8 Bitcoin

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Bitcoin is Common Sense
“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense (February 24, 1776).

These were the opening remarks of Thomas Paine’s call for American independence in early 1776. At the time, a declaration of independence was far from a certainty, but in Paine’s view, there was no question. It wasn’t a debate; there was only one path forward. Still, he understood that public opinion had not yet caught up and naturally remained anchored to the status quo, with a preference for reconciliation rather than independence. Old habits die hard. The status quo has a tendency of being defended, regardless of merit, merely by its anchoring in time to the way things have always been. However, truths have a way of becoming self-evident in time, more often due to common sense rather than any amount of reason or logic. One day, the truth is more likely to smack you in the face, becoming painfully obvious through some firsthand experience which opens up a perspective that otherwise would not have existed. While Paine was undoubtedly attempting to persuade an undecided populous with reason and logic, it was at the same time an appeal to not overthink that which stands in opposition to what is already self-evident.

In Paine’s view, independence was not a modern-day IQ test, nor was its relevance confined to the American colonies; instead, it was a common sense test and its interest was universal to “the cause of all mankind,” as Paine put it. In many ways, the same is true of bitcoin. It is not an IQ test; instead, bitcoin is common sense and its implications are near universal. Few people have ever stopped to question or understand the function of money. It facilitates practically every transaction anyone has ever made, yet no one really knows the why of that equation, nor the properties that allow money to effectively coordinate economic activity. Its function is taken for granted, and as a result, it is a subject not widely taught or explored. Yet despite a limited baseline of knowledge, there is often a visceral reaction to the very idea of bitcoin as money. The default position is predictably no. Bitcoin is an anathema to all notions of existing custom. On the surface, it is entirely inconsistent with what folks know money to be. For most, money is just money because it always has been. In general, for any individual, the construction of money is anchored in time and it is very naturally not questioned.

But enter bitcoin, and everyone suddenly becomes an expert in what is and isn’t money, and to the fly-by-night expert, it certainly is not bitcoin. Bitcoin is natively digital, it is not tied to a government or central bank, it is volatile and perceived to be “slow,” it is not used en masse to facilitate commerce, and it is not inflationary. This is one of those rare instances when a thing does not walk like a duck or quack like a duck but it’s actually a duck, and what you thought was a duck all along was mistakenly something entirely different. When it comes to modern money, the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

In all perceived-to-be successful applications today, money is issued by a central bank; it is relatively stable and capable of near infinite transaction throughput; it facilitates day-to-day commerce; and by the grace of god, its supply can be rapidly inflated to meet the needs of an ever-changing economy. Bitcoin has none of these traits (some not presently, others not ever), and as a result, it is most often dismissed as not meeting the standards of modern-day money. This is where overthinking a problem can cripple the highest of IQs. Pattern recognition fails because the game fundamentally changed, but the players do not yet realize it. It is akin to getting lost in the weeds or failing to see the forest through the trees. Bitcoin is finitely scarce, it is highly divisible and it is capable of being sent over a communication channel (and on a permissionless basis). There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. Rocket scientists and the most revered investors of our time could look at this equation relative to other applications in the market and be confounded, not seeing its value. While at the same time, if posed with a very simple question, would you rather be paid either in a currency with a fixed supply that cannot be manipulated or in a currency that is subject to persistent, systemic and significant debasement, an overwhelming majority of individuals would choose the former all day, every day.

On bitcoin: “It’s probably rat poison squared”
– Warren Buffett

“Bitcoin – there’s even less you can do with it I’d rather have bananas, I can eat bananas”
– Mark Cuban

Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees
As kids, we all learn that money doesn’t grow on trees but on a societal level, or as a country, any remnant of common sense seems to have left the building. Just in the last two months, central banks in the United States, Europe and Japan (the Fed, ECB and BOJ) have collectively inflated the supply of their respective currencies by $3.3 trillion in aggregate – an increase of over 20% in just eight weeks. The Fed alone has accounted for the majority, minting $2.5 trillion dollars and increasing the base money supply by over 60%. And it’s far from over; trillions more will be created. It is not a possibility; it is a certainty. Common sense is that deep feeling of uncertainty many are experiencing that says, “this doesn’t make any sense” or “this doesn’t end well.” Few carry that thought process out to its logical conclusion, often because it is uncomfortable to think about, but it is reverberating throughout the country and the world. While not everyone is connecting the equation to 21 million bitcoin, a growing number of people are. Time makes more converts than reason. Individuals don’t have to understand how or why there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin; all that has to be recognized in practical experience is that dollars are going to be worth significantly less in the future, and then the idea of having a currency with a fixed supply begins to make sense. Understanding how it is possible that bitcoin has a fixed supply comes after making that initial connection, but even still, no one needs to understand the how to understand that it is valuable. It is the light bulb turning on.
For each individual, there is a choice to either exist in a world in which someone gets to produce new units of money for free (but just not them) or a world where no one gets to do that (including them). From an individual perspective, there is not a marginal difference in those two worlds; it is night and day, and anyone conscious of the decision very intuitively opts for the latter, recognizing that the former is neither sustainable, nor to his or her advantage. Imagine there were 100 individuals in an economy, each with different skills. All have determined to use a common form of money to facilitate trade in exchange for goods and services produced by others. With the one exception that a single individual has a superpower to print money, requiring no investment of time and at practically no cost. Given human time is an inherently scarce resource and that it is a required input in the production of any good or service demanded in trade, such a scenario would mean that one person would get to purchase the output of all the others for free. Why would anyone agree to such an arrangement? That the individual is an enterprise, and more specifically, a central bank expected to act in the public interest does not change the fundamental operation. If it does not make sense on a micro level, it does not magically transform into a different fundamental fact merely because there are greater degrees of separation. If no individual would bestow that power in another, neither would a conscious decision be made to bestow it in a central bank.

Everything beyond this fundamental reality strays into abstract theory, relying on leaps of faith, hypotheticals and big words that no one understands, all while divorced from individual decision points. It is not that one individual is more trusted than another or one central bank relative to another; it is simply that, on an individual level, no individual is advantaged by someone else having the ability to print money, regardless of identity or interests. That this is true leaves only one alternative, that each individual would be advantaged by ensuring that no other individual or entity has this power. The Fed may have the ability to create dollars at zero cost, but money still doesn’t grow on trees. It is more likely that a particular form of money is not actually money than it is that money miraculously started growing on trees. And at an individual level, everyone is incentivized to ensure that is not the case. While there is a long habit of not thinking this particular thing wrong, the errant defense of custom can only stray so far. Time converts everyone back into reality. At present, it is the Fed’s “shock and awe” campaign contrasted by the simplicity in bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million. There is no amount of reason that can replace an observed divergence in two distinct paths.

Defending Existing Custom
“There’s money and there’s credit. The only thing that matters is spending and you can
spend money and you can spend credit. And when credit goes down, you better put money into the system so you can have the same level of spending. That’s what they did through the financial system (referencing QE in response to the past crisis) and that thing worked.”
– Ray Dalio, CNBC September 19, 2017