I hear this argument all the time, both online and in my day to day shilling of Bitcoin. It’s TOO expensive; I cannot afford an entire Bitcoin; it’s too late for me to get in all the gains are gone. That’s the mindset of a fiat maxi when you’ve been conditioned for the rat race of acquiring more units; you can’t think of anything but getting more numbers on your screen or pieces of paper.
People do not have the concept of a unit appreciating over time; sure, they can see it in stocks, real estate and bonds. However, currency cannot get it around their heads that a currency can appreciate in purchasing power.
They think that having 1 Bitcoin is the goal to protect you from inflation, the same way having a certain absurd amount of fiat would protect you.
Sure, if I were a US dollar multi-millionaire, I wouldn’t care too much about inflation, but the vast majority of us will never accumulate that amount of US dollars.
A unit trust.
Unit bias is a cruel mistress, something many of us fall for when we leave our safe space in the fiat world and move into the world of Bitcoin and digital assets. The idea of having 1 of something is so attractive to us that we would even go against our better nature and even harm ourselves to own 1 of something.
We can debate the shitcoin market and its potential merits all day long, but the fact of the matter is, the market is made up of a few people.
- Insiders benefitting from seigniorage
- Speculators trying to flip for more fiat or BTC
- Idyllic dreamers who think decentralising everything is the way
- The intellectually lazy who believe in marketing over fundamentals and don’t do their research
- Those who feel Bitcoin is too expensive, ill never own one, so I might as well grab all these other coins while they are below a price I can afford to buy one.
Shitcoin creators play on this unit bias and sell you dreams of getting in early on a replica of Bitcoin. Unfortunately, this is nothing but a dream; there is no second best when it comes to Bitcoin. Only inferior investments that will see you lose money when compared to Bitcoin.
Sure your coin holdings may improve in fiat value, but you’re only comparing your coin with an even bigger shitcoin with unlimited supply and constant printing; that is hardly a fair comparison.
A better measure of your coins appreciation would be against something that requires work to produce, something like gold or, better yet, the apex predator in markets these days. So if you want to compare unit for unit, compare it with Bitcoin.
It won’t take you long to see your coins unit continues to lose ground to Bitcoin.
One Bitcoin isn’t the end goal.
Orange pilling a normie or precoiner isn’t easy, especially when the price keeps running. They’ll feel like they are too late, this thing at $50 000, how ill I ever afford one. As if the goal is to afford a whole Bitcoin.
The fact is the vast majority of people will NEVER own an entire Bitcoin.
Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math, shall we?
There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin, and there are around 7.9 Billion people on the planet. If we have to spread the distribution evenly, that leaves 0.00265822 BTC or 265 822 satoshis for everyone on the planet.
Lost BitcoinÂ
There are reports that around 20% of all Bitcoin has already been lost forever as people lose access to their wallets and forget their seed phrases. This won’t stop anytime soon; people will continue to lose access to their Bitcoin as long as the network remains intact; it’s just human nature to be forgetful, to be negligent or not to take proper contingencies to protect their wealth.
The fiat system has made us soft, and we aren’t used to having zero fail-safes to retrieve our funds, and plenty of people are going to find out the hard way.
Stackers are stacking
Then we need to factor in everyone who continues to stack and mine the current supply and those who did so in lower competition years. Then you’ll see the chances of acquiring 100 million satoshis/1 Bitcoin becomes a dream few will realise in their lifetimes.
A fraction of the cost
I would rather have a piece of something that continues to appreciate than an entire basket of depreciating assets.
I am not trying to put you off stacking sats; in fact, quite the opposite. If you have the free cash flow to spare and want to lock it up long term, then Bitcoin is a great option. You don’t have to compete to try and get to 1 Bitcoin; stack as much as you feel comfortable holding.
If that happens to be 1 BTC, so be it.
Sure there are some of us utterly obsessed with stacking sats and stack, and hodl culture continues to gain popularity in the Bitcoin movement but doesn’t feel pressured to give up everything for Bitcoin.
There is no second best.
I know this sounds like a boobie prize boo hoo; I don’t get to own a whole Bitcoin but get over your fucking ego for once. The appreciation properties of Bitcoin apply to every single satoshi on the network. The end goal isn’t to hold one Bitcoin or multiple Bitcoin. The end goal is securing your current savings in the most robust computer network in the world.
The goal is to have complete confidence that those savings will provide you with even more consumers in the future and reward your choice for delayed gratification.
Don’t try to compete or accept defeat.
I know it can be hard to see people dox their holdings online or whales share their holdings online. It can seem daunting and can put you off acquiring, but again, that’s more ego than acting rationally.
If you can acquire one Bitcoin or multiple Bitocin, I am happy and wish you all the best.
As for me, I couldn’t care less about other peoples holdings. As long as I have more Bitcoin today than I did yesterday, that’s all that matters.
One Response
All of this! I keep hearing the same thing and it’s hard to get people off the unit bias. People would rather have millions of a shitcoin that disappears into nothing than have fractions of a Bitcoin. There is still a long way to go but I’m with you, if I can have more sats today than I had yesterday, I’m a happy man.