Bitcoin cultists love to say it!
Bitcoin fixes this.
Hm, but does it really?
You know when I first began my crypto journey in 2017 I used to think a lot differently than I do now. I learned a lot about banking, economics, politics, and the problems that crypto is supposed to solve. Like many others I got caught up in the moment thinking these hundreds of ICOs were actually going to do something. They did not. Reality can be fierce sometimes.
Now we have an entire class of people called the Bitcoin Maximalists who unironically believe that Bitcoin is going to replace every piece of infrastructure in the entire world and centralize all ownership to a single blockchain that only processes 1 megabyte of data every ten minutes for the entire world. Couldn't be me; I refuse to allow reality to slap me out of that brain coma. Sounds painful.
USD is dead; long live USD
I used to think that $dollars and just fiat in general were doomed to disappear; perhaps even as soon as the next ten years. Crypto would takeover and everything would be all good. Again this is simply just not how it works. Not only that, but rooting for the destruction of the infrastructure that supports billions of people is downright sociopathic. To actually make it happen on purpose is psychopathic. There are simply too many people out there reliant on these systems to rugpull the Titanic right out from under their feet.
What I have come to learn after years and years of study is that none of these systems are in competition whatsoever. The worst enemy of all public infrastructure is itself. The biggest threat to USD is USD, while the biggest threat to Bitcoin is Bitcoin. These protocols will sink or swim based on their own merit, and outside interference will have very little to do with any successes or failures, even if that's how the news will interpret and report such events across short timelines.
Take debt for example
Bitcoin does not replace USD because Bitcoin does not fix debt. The need for debt to exist does not simply disappear because Bitcoin is a thing. Crypto enthusiasts and no-coiners alike are equally ignorant of this fact: DEBT REQUIRES COLLATERAL.
And what is crypto if not the best collateral that the world has ever seen? Crypto wanted to be currency but instead we got collateral. Interestingly enough that's exactly what the economy needs to prevent complete systemic collapse. Look at the national debt. Look at central and retail banking. Look at trends in technology that create abundance of product and deflation of currency.
Crypto is not the fiat-killer it was framed to be; it's actually the one thing that fiat needs desperately to survive. And now that institutions are starting to adopt the tech, old-school crypto bros are all mad about it as they do their mental gymnastics required to cling on to their own falsely held beliefs.
Silver bullet theory
The term silver bullet is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections.
Did you know that the ancient Egyptians didn't know what the brain was for? They kept organs in special jars to be preserved during mummification for use in the afterlife. The brain? They scooped the brain out through the nose and threw it in the garbage. You won't be needing that in the afterlife, friend.
How ironic.
Imagine how horrified they would have been to learn that the brain controls everything and they were sending brainless zombies into the netherworld. Oh wait... that part was totally made up too, never mind.
Point being that crypto is exactly like that.
We haven't the slightest clue as to what is happening right now so we make up stories and act upon faith rather than admit we don't know. It's really not a great place to find oneself, but many find comfort within this state of being, so that's something. My advice would be to keep an open mind and stay ready to pivot upon these shifting sands of reality. Earthquakes are unkind to rigid structures.
So yeah, penicillin may have been a silver-bullet magical vampire-killing super-drug, but it's not like it ushered in world peace, fed the hungry, or even cured cancer. It did the one thing, and it did the one thing very well; just like Bitcoin does. In fact, most cryptocurrencies are only going to have a single niche if they are lucky enough to have even that. I don't make the rules. The writing is on the wall.
Elitism
If you don't get it, I don't have time to explain it to you.
Another thing tribalists will do is just casually dismiss any and all argument and discourse. When Satoshi Nakamoto famously said, "I don't have time to explain it to you," it's because he had already spent hours explaining the thing in great detail. Now this has become one of the most toxic and potentially imperialist misquotes of all time.
Rather than actually try to engage, people just chalk up political conversations to the extremely reductive, "Well if you don't believe what I believe then you're just an idiot." It's actually quite baffling to watch from the sidelines. Both sides are statistically big enough to carry a wide spectrum of intelligence, and both sides just dumb it down to, "Nah, you're just an idiot if you believe that." It's wild.
Intelligence has NOTHING to do with it.
This has always been a matter of trust from the top down. People have to trust people. It's a simple as that. Society doesn't operate in any other way. When all the most powerful people in this world turn out to be not very trustworthy, bad things happen. And it's nobody's fault either, but rather the result of a collective emergence that materialize from these systems that nobody really controls.
For example, no one controls the worldwide demand of any particular asset. That demand just materializes as the aggregate of all the entities that want it. The logistics of supplying that asset can get very complicated especially when the demand is in constant flux.
Everyone wants more money and power.
It's easy to blame capitalism for things and call it 'evil', but capitalism is not immoral, but rather amoral. It completely lacks morals and doesn't care one way or the other. Like any tool or piece of infrastructure it can be used for great and terrible things. It is not capitalism's fault that people are greedy and will always act within their own self-interest.
The point?
Ah well when I hear the term, "Bitcoin fixes this," in certain situations... I cringe. Hard. Bitcoin does not fix the greed problem. People are going to be greedy and we need economic systems that are going to factor that in.
It's also quite clear that these people are actively lying to themselves. If Bitcoin solves the problem of an unfair economy, then how are you going to create "generational wealth" by holding it? Generational wealth, by definition, is quite unfair. The entire mindset of a maximalist is riddled with disturbing hypocrisy.
War
Ultimately the main catalyst that sparked this post is that they keep spouting nonsense like Bitcoin defunds war and makes it unprofitable. Really? How? Such a dumb take.
The main point of war, and the use of lethal force in general, is to take something away from someone else. It's the thing being taken that becomes variable. Could be a person's freedom. Could be property. Could be political power. Could be the delicious black crude oil that courses through our veins. Whatever it is, someone wants it and they intend to get it.
To say that Bitcoin defunds war is absurd.
In fact when we realize that Bitcoin is very valuable... that's just one more thing that we could go to war over. Just because the standard playbook for war this day in age means syphoning tax dollars from the citizens into the military industrial complex doesn't mean that's the only way to go about this sorted business. To assume that war can't be profitable under a Bitcoin standard is just babble-talk nonsense.
"Softwar" is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the transformative impact of proof-of-work and Bitcoin on the future of world. The main idea is that proof of work represents a mechanism to countervail oppressive abstract power structures and prevent exploitation.
There's even a book on it!
I must admit I should probably read this book at some point because it is likely extremely relevant to what I'm talking about, but alas I have not. Is decentralized architecture harder to conquer and colonize? Sure. In theory. Is it harder to steal assets that are secured in a decentralized way? Also yes.
But when Blackrock takes your retirement account and dumps it into Bitcoin can you really look me in the eyes with a straight face and tell me that doesn't benefit the war machine? Get real. The government doesn't have to steal things that get taxed automatically and dropped into the "defense" fund. I guess automation really is a double edged sword.
Conclusion
People are gross monkeys running around flinging their shit at one another.
Bitcoin doesn't fix this.