The Top 10 Reasons Goldman & Others Can’t See The Bitcoin Light

On May 27th, Goldman gave a presentation on the economic outlook of the U.S. given current government policies. You can see the 45 page report here.

Goldman has been opining on Bitcoin for years, including a bullish outlook when Bitcoin was starting its historic bull run in 2017.

While it was exciting that “Bitcoin” was in the title of the report, which included six pages devoted to Bitcoin/cryptocurrency, every page highlighted reasons to be bearish. One page titled “Cryptocurrency Can Be a Conduit for Illicit Activity”, generated significant social media chatter:

Personally, I don’t care what Goldman or other institutions say about Bitcoin. This is a financial revolutions, and, last I checked, revolutions are not lead by incumbents. They’re followers. That’s why, other than Fidelity, which is family owned, there’s no meaningful incumbent financial institution that’s acting as if it’s leaders have seen the crypto light. Below are my top 10 reasons why.

1. Crypto Is Still Too Complicated

Crypto is the densest thing I’ve tried to understand. It’s so new, that even the nomenclature used to describe crypto isn’t fully formed. Decentralization is a new concept, let alone proof of work, proof of stake, DeFi, bonding curves, or mining.

2. People Don’t Like To Work/Study

To learn about Crypto, you have to read…a lot. At first, you won’t understand much of what you read. So you have to work to understand the meaning of individual words or phrases. I’ve seen it accomplished in as little as 20 hours or so. I’ve seen others take closer to 200 hours. Either way, it’s a lot of work, and it turns out, most people aren’t up for that.

3. Some People Are Too Successful To See The Light

Before I saw the light, I thought I could see how financial markets worked, but I was only seeing a partial view. After I saw the Crypto light it felt like I’d been a horse with blinders on, and the new world I saw was something very different than what I had seen before. I’d had what’s called a Gestalt Shift.

I Used To Think This Was A Duck…Then I Saw A Rabbit

In order to see the Crypto light, you have to be open to new ideas. You have to want to look to the right or left, even if looking straight ahead has paid off big time. Yet the more successful that people are, the less likely they are to change how they look at the world. The less likely they are to have an interest in looking left or right and seeing what’s there. Being successful makes it less likely you’ll see the Crypto light.

4. The Belief That Only Governments Issue Currency

It’s hard to get people to appreciate that they are better off believing in an algorithm, like the one that runs Bitcoin, than their own government. Even Wikipedia says “… .Currencies in this sense are defined by governments”.

The Goldman report made no mention of stablecoins, a market that now tops $10 billion, up over 75% year-to-date.

5. Most People Don’t Care

The most prevalent reason people don’t see the light is because they have no interest in it. In a 2018 poll, “There is no need, or they are disinterested” was the #1 reason people cited for not owning cryptocurrency.

6. Not Curious

It’s hard not to realize there’s something going on with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is the fastest growing company in terms of market cap in the 11+ years of it’s existence. Bitcoin is worth over $170 billion today. The only reason to not care about that, is simply because you’re not a curious person.

7. Crypto Is Too Volatile/Too Risky

People say that Crypto is too volatile or too risky for them to be interested in it. So were junk bonds when they first started trading. Other than Drexel Burnham, which invented junk bonds, every other investment bank at the time said junk bonds were garbage that they would never deal with. And they often pointed to volatility as a sign that junk bonds were to risky and would never be a thing. But the S&P can be very volatile as well. But few use that as a reason not to invest.

8. It’s A Scam

It doesn’t help that a lot of people still think of Silk Road when they think about Crypto. That concern is compounded by the fact that some of the most successful business people in the world continuously deride Crypto. Even the Goldman report had one whole page on how Bitcoin is used for illicit activities

And another page was devoted to hacks.

9. Too Old

I met Ken Langone, the 84 year old financier of Home Depot. I asked him if he’d looked in to Bitcoin/Crypto. He laughed derisively, and said “I only invests in things I understand”. I said he wasn’t to old to learn. He shrugged me off as if I was trying to get him to join a cult, and maybe I was. Now I don’t know Ken Langone, but I assume he was a curious guy at some point in his life. But now he’s too old to care about learning a new trick.

10. The Crypto Light Is Still Pretty Dim

Even for people who are curious and do the work, it’s still hard to see the light, because it’s still dim. Most people have never knowingly interacted with the blockchain. Most have never even met someone who’s used Crypto as a currency. Most people have no context in which to begin to place Crypto.

But the Crypto light is getting brighter every day. Every day, more people see the light. Everyday, the Crypto community is building and improving Crypto related tech.

Even though this list above can seem pretty dire, I’m confident that the Crypto light will continue to get brighter, and at some point, like the sun in the sky, it will be clearly visible for all to see.

Until then, we’ll continue to build the industry brick by brick. We’ll continue to educate those that haven’t seen the Crypto light. We’ll continue to take the derision of highly respected people who haven’t done thee work. We’ll continue to innovate. And most importantly, we’ll continue to leverage Crypto to make the world a better place for billions of people less fortunate than us.

Everything else will take care of itself.

If you got at least 0.000001 Bitcoin worth of value from this post please “Clap” (up to 50 times) below so others will see the post.