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Bitcoin is more centralized than the dollar. Most is owned but a few large holders, the whales.
It is a poor store of value as it is hard to access in an emergency. Has no utility beyond storing value, unlike gold or silver or shares or bonds. The reason people put their money there is not to escape the fiat system or to make transfers easier (both valid use cases). It's to try and make a quick buck. Unfortunately, most won't. As more and more start to lose money, it will continue to drop.
The technology is sound but the processing speed and acceptance and cost to process transactions, computationally and in dollar value makes it useless for its stated purpose. Which was part of the design.
As card prices have gone up, and energy prices for up, mining Bitcoin becomes uneconomical, so I'd expect less hype and many players to exit leaving others holding the bag.
It may resurge when there are cheap cards after an ai crash. However, I don't see Bitcoin taking over as a payment system replacing the existing banking system. Even Europe faces with visa and MasterCard being a risk for payment processing after American fuckery aren't looking at Bitcoin as the answer. They are looking at block chain technology, though, as being part of the solution.
Market cap on BTC is 21M coins and the largest individual owner has 1.1M coins while the next two largest owners is 70k coins and 30k coins respectively. I think a small country and the FBI are also major holders.
The capability for those owners to devalue it via selloff is infinitely less than the capability of a country to devalue its currency via selloff, inflation from minting and loan interest rates, poor trade practices, etc.
A country devaluing their currency has negative effects for them. So they don't have incentive to do so. Even with hyperinflation in countries like Argentina, people start to use a different currency, like the dollar.
For Bitcoin I'm just copying and pasting: Top 10 addresses: The 10 richest Bitcoin wallets (excluding Satoshi Nakamoto’s dormant holdings) collectively hold roughly 1.1 million BTC, about 5.5% of the total supply. Top 100 addresses: The 100 largest wallets control approximately 2.9 million BTC, around 14–15% of the circulating supply. “Whale” wallets (>1,000 BTC): There are 2,000–2,100 addresses that each hold at least 1,000 BTC (worth $100+ million apiece). Collectively, these large holders own over 36% of all Bitcoin.
This also assumes that wallets are individual people. Some wallets may be only part of some holdings and the same entity might have multiple addresses.
In the case of Bitcoin if they decide it's not viable and want to sell, there is no negative effect for them once their holdings are gone, should their sale cause a crash. Theat level of control of the market is unheard of. Even looking at the plays on GBP in the past, it was based on much smaller amounts.
Assuming a world of only rational actors only takes you further away from reality.
Haha, true that. However, I'm pretty sure the whales will act in their interest. Financially or otherwise.
And you should, but it's foolish to think that the nations will.
The difference is the nations effects have diminishing returns. So as they make moves that crash the currency. There is pressure on them to stop or change. Either financial if it's for corruption or political if it's for other reasons.
For Bitcoin whales, there is no such pressure or negative effect. Once they sell their holdings, they are done.
I don't know how to tell you this but nations have on many occasions made their currency worthless.
The pressure to stop despots and morons from destroying their value is meaningless when BTC DOESN'T EVEN HAVE THE SAME MECHANISMS TO DESTROY VALUE.
All the whales can do is sell, and its not enough to harm the value long term because when they sell then somebody else will own it.
Yes, I know but usually not on purpose and in the process of enriching themselves.
With Bitcoin, it is in their interest to sell of they think it's starting to devalue and that may be permanent. So the market pressure is in the opposite direction of where it would be for a currency where the central bank has no interest in profit but only stability. That can be corrupted, of course. But with currency, that's in a worst case scenario. With Bitcoin, that's the norm.
When the shakes sell, the value drops. Someone else only owns it if the sale is successful. At a certain point it becomes a falling knife. So their only interest is to try and sell before anyone notices. Eg quickly, which will cause a bigger drop.
That's what I mean. The incentives in Bitcoin for individuals are pervers for Bitcoin as a whole.
Every 3 or 4 years for over 20 years there are droves of people like you saying the value dropping is permanent, that it will never go back up, and yet it has gone from pennies a coin to over $123,000 USD per coin. As BTC adoption rate increases so does price and stability, and BTC adoption rate has always increased and in my opinion will continue to do so for many decades.
In what way do you think Bitcoin adoption has increased? I still don't see it's use for transfers nor as a safe value store. It's used as an investment strategy, yes, but not based on any fundamentals apart from market sentiment.
I don't know if the value drop this time is permanent. What o know is that I don't foresee Bitcoin being a replacement for global currencies. I think the digital euro has more of a chance of that happening.
Bitcoins value increase from mining is what made it popular. That is no longer the case. The hope is that as mining ceases it becomes non inflationary as the number is finite.
That whole proposition is based on Bitcoin being the primary store of value. If the rest of the world continues to have currencies which are inflationary, then the price of Bitcoin will represent its value in dollar terms, as it does now. So as the dollar depreceates, the value of Bitcoin in dollar terms should rise. No different to how the equivalent euro or gold does now. So it's not a magical hedge.
LINK an exponential chart with a collection of surveys showing increased number of BTC owners at about 520,000,000.0 people in 2024 up from 390.0 in early 2009. If it were a linear chart it would probably look like an almost vertical line.
You can also purchase cards with which to buy stuff from stores from some exchanges and they convert to your currency of choice on credit, you can use BTC kiosks in most major cities, and you can use it directly at a variety of stores in several countries including Switzerland, Venezuela, and it was widespread in Zimbabwe until their central bank banned it.