Thanks for a great read - and a useful one too. I’ve no doubt of the value of bitcoin and will buy week in week out for the rest of my life. Not for me, but for my children and their children. When they’re adults they will thank me that I had the foresight to reject the current ‘money’ and exchange it for something of real, eternal value.
Hi Jesse, really happy that you've "come out", although I do somewhat miss the mysteriousness of Croesus! I was listening to some of your old Citadel Dispatch calls with Matt Odell, just wondering if you've gotten closer to his staunch anti-KYC stance since then... hope to hear more from you soon!
Great write up thank you. Small quibble with charting (Actual, Actual Log, Conceptual Log) 20k high after 2016 halving appears visually LOWER than 15K low of 2022.
Apart from store value and its halving cycles is there any reliable use cases to be made for Bitcoin and its impact on it value? when time permits if you can write on this, would much appreciate it.
This is all well and good but in my opinion that real mind blowing fact is that through mining, BTC has monetized energy itself, regardless of physical location. This will incentivize investment in renewable sources as they are cheaper as well as make the network carbon negative via methane capture with remote mining containers. The PoW consensus was a breakthrough on many levels.
I'm never entirely sure about the gold comparison: a reasonable percentage of all the gold ever mined seems to have been lost, simply unregistered or stolen.
For instance, the Japanese army reputedly hoovered up (and never repatriated) reserves throughout occupied China & SE Asia during the 1930s & WW2 to a value of about $1T - that's an estimate put on it in the early 2000s. Much of that gold allegedly went into private coffers post-WW2.
In that case, gold's market capitalization should either be higher than $11T, if unaccounted amounts were to achieve current prices - or, more likely, lower because declaration would undermine the price of what is supposed to be highly limited supply. So undeclared reserves - and the value of market capitalization - currently benefit from the price put on only those reserves which are publicly-declared. There's a sleight of hand at work within gold's valuation.
There is talk of tokenizing all gold currently held in declared reserves. If that were to happen, we'd end up with a more explicit two-tiered holding situation - do you own tokenized gold or untokenized gold? Tokenizing would presumably impact banks and brokers: tokenizing could become a requirement for access to the public market, which in turn would impact the valuation of all holdings, declared or undeclared. An untokenized holding would be worth less than a tokenized holding, I imagine. If you can't account for it with a token, how can you lay claim to the public price in its valuation?
But with BTC, supply is ultimately fixed and ideally the price will ultimately reflect bounded supply, a chain of title and the security of holding.
Anyway, I think gold has a lot of dark corners to it which undermine the comparison, but which may ultimately be to the benefit of the BTC thesis. It may even be that in order to compete with BTC, and maintain its valuation as a reserve, gold must be tokenized.
Just because an asset is "scarce" does not guarantee number go up (NGU). Just because a halving happens, does not guarantee NGU. Bitcoin has never been tested in a proper long global downturn like we are having now.. its acting just like a tech stock.
Also, with the halving happening in 2024 and energy costs rising, miners will have their lights put out i they are not profitable, NGU will be much harder then. Hash rate will fall. Yes there is the difficulty adjustment, but so what?
It should be noted that "Bitcoin" has a much more searched term in 2017, just look at google trends. The vast majority of the world is simply not interested in Bitcoin. yes, maybe more time to "stack sats", but that does not mean NGU.
I agree and share the opinion that bitcoin is hugely misunderstood by the broader public which seem to focus only on price action instead of judging from fundamentals.
I think we indeed need more good education and this serious and your twitter content is really really helpful.
Ever since the beginning of bitcoin, ‘monetary conditions’ in the broadest sense have not stood in the way of (and perhaps even pushed) the price of something still considered to be a risky asset. Only time (this cycle) will tell if it can withstand tight monetary conditions. Until then, we’re only guessing what the price will do as conditions like these have never happened before.
Thanks for a great read - and a useful one too. I’ve no doubt of the value of bitcoin and will buy week in week out for the rest of my life. Not for me, but for my children and their children. When they’re adults they will thank me that I had the foresight to reject the current ‘money’ and exchange it for something of real, eternal value.
Hi Jesse, really happy that you've "come out", although I do somewhat miss the mysteriousness of Croesus! I was listening to some of your old Citadel Dispatch calls with Matt Odell, just wondering if you've gotten closer to his staunch anti-KYC stance since then... hope to hear more from you soon!
Great write up thank you. Small quibble with charting (Actual, Actual Log, Conceptual Log) 20k high after 2016 halving appears visually LOWER than 15K low of 2022.
this is well written, really enjoyed.
Apart from store value and its halving cycles is there any reliable use cases to be made for Bitcoin and its impact on it value? when time permits if you can write on this, would much appreciate it.
Thank you.
This is all well and good but in my opinion that real mind blowing fact is that through mining, BTC has monetized energy itself, regardless of physical location. This will incentivize investment in renewable sources as they are cheaper as well as make the network carbon negative via methane capture with remote mining containers. The PoW consensus was a breakthrough on many levels.
Bitcoin eclipsing gold market cap feels inevitable to this pleb.
I'm never entirely sure about the gold comparison: a reasonable percentage of all the gold ever mined seems to have been lost, simply unregistered or stolen.
For instance, the Japanese army reputedly hoovered up (and never repatriated) reserves throughout occupied China & SE Asia during the 1930s & WW2 to a value of about $1T - that's an estimate put on it in the early 2000s. Much of that gold allegedly went into private coffers post-WW2.
In that case, gold's market capitalization should either be higher than $11T, if unaccounted amounts were to achieve current prices - or, more likely, lower because declaration would undermine the price of what is supposed to be highly limited supply. So undeclared reserves - and the value of market capitalization - currently benefit from the price put on only those reserves which are publicly-declared. There's a sleight of hand at work within gold's valuation.
There is talk of tokenizing all gold currently held in declared reserves. If that were to happen, we'd end up with a more explicit two-tiered holding situation - do you own tokenized gold or untokenized gold? Tokenizing would presumably impact banks and brokers: tokenizing could become a requirement for access to the public market, which in turn would impact the valuation of all holdings, declared or undeclared. An untokenized holding would be worth less than a tokenized holding, I imagine. If you can't account for it with a token, how can you lay claim to the public price in its valuation?
But with BTC, supply is ultimately fixed and ideally the price will ultimately reflect bounded supply, a chain of title and the security of holding.
Anyway, I think gold has a lot of dark corners to it which undermine the comparison, but which may ultimately be to the benefit of the BTC thesis. It may even be that in order to compete with BTC, and maintain its valuation as a reserve, gold must be tokenized.
Just because an asset is "scarce" does not guarantee number go up (NGU). Just because a halving happens, does not guarantee NGU. Bitcoin has never been tested in a proper long global downturn like we are having now.. its acting just like a tech stock.
Also, with the halving happening in 2024 and energy costs rising, miners will have their lights put out i they are not profitable, NGU will be much harder then. Hash rate will fall. Yes there is the difficulty adjustment, but so what?
It should be noted that "Bitcoin" has a much more searched term in 2017, just look at google trends. The vast majority of the world is simply not interested in Bitcoin. yes, maybe more time to "stack sats", but that does not mean NGU.
No mass adoption = no NGU.
Interesting read. Thanks for putting it together.
I agree and share the opinion that bitcoin is hugely misunderstood by the broader public which seem to focus only on price action instead of judging from fundamentals.
I think we indeed need more good education and this serious and your twitter content is really really helpful.
Ever since the beginning of bitcoin, ‘monetary conditions’ in the broadest sense have not stood in the way of (and perhaps even pushed) the price of something still considered to be a risky asset. Only time (this cycle) will tell if it can withstand tight monetary conditions. Until then, we’re only guessing what the price will do as conditions like these have never happened before.