What is the use case for BTC other than being the poster child for crypto?
I've been involved with Bitcoin since 2013 and im a big fan. I love it and I love many other cryptos but the longer im in the game, the more it seems like where is the value? Why is BTC's market cap over $700 billion when it does not really have any use case other than being a poster child for crypto? Maybe its purpose is to be the 1st and it's already fulfilled its purpose, maybe its purpose is for whales to play with volatility, get rich and we're just along for the ride hoping the next guy will pay more. Maybe it's just way over my head but when you flash your phone/atm card in front of a machine in a shop, do you understand are even care about how that transaction is processed are do you only care about the end result of being able to pay for something in a few seconds with the effort of letting your arm to hoover it after a scanning machine (i assume). So what is Bitcoin?
It's a currency!!
When BTC was launched, its whitepaper said that it was a currency. Back in the day, I believed this because BTC was trading for $100 and fees were pennies but it was slow and it is still slow, 5-7 transactions per second. Who's paying $15-20 in fee's to buy a loaf of bread and then waiting 20 minutes for the transaction to confirm. Yes, yes, the lightning network was released and it can do more transactions than visa but it's centralized so...
Im a little bit of a hypocrite because I use BTC for buying stuff but it's nothing good. The only thing I have used BTC for is the buy weed from the dark web. I did this a few times in 2013 for the novelty and I've been buying weed from the dark web every other week from March 2020 to now. I started to use the dark web when the pandemic started and now at 36, im too old to be meeting some shifty 17-year-old cunt in a carpark. I would prefer to use a debit card or Paypal as paying with BTC is expensive and the is lots of room for human error which results in losing your money. In other words, I only pay with BTC because I have to. I dont wanna pay 0.0005 BTC every time I buy some weed. So I guess BTC can be used as money but from my experience, it's not fit for this purpose and spending BTC does not feel like spending money, it's a process. I convert fiat into BTC and then forward it on to the dealer, the process takes 30 minutes in total, costs me fee's to convert fiat to BTC and then a transaction fee to send it on. I own a wirex BTC card and I have once it once to see if it worked, I dont use it because I dont wanna spend BTC when I spend fiat. I'd rather hold onto my BTC than spend it. I think most people will agree with me on this. There are many other crypto's that would be excellent for this purpose but BTC is too slow, expensive and easy to lose.
No wait, we got it wrong, it's a store of value
Sometime around 2017-18 when BTC was over the $10k mark, it started to get labelled as a store of value. I believe this change of thought happened for a few reasons. First off, not many BTC holders prior to 2016 meaning transactions were faster as fewer people were using the blockchain. The price was cheaper and fees were pennies as well and after it went from being worth hundreds to thousands per BTC, fee's went up, transaction times increased and using it as a currency was not valid.
Calling BTC a store of value makes sense because when I think of gold and thinking as a silver and gold stacker. I have no problem paying $20 in fee's to move it, I dont care that it takes 20 minutes because I know it's secure as fuck. If you want my silver and gold stacks, you'll have to break into my house, pull my 130kg bolted in safe out of the house and then break into it and it's yours. The tracker I keep inside with give up your location but you can have a crack at it, the payday would be worth it. The point is, my silver and gold is mine, nobody is taking that from me. If the government ever did a recall on gold, fuck you!!, no thanks. I'd sooner bury it at the bottom of a lake and do a few weeks in jail (could use the holiday). With BTC as a store of value, the same sort of thing can be said. If you hold the private keys and they are not on any device connected to the internet, nobody is taking your BTC. If someone figures out a way to break SHA-256, we'll have bigger problems to worry about.
BTC as a store of value has made sense the past but over the past few weeks, as we see the stock market heavily correcting due to the threat of central bank interest rate jumps, we also see BTC follow this path. The last time I bought BTC was during the black swan event caused by COVID in March 2020. Most will remember that the stocks market crashed as did the crypto markets. I was able to buy BTC at $5.5k, I cant remember the low but I remember feeling good as I was holding a little bit of folding at the time and I'd not bought BTC for a few months. But, when the stock market's crashed back then, so did the crypto market and Bitcoin. These are not the actions of a store of value. Fool me once and all that.
SP-500 chart for the past 30 days = -10%
BTC chart for the past 30 days = -25%
Gold chart for the past 30 days = +4%
Oh shit, look at that. Gold has gone up as the stock market has gone down, what a shock. I thought BTC was a store of value like gold has been for the past few thousand years.
Motherfucker!!!
I've been tricked again and BTC is not a store of value.
So what the fook is BTC? and why will be it worth anything in 10 years time mean it's as useful as a cheque is today.
At the end of the day, BTC is 13 years old and still in its infancy compared to gold's 5000 years. It's hard to lose gold and if you die it's still there, it's not locked away in a wallet. Does anyone else have full access to all your cryptos?, partner, parent, sibling, kids? I'd bet....no. How many BTC's will be in open circulation in 30 years time from now? How many million will be gone forever? Lost from people losing private keys and access to wallets. It's dead easy to lose some seed words for a wallet and when your device breaks, gone! add a wrong character to an address and click send, gone! hackers steal a shit ton and leave it sitting dormant in a wallet, gone! How many decades until BTC becomes a crypto collector's item like a model-T would be to a car collector nowadays?
Look at this pile of crap, hard wheels, shitty handling, slow and not fit for its purpose in today's world, doesn't even have a radio FFS but they are worth a fortune. This is BTC is 100 years from now. For the record, I understand cars and crypto are 2 completely different things but one thing they roughly share is mintage numbers. There was 15 million model T's built, the last build in 1927 and around 100k survive to this day. Maybe some tech nerd figures out a way to recover lost wallets but I dont think so as everything that can be used for good can be used for bad.
Just for the record. I will still convert my cefi and defi earnings to BTC, I will still convert some HIVE to BTC when HIVE pumps and I have no plans to sell any but sometimes you have to take a step back look at what something does instead of listening to what people say it does. You can believe BTC is a store of value but a bunch of history and stats would show otherwise. At this point, im here for the ride.