Bitcoiners often talk about the scarcity of Bitcoin, the “21 club”, the limited supply and to an extent, that is true. The idea of having something that very few can own is an attractive proposition in a world where the money is printed like never before; anything measured in money seems to be improving its value.
We’ve seen the price of stocks, crypto, precious metals, real estate and even collectables shoot up in price. Being scarce isn’t the only attribute that drives up the price of something, but it does help. As interest and demand improve for Bitcoin, the possibility of owning a single one becomes less likely for more people.
The unit bias tends to also push away users since people feel the need to want to own a WHOLE of something. Soon the fiat value of a Bitcoin will price out the majority of the market, which without education could put a damper on demand.
The big satoshi secret
It seems like a secret at this point, but a lot of people don’t seem to be clicking that the Satoshi allows you to get into Bitcoin at any price. Bitcoin is not scarce when there are trillions of satoshis available to buy right now and well into the future.
Even if, at some point, the current satoshi breakdown is not enough, it can easily open up even more decimal points, and we can trade on the milli-satoshi level.
Bitcoins scarcity isn’t from the 21 million “hard cap” but the ability to reserve your position in the hierarchy of that 21 million.
Bitcoin is the treasury bond
As Bitcoin continues to grow, I see it transitioning into more of a treasury bond, where it becomes the security used to collateralise the system. Where the satoshi provides liquidity in the same way, the US treasuries are issued to back the creation of new US dollars.
The satoshi is the utility token of the Bitcoin network; it will be used to pay for network fees on the lightning network and dapps.
It will be used to transfer value between different assets, it is already used as a trading pair, and in future, there will be even more interesting use cases.
The hard cap
As the hard cap starts to play more of a role in the availability of Bitcoin on the market with halving every 4 years, the satoshi should become more valuable and play a bigger part in the ecosystem.
I think in future, we will even begin to measure the health of the chain by the velocity of the satoshi and how many times it turns around per year between wallets.