Bitcoin has already succeeded
I frequently come across, like I guess most of you, people who repeat the mantra of “Bitcoin has failed” or “Bitcoin is going nowhere”, blah, blah, blah.
As I recently said in twitter, I find it hilarious; when I hear/read this, I have the same feeling as if someone told me my home or my computer have failed.
If value is subjective, who do you think you are to tell me something that I find useful has failed for me?
I can agree with you that my house or my computer may suck to your standards, but how can you know if it is not good enough for me? Isn’t that extremely arrogant?
Let me tell you a really brief story:
Something like 10 years ago, I got a speeding ticket yet I didn’t find out until it was very late because notifications from the authority were going to a former address of mine. So I was getting those notifications there but I had already moved somewhere else. Apparently I have the obligation to notify this authority in my Country, that I was actually moving, but I didn’t know.
Given the constant delays in payment, the ticket was getting larger with extra penalties.
Then one day, I can’t remember how, I found out that my bank accounts were about to be blocked. I was not married and didn’t have kids at the time, but the mere possibility of running out of money was one of the most scary experiences I’ve been through. I don’t think I have ever felt this powerless. Now married and with kids and with a communist regime in power which believes my individual well being is secondary to their ideology, it is as scary as it gets. It was me against bureaucrats on the other side of the phone that were simply following orders and for whom I was a mere ID number.
Until then, I thought this kind of things only happened to people that didn’t pay their taxes or criminals…
I don’t live in Afghanistan but in an EU country, so I can only imagine the number of problems people in that kind of countries may go through regularly.
If you think Bitcoin’s volatility is a problem, you are likely to have never experienced full volatility, that is, seeing your money going down to zero.
This is what many pundits don’t see. If there are some initial use cases for Bitcoin in developed countries, just think of the potential eventual demand elsewhere. If the cost of storing this part of my wealth is both microscopic and censorship resistant compared to any other form known to us, then there is definitely a gigantic potential appreciation, becoming a good investment idea too. I’m as a result both a user and a speculator.
It all comes down to what you consider a success for Bitcoin. For me the fact it is already useful for me and many others is a complete success. Whether there is a tiny chance of it being attacked is irrelevant. My government could ban wine tomorrow and that wouldn’t make wine useless or a failure overnight.
When did the iPhone succeed? When it reached $1m in sales? $10m? $5 billion? Or maybe 20 million users? or 100m?
For the same reason, has Bitcoin succeeded? If you can enjoy its utility already, I think it has. If not, what defines its success? And what defines its failure?
Whether you have not discovered its utility yet, that’s an entirely different matter
