, like this article, I decide on a title in advance because it’s very clear what I want to say.

But as I was wandering around this weekend, I found myself wondering where I had ever heard that phrase before.

Suddenly it came to me. In one of my favorite comedy skits, a group of improv comedians from Philadelphia attended an Occupy protest that occurred as a result of the 2008 economic collapse. At least one place has a sign that says “Why I Occupy.” In fact, it’s basically a namesake and part of the Occupy movement. I remember WhyIOccupy.org was the source of quite a bit of angry publicity at the time. They thought whatever ideology was on that website was their special solution to the financial crisis.

It was only after I remembered that in the next major financial crisis that people actually thought they would have a legal exit from the system. Bitcoin is an exit ramp. This is exactly what those involved in the GameStop craze, whether they knew it or not, were so desperately looking for but couldn’t find.

After the GameStop fiasco happened, I remember thinking that there were so many people who were angry but didn’t know what they were angry about. Everyone was criticized in chat rooms and on social media. but Federal Reserve Bank. These people were angry because they felt as if they had been trampled on. Whether they knew it or not, they were reacting to the growing inequality gap as they struggled to make ends meet.

But what they didn’t know was that this wasn’t the fault of Ken Griffin, Citadel, or the short sellers. Rather, it was the Fed’s fault.

These days, it is becoming more and more clear that the inequality gap is widening as the Federal Reserve shoehorns in the issue. Inflation is clearer because it is a mainstream story and a phenomenon people can understand. Even if they don’t know why With inflation happening, most people seem to understand that it has something to do with the Fed cutting off the money supply for the past four years and, to make matters worse, lying to the public that inflation is temporary.

And those hoping to repeat GameStop’s success with names like AMC now know that toxic management and loss-making businesses can very easily suck the air out of any momentum into any type of short selling, or FOMO. And they also know that brokerages and regulators can stop them from trading whenever they want.

My guess is that during the next major financial crisis, which is not too far away, a group of angry “haves” will place more blame where they belong: monetary policy. After all, inflation is a cruel tax on those who can’t afford it, and has little meaning for the super rich. And the super-rich have become richer as a result of quantitative easing and money printing, providing disproportionate relief to stock, bond and housing markets. In other words, it is an asset that rich people have but low-income people do not have.

I have often asked the Fed while they are printing money for Covid. If the Fed wants to print $5 trillion, why not split it equally among everyone in America and cut us all a check? Ultimately, if you divide $5 trillion by 300 million people, you get about $16,500 per person. Systematic reasoning aside, this is a very simple and straightforward question. If you want to stimulate the economy by throwing money everywhere, why not spread the money equally to all citizens instead of playing the game of favoritism?

But that didn’t happen in 2008, and it won’t happen in the next financial crisis.

But what I think will happen is that a new group of “have-nots” and economic traitors will become exponentially more informed not only about the consequences of the GameStop fiasco, but also about how the currency police works as a new, younger generation. no see. I’ve become familiar with the ideological case for Bitcoin. One of the things I liked about Bitcoin before it was the idea of ​​forcing the younger generation to understand the Austrian economy in a world where the privileges of modern monetary theory are abused and overpowered. Armed with this new knowledge, a whole new generation of angry ordinary people will once again bear the cost of socialized losses from the evil and toxic corporations that have privatized their profits. And this will be amid an inflationary crisis that is still fresh in their minds. This time there will be no question about who is eroding purchasing power and wealth through taxes and inflation.

My point is as follows: Bitcoin could be the exit ramp that millions of angry people look to in such situations.

Unlike GameStop, Bitcoin actually Do you have an opportunity to affect big change? This is because the success of a network depends on the growth of its size. This means that every individual who owns Bitcoin or decides to educate themselves about it becomes part of a self-fulfilling prophecy of the network’s success. And, of course, the ideology behind the network’s success is firmly rooted in empowering people like them. That is, people who are tired of making little money who are quietly being chased away by the dark inflationary financial machine of the night.

Many of those who participated in the GameStop frenzy, including the “apes” on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets and millions of other retail traders, will realize this: Bitcoin has all the positives it has hoped to achieve in the past, without the negatives.S. There is no management to ruin it, no counterparty to dilute it, no one to push the buy button, and essentially no management or regulator to prevent the network from succeeding if the people want it to. Be one. That becomes the digital freedom that all these people were seeking during the last financial crisis but had no way of effectively realizing.

2008 was another year that showed what Wall Street was doing. Every time the situation deteriorates into disaster, the public pays the price and brandishes the torch in anger. But eventually it explodes and people go about their business.

“I’m starting to feel a little better about this whole thing,” says John Tuld. margin callThis means that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bankers and politicians have been playing the same old game, relying on this pattern to continue perpetuating the same schemes they have engaged in for decades. In essence, this would enable a miscarriage of justice for ordinary Americans who bear the costs of the failures of the ultra-rich.

So the next time something like this happens, the investing public will There is a legal opportunity to break that vicious cycle. Bitcoin was adopted for the first time in half a century. There is an opportunity to exclude them from the system they have condemned. As capital flows into Bitcoin and flows out of traditional financial assets, it will send a message to major financial institutions that will only respond to opportunities to earn fees (here’s an ETF for reference, so see our newfound obsession with Bitcoin). At the same time, these flows can add up to a self-fulfilling prophecy that the network will succeed due to redundancy essentially acting as a barometer for the state of the network.

It’s never a guarantee, but if the system fails again and the average person is looking for a real weapon to fight it, it’s a weapon programmed to literally be the technological braille of the phrase “there is safety within.” Through “numbers” and “the power of empowering people,” Bitcoin could shine and usher in what is considered an adoption renaissance in the future.

This is a guest post by Quoth the Raven. The opinions expressed are solely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.