Beauty's In The Eye of the BTC-holder

Is BTC hyper-political or anti-political? Is it more Communist or Capitalist? Means of (monetary) production for the Marxist worker or the ultimate free market asset for Libertarians?

Apr 06, 2022

Story time... when I started falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in late 2011 & early 2012, I had many heated debates with a self-avowed Communist friend over whether Bitcoin was hyper-Capitalist or hyper-Communist tech.

He saw Bitcoin as the tangible expression of core Marxist principles: a mechanism for putting the means of (monetary) production in the hands of the workers, the people's revolution, etc. A deeply political technology.

I saw Bitcoin as the ultimate free market, more aligned with the Austrian School: Zero barriers to entry, non-interventionism, open-source competition, rejection of artificial stimulants (e.g. low interest rates or high supply expansion). A credibly neutral, deeply apolitical technology.

What we agreed on, however, was that BTC was a very powerful and fundamentally new type of asset with the potential to disrupt the global monetary order and dramatically skew the balance of power away from institutions and toward individuals.

Of course, the rest of the world saw it as Chuck E. Cheese tokens for internet geeks...

But one thing's for sure: after Russia invaded Ukraine, no one could say BTC was useless...

Russia started mining BTC and made a global offer to price oil & gas exports in BTC.

Ukraine has been leaning on BTC for humanitarian aid as well as a Store of Value helping refugees flee with assets beyond what they could physically carry.

The wild thing is that the real world use cases for Bitcoin have arrived and they're coming from BOTH sides of the war!

Russia for censorship-resistance; Ukraine for Store-of-Value.

Like my Communist friend and I, Russia & Ukraine can violently disagree on just about everything yet still both find equal value in a permissionless, global, digital store of value.

MOAR BTC

Which is why you shouldn't waste your time (like I did) debating whether BTC fits better into a framework of "The Left" or "The Right".

The far more important fact is that everyone - on every side of every aisle - benefits immensely from it.

Which is why over just the last month we've seen so many people, companies, and countries desperate to get their hands on more sats:

Newly launched CitadelDAO aims to accumulate the world's largest community-owned BTC treasury
Microstrategy & founder Saylor aim to be the world's largest BTC holders - used BTC as "pristine collateral" for a $205m loan... to buy more BTC
Silvergate, the bank who funded the loan, is eager to accept BTC as "pristine collateral"
Public BTC mining firm, Riot Blockchain, files to sell $500m of equity so they won't have to sell their BTC
Both "Shrimp" (<1 BTC) & "Whale" (>1k BTC) wallets have been accumulating large amounts of BTC recently
Russia wants BTC, not USD, in return for their oil & gas exports
El Salvador wants BTC, not Gold, to support their currency
Ukraine wants BTC for humanitarian aid, funding their resistance efforts, and to enable citizens to flee with their wealth in tact
Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden says America should support BTC innovation
Republican U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis says America should put BTC on its balance sheet

No one can get enough! People, projects, companies, and countries are now competing to own the most BTC.

They all have different politics, economic objectives, cultural values, and motives, but they all agree on BTC.

(notably no one is competing for XRP...)

The Only Constant is Bitcoin

This intense, targeted demand for Bitcoin is a natural part of the Circle of Life in crypto... a cycle we've seen play out more times than we can count over the past 10 years.

The specific project names change (with the important exception of BTC), but here's how the cycle plays out:

Capital flows into Bitcoin (or BTC + ETH)
Rotates to Large Caps (e.g., SOL, LUNA)
Trickles down to Small Caps (e.g., DOGE)
**Market crashes 80-90%**
Capital flows back to Bitcoin

When everyone rushes back to BTC (as they are now) after the crypto market crashes (as it just did in Q1), it historically marks the end of the Bear and beginning of the Bull.

And this time, the Demand/Supply ratio has never looked better... the 19 millionth BTC was just mined last week, meaning it has never been more difficult to increase the supply of BTC in circulation.

It took 13 years to mine the first 19M BTC, but will take another 118 years to mine the final 2M BTC!!

Conclusion

So, does the fact that BTC is used by both sides of the political aisle make it hyper-political or anti-political? Is it more Communist or Capitalist? Means of (monetary) production for the Marxist workers or the ultimate free market asset for the Libertarians?

Truth is, my friend and I were both right, because: Bitcoin is for *everyone*

And whether you like it or not, BTC benefits all who use it: the Left and the Right, institutions and individuals, Russia and Ukraine.

And that's the beauty.