Dear reader,
I’m upbeat today. I love days like these. It’s because there’s a bloodbath in the markets.
Stock markets, crypto markets, property markets. There isn’t much right now that is doing well. It’s all downhill from here. Welcome to the new crash.
OK…hold it right there.
That’s the view the mainstream would have you take. Bad things, bad things, bad things. That’s their motto and they’re going to run with it.
Heck I just read an article that Bunnings sausage sizzles are the latest victim of social fear. According to the Daily Mail Australia:
‘As a matter of safety, those running the [Bunnings] BBQ have been instructed by head office to add onions to the sandwiches before placing the sausages on top — so the onions don’t fall out and become a slipping hazard.’
That’s right, even the sausage sizzle is going to get you!
It’s just one big world of scary things. Best you stay indoors then. Except when you flick on the telly or go online, it’s just as bad. May as well pull out a good book then…
But fear not. Don’t revert to the old school ways and go off grid just yet. In fact get ready. Times like these call for investment fortitude. Fortunes can be made. And they can be lost…or future fortunes completely missed.
Bitcoin is a social experiment
There’s nothing quite as polarising as cryptocurrency. You could survey 100 people; most wouldn’t be able to name anything outside of bitcoin. Most may have heard of it. Most probably don’t own any.
You could also survey those people and many will tell you it’s all one big scam. Some will happily explain it’s the future of money. Some will shrug their shoulders and go, ‘meh?’.
Either way it’s divisive. Some love it, many hate it. But the real question is why do the haters hate it with such vigour and bite?
After all at the very heart of its ethos, bitcoin is a technology revolution. It’s the first time in history people outside of a central bank have been able to play with the idea of what money is.
The fact is that bitcoin is a social experiment. That’s not really its original intention. But that’s what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing if people place sufficient faith and belief in a technology that has the capacity to act as money and a store of value.
This idea isn’t all that different from money as we know it today, or gold for that matter. Anything with any value attached to it is really just a different form of belief.
For example, someone might be willing to pay $1 million to live in Fitzroy. But to someone else there’s no way that property prices in that area are worth that much. Likewise a brick shack in Mozambique might be worthless to you, but be the single most valuable thing to someone that actually lives in Mozambique.
Property is just a thing that someone attaches value to and is happy to pay for. You can’t use a property to go and buy a slab of beer. You can’t use it to send family a gift on their birthday. But in society (most societies) it’s a store of wealth.
Gold as well has similar properties. It’s really also just a thing that exists. And it’s shiny and can be used in certain industries to make things. It’s got history and society determines that gold is worth something, because that’s what the widespread belief is.
But it’s really just another thing that we determine as people is worth something and will be possibly worth something at another point in time.
Bitcoin is also just a thing. It’s a technology thing. Like the internet is a technology thing. So far society has deemed that a bitcoin, and fractions of a bitcoin also are worth something. And through its properties you can use it to do stuff, buy things or keep as a store of value.
But it ultimately will live or die on society’s determination of its value. But there’s no need to get so angry about it. There’s really no need to get angry about anything, property, stocks, gold, bitcoin, whatever.
These are all just things, social constructs determine whether or not they will succeed, fail, be a part of our lives or fade into obscurity. All these things are different. They all have good parts, bad parts and parts that we’re not sure about.
But they’re all different, and all serve a purpose. Which is why we simply can’t understand why people get so mad at cryptocurrency and bitcoin.
Don’t get mad at a ‘thing’. Understand what it is, what it can do and don’t close your mind to what it can become.
Bitcoin could help us regain control
Importantly you should take the time to really understand this bitcoin ‘thing’.
The good news is that right now with all the hard line attacks on the validity of bitcoin, there’s a real opportunity for people that can see the future.
Now of course, no one can actually see the future. But we can certainly make educated predictions on what it might look like.
And in that future we see a very different society that we see today. Actually to be honest, we’re seeing the start of that change in society today. Just, it won’t quite play out for a number of years just yet.
It’s a society that pushes back at centralised control and authority. One of the negative by-products of our high-tech world is the pervasion of tech into our lives. That ‘always connected’ feeling is there because we are always connected.
But it allows others, corporations, government, third party providers to learn about us, monitor and analyse us, to spy on us. It’s the ability to influence, control and command that we’ve allowed to happen.
The other by-product of our high-tech world is the ability to create solutions to these problems. To create new networks and technologies that allow us to regain some of the power that we’ve handed over.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are part of that tech experiment to regain control of our existence. It’s a push back to centralised authority and control. It’s a way for society to have faith, trust and belief in a system that’s built for them, by them.
The fact that bitcoin is also really a new money technology makes the stakes particularly high. And hence, makes a lot of people angry at it.
However if you view this as a technology revolution, understand that society always changes, and appreciate the environment the world is in right now — then the idea of bitcoin being considerably more valuable in the near future isn’t crazy.
If you can wrap your head around that idea then we think there’s a small fortune still to be made here. But it relies on you pushing back again the common knowledge, taking a risk, and getting yourself a slice of the crypto revolution.
Regards,
Sam Volkering