BTC should not be taken seriously as an investment
As it is an emperor wearing no clothes; without utility or long-term security
Making it a purely speculative asset, contrary to the original goals of the project
Here are fourteen reasons why you should not invest in BTC: 🧵
1. No Capacity (Utility)
The block size limit fundamentally limits BTCs throughput to between 7-22 Transaction Per Second, which means it would take more than seventy years for everyone in the world just to do a single transaction.
This means that widespread & significant usage of BTC is impossible from a technical perspective, as usage has literally been capped. Therefore, it cannot & will not ever be the “future of money”.
Congestion also renders transacting over BTC unreliable as it is impossible to predict fees perfectly, leading to failed transactions.
Some have proposed the Lightning Network as a solution to this problem. However, onboarding people onto the Lighting Network in a non-custodial manner actually requires several on-chain transactions, while high fees are also passed on to LN users during times of congestion.
The block size limit, therefore, destroys all potential use cases for BTC, as any significant amount of usage is literally impossible. Whenever a real use case does take off, it only leads to fee spikes and congestion, which eventually drives people away; this is why BTC has no utility.
2. No Long-Term Security (Without Utility)
BTC’s security model is currently in a bootstrapping phase, where the security budget is supported by high inflation. However, we are now approaching the next phase, where fees are supposed to take over from inflation due to the halvening mechanism.
BTC was originally designed to be a high-volume payment network where a large number of TXs, each paying a small fee, would be able to pay for the security of the network based on this utility/service.
However, because BTC fundamentally changed its roadmap, goals & vision by refusing to increase the block size limit as was originally planned, it now faces a different dilemma. A total failure of its security model due to an inability to pay for its own security.
There are now only two ways in which BTC can remain secure while keeping the same inflation schedule; both are exceedingly unrealistic:
BTC has to double in value every four years for the next century or sustain extremely high fees just to maintain the current level of security. Such growth is impossible since it would exceed the current global GDP in 31 years based on the current price. This price doubling would have to continue for another 80 years after that until the security budget runs out completely. If you understand exponentials & economics, you should know that this is entirely impossible.
Fees will also never reach sustained extremes due to the ratcheting effect of the fee market. Paying hundreds of dollars for a single transaction is not realistic in a competitive market. When fees spike, users leave, all due to the unnecessary addition of the block size limit.
This all means that BTC’s long-term security is unsustainable without extremely high TX fees; the security of BTC will inevitably continue to decrease until it drops so low that the network becomes profitable to attack, rendering BTC insecure. I predict this will happen anywhere between five to nine years from now (two to three halvenings).
BTC’s security & technical foundation are made out of sand; false hope.
3. No Predictable Supply (Without Security)
There is a third, more realistic option to avoid this catastrophe in the absence of increasing the block size limit before it is too late.
Increasing BTC’s inflation rate beyond the 21M limit will be the only option left once BTC’s security drops below a certain threshold. Because once we reach this inevitable state, there will only be two choices left:
Option one is allowing censorship & double spending to occur as the network gets 51% attacked.
Option two is to increase BTC’s supply inflation beyond the 21M limit.
I suspect once this happens in around a decade from now, both will occur simultaneously, splitting the network again and causing even more chaos all as a consequence of rejecting utility and the original vision for Bitcoin during the block-size debates.
4. No Value Proposition (Without Security, Utility & A Predictable Supply)
An insecure & purely speculative asset cannot serve as a good Store of Value or even a good form of money at all. The best Store of Value is one with a foundation in utility, as that creates a far more stable foundation for speculation. Furthermore, the impending failure of its long-term security model completely destroys all narratives used to justify BTC as an investment in the absence of utility.
The reality is that BTC is unable to provide any value whatsoever beyond mere speculation. That is what turns it into a purely speculative asset, making it highly volatile & ultimately pointless, all very much unlike competing blockchains such as ETH, which provide massive utility & do have mechanisms such as token burning which return part of the value generated by the utility of that blockchain back to token holders.
Making an investment in third & fourth-generation blockchains far more attractive, not only from a utilitarian perspective but also from a Store of Value perspective. As this all translates into a blockchain that is far more secure & scarce, exactly the features at which BTC was supposed to excel at.
The times have changed & the technology has evolved to the point where BTC’s token economics now look incredibly weak compared to the competition.
5. No Turing Completeness (Programmability)
Programmability has proven itself to be a critical feature for any new blockchain, as it has enabled a wide range of now-proven new use cases.
It also makes sense that the best-decentralized money needs decentralized finance to support it. Otherwise, everyone would still be reliant on custodial services in order to enable these more complex financial products, defeating the point of using a decentralized cryptocurrency, to begin with. That is why there are orders of more magnitude wrapped BTC on the Ethereum network compared to the Lighting Network right now.
I consider programmability to be a necessity for long-term competitiveness, as it provides a far more compelling stepping stone to attracting new users, compared to the purely speculative SoV narrative & money narrative, which requires some degree of ideological motivation, at least in the developed world.
6. No DeFi (Without Programmability)
The lack of programmability explains why BTC cannot support DeFi. Consequently, countless bitcoiners keep losing money on centralized exchanges & fraudulent centralized lending platforms.
This will continue indefinitely, as BTC is incapable of developing its own DeFi, requiring trust in centralization institutions from its users instead, which is all very much contrary to Bitcoin's original thesis.
This extreme lack of functionality also further affects BTC’s capability to compete in terms of security & economics, as utility remains the key to sustainable & highly attractive token economics. Something that BTC is just not capable of at any significant scale at all.
7. No Privacy (Without Capacity & Programmability)
The block-size limit also massively reduces the anonymity set, as it is much easier to conduct chain analysis when there are far fewer transactions. Mixers are also rendered far less usable due to this lack of capacity & also far more expensive during periods of congestion.
There is also a complete lack of significant privacy-enhancing technologies, largely due to the lack of programmability over BTC.
Otherwise, solutions such as zero-knowledge proofs could have been implemented, making BTC far more private for users who desire such capabilities. While any native implementation of privacy features still remains far-fetched, at the very least, considering the state of BTC governance, which I will cover later.
Privacy is a critical feature of any financial or payment system. The fact that BTC is unable to implement robust privacy features is what also makes it unsuitable to be adopted as money, even if it had the capacity.
8. PoW is inefficient & wasteful compared to PoS
Proof of Work carries with it a massive cost in arbitrary computation, almost completely absent when compared to Proof of Stake. This cost has to be reflected in either fees or inflation to pay for its long-term security.
PoW externalizes the cost of validation by requiring a massive amount of hardware and electricity to secure the network, all to solve arbitrary mathematical equations that do not directly benefit the network itself. PoS, on the other hand, leverages the value of the token itself to secure the network, resulting in a far more efficient means to gain high blockchain security.
PoS is economically superior since, without this massive arbitrary computation cost, its token economics can have far lower fees and or inflation in all variations of the design due to this increase in efficiency. In terms of the “cost to attack,” comparing PoS to PoW assuming similar attributes besides the consensus algorithm; PoS is 20x to 50x more expensive to attack compared to PoW.
Due to the cost expenditure already being much lower with PoS, as pointed out above, it means that if all else is equal: PoS is more secure and far more sound based on the economic considerations alone.
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@vaken_crypto @ACQuinn_ @MultiversX@NEARProtocol Completely agree. Near works well for me. All you have to do is try it to see for yourself. Also, the easiest to onboard
Why do politicians, (and their followers) use the term "woke" since they clearly don't know what it means? According to any reliable source, it means "aware". So, they are calling THEMSELVES unaware. (I don't give them credit for being enlightened enough to use sarcasm).