Fourteen Reasons Not To Invest In BTC:
Looking at BTC objectively from a fundamentals-first investment perspective; it is abundantly clear that it should not be taken seriously as an investment at all.
BTC is an emperor with no clothes, without a foundation in utility or long-term security. Consequently making it a purely speculative asset, contrary to the original goals of the project.
Here are fourteen reasons why Cyber Capital has not been invested in BTC since 2017:
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.
9. PoW is less decentralized compared to PoS
PoS is far more decentralized compared to PoW, as PoW requires warehouses full of hardware that can be seen from space! Centralized by economies of scale & requiring special deals with governments for electric contracts, PoW is reserved for industrialists.
Whereas PoS block production can be run on Raspberry Pi’s from ordinary people’s homes, and rewards are equally distributed based on stake instead of industrial-scale competition. Lowering the barrier for entry & thereby widening the distribution of power (decentralization).
Most PoS cryptocurrencies operating at the scale of BTC would be far more decentralized by several orders of magnitude. PoW does not stand a chance; PoS is the evolution.
This all makes PoS superior to PoW in every meaningful way, from the standpoint of economics, security, decentralization, and even according to broadly agreed principles of fairness and equality.
10. Dysfunctional governance
My original 2013 thesis for investing in BTC was destroyed by the very people we trusted to maintain it. There also laid the problem. I believe in the end, what we witnessed was a failure of governance. BTC’s history of power struggles & civil wars is a symptom of this failure.
The truth is that the dominant client implementation, “Bitcoin Core,” has effectively achieved centralized control over BTC development. Turning BTC into a one-party system, with Core as an effective gatekeeper of all change.
Currently, more than 98% of the full nodes are using Bitcoin Core, which is an extreme degree of centralization. There is literally only one lead maintainer who has the final say over all decisions in Core, making it a dictatorship. Like all dictatorships, there are limits to what they can get away with. However, this is still a total perversion of the very idea of decentralization that BTC was supposed to represent.
This is all another cultural consequence of the block-size debates, explaining why truly competing clients are today seen as “enemies of Bitcoin”.
The myth of BTC; is that it is a decentralized meritocracy. This could not be further from the truth; Bitcoin Core has disproportionate power to make any changes to the protocol, including highly controversial ones like RBF, while simply kicking out anyone who disagrees with them, such as Gavin Andresen, Mike Hearn, and Jeff Garzik.
This is why a diversity of competing client implementations is so essential for true decentralization. BTC has lost its client diversity as a consequence of the block-size debates, which means it has effectively been captured, a clear failure of decentralized governance.
11. Toxic culture
From bitcoin maximalists to laser eyes, BTC is notorious for its toxic & closed-minded culture. This is important to understand in light of the lack of any formalized governance, which leaves Core as a de-facto dictator of the protocol. That all means that the only hope for reform lies in the culture, or in other words, the social layer.
Unfortunately, this social layer is highly dysfunctional today, again this is partially a consequence of the previous points; as these flaws cause a deep unconscious feeling of insecurity.
As BTC’s culture is a by-product of its history & anthropological evolution. Most notable in this evolution is the time period of the blocksize debates, which was accompanied by mass censorship campaigns. Leading to the exodus of almost all of the dissenting voices.
Creating an echo chamber with a self-reinforcing selection bias for the leading personalities, reinforcing the homogenous demographics of BTC even more. Toxicity, closed-mindedness & hostility are all, their defense mechanism for defending what are fatal flaws in BTCs design. That is the cause of their insecurity, which demands fictitious narratives from its supporters, as falsehoods, fantasy & wishful thinking are the only ways to keep selling BTC to the greater fool, even resorting to tactics taken directly from the Ponzi playbook.
The dominant personality type is now the polar opposite of when I first joined in 2013. The same collective psychological spirit that I fell in love with now thrives in BTC’s competitors instead. While bitcoiners keep selfishly pretending as if BTC still supports its original lofty goals when it clearly does not.
12. Conflicts of interest
The majority of prominent BTC developers are financially supported by for-profit companies whose aim is to develop L2 solutions for BTC. This creates a clear conflict of interest against scaling BTC’s L1.
Prominent members of Bitcoin Core received a lot of money & equity from companies building L2 solutions such as the Lightning Network & Liquid. Companies such as Blockstream & Chaincode Labs have been funding Core developers for many years now. The conflict arises from the fact that these companies benefit from not scaling BTC’s L1. At least in the mid-term, these companies were able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling a solution (L2) to a problem they have created and are able to maintain (L1 scaling).
We have to look at a system’s incentive mechanisms as a whole instead of looking at individuals. Since we can predict outcomes of large groups of people based on incentives, unlike the behavior of individuals. That means over a sufficiently large period of time and scale. This particular misalignment of incentives will cause these conflicts of interest to occur again and again. Making this a major systemic flaw in blockchain governance, something I have covered more extensively in my “Theory On Bitcoin Governance; Three-Stage Model”
13. Entrenched & complicit leadership
Power, on average, always corrupts & we should not expect those in power to go against their own interests and surrender their position. As this only occurs in the rarest of cases throughout history.
The leadership responsible for these failures & departures from the original goals is effectively still in power today. From this perspective, BTC remains effectively captured by parties with direct conflicts of interest.
The need to overthrow the current BTC leadership represents a massive barrier to positive change, one that is unlikely to be overcome any time soon. Especially considering the lack of any formalized governance & cult-like following of the incumbents.
14. Inability to solve all of these problems
BTC is unable to change in order to solve all of these problems, in large part, due to its dysfunctional governance & toxic culture. BTC’s governance has been ruined by the denial of its existence; “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist”.
Supporting BTC based on the potential for change cannot be divorced from politics; any sufficiently deep investigation will expose its flaws & highlight its inability to change, even when confronted with the type of major extensional threats to its existence I outlined earlier. BTC is on a train heading directly into the brick wall of its own technical limitations, bitcoiner's hopes & dreams do not alter that inalienable fact.
Conclusion
From a fundamental perspective, BTC is one of the worst cryptocurrency assets on the market today. Its only real benefit is its first-mover advantage, still putting it at the number one spot in market capitalization. However, once it inevitably loses this dominant position, there will not be anything left to justify its prominence. Allowing us to see BTC for the failed experiment that it really is. A beautiful experiment that has brought about a Cambrian explosion of innovation, ensuring that Bitcoin's original vision does succeed.
You can project any beliefs you want onto BTC, but that does not change the technical facts of its inferiority, setting it up for an inevitable downfall. You can speculative on it, you can trade it, you can even set up a quasi-religious belief system around it. However, the one thing you cannot do is build a coherent, fundamentally based long-term investment case around it, without ignoring the competitive landscape of the wider cryptocurrency market.
BTC is on borrowed time, hand waving away its deeply flawed design. Failing to move with the times & ideologically entrenched in outdated technology, BTC is not exempt from free market competition. The Bitcoin dream now thrives in its children instead; while BTC is left behind, relegated in future history books for founding this movement, but not continuing it. A spectacular and necessary failure, I am sure future generations will look back at 2023 and wonder how the majority of people could have been so wrong.
The same is also true when we look into the past, it might seem obvious with hindsight, but for those ingrained in the culture of their time, the opposite can be true. Ultimately all monetary value is based on belief, however, there is a reason why the vast majority of the worlds value is tied up into assets with utility. Because value investors like myself believe that utility is far more valuable than speculation alone can ever be. That is why Cyber Capital has not been invested in BTC since 2017 while never regretting that choice.
