I still don't get the appeal of bitcoin other than as another way of gambling.
As a store of value Bitcoin has the following benefits
- easy to store, just write down some numbers and digits on a piece of paper. Compare that to storing gold or storing a multi-million dollar Picasso or original Da Vinci.
- easy to maintain. The owners of Bitcoin don't need to do much of anything to maintain the Bitcoin network. Compare that to maintaining an expensive house, boat, farm, whatever, anything valuable and large. Bitcoin is easier to maintain.
- perhaps harder to steal than other assets. Think of all these Saudis that are currently being investigated for corruption in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says they're corrupt, their gains are ill gotten, and well, therefore the Saudi government is taking away all of their buildings. With Bitcoin if you control your private keys/numbers, then no large entity can just take it from you.
- no government printing money which reduces the value of the money....ie. no inflation. The number of Bitcoin is fixed at about 21 million. If Venezuela needs more Venezuelan money to pay Venezuela's bills, they just print more Venezuelan money. This makes your Venezuelan money worth less. With Bitcoin, that doesn't happen. It can't happen.
- easy cross border payments. It's like Western Union in that regard, without all the regulatory controls. You can send large amounts around the world to anyone with a few key clicks, although the difficulty of getting it back into fiat money (if you desire) can be challenging in some places.
- There are 1,000s of new crypto currencies and more emerging all the time. Usually, you buy and sell these newer crypto currencies with Bitcoin. So it's sort of the crypto dollar in that regard.
Those are all pretty appealing. And they don't have anything to do with gambling.
Bitcoin of course has some negative aspects as well, but the appealing aspects of it are pretty desirable.
If I had a billion dollar net worth and I was the African despot, and there was just a revolution in my country which removed me from power, I would much rather own Bitcoin than the local power plant, supermarket and all the main downtown buildings.
In any country with inflation, Bitcoin should be very popular. The world doesn't have much inflation now other than in failed states like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, but if it rears it's head the price of Bitcoin will soar. |
