Top 10 reasons to own Bitcoin that have nothing to do with the price
Right now the focus is on the price of crypto currencies like Bitcoin going up. This wasn’t always the case: there was a time when the excitement around the crypto currency sector had very little to do with the price.
So lets take a step backwards in time away from the speculative gamble and imagine we are early adopters with no real chance of major price appreciation. Are there still reasons to own decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin(BTC) , Ethereum (ETH) and Causevest Coin(XCV)?
Read on and you will find my top 10 reasons to own decentralized cryptocurrencies that have nothing to do with the price.
The list:
10) Convenience - Bitcoin is still more convenient then cash
9) Education – Cryptocurrencies incentivise people to learn more about the institution of money while fiat gives a false sense of security
8) Improving Technology- Legacy Banking is stale while crypto Technology is always improving so much so that they copy it
7) Income Generation- cash flow is still king and crypto generates better rates for small investors
6) Financial capacity- I have the capacity to do more with bitcoin then with fiat
5) Governance and oversight – the average person with a computer has more power over a cryptocurrency then over the government and financial institutions
4) Privacy – Live unseen
3) Trustless - Minimized the need for trust
2) Wealth protection
1) Build new social systems
10. Convenience- Bitcoin is still more convenient then cash
A lot of the early attacks on bitcoin adoption where based on the lack of convenience to buy, sell and spend BTC.
Today it’s easier than ever to do all of those things! In the UK, normal ATMS allow you to cash out your crypto holdings, buy from brokers, and trade on exchanges. Pre-paid cards are available funded by crypto and there are credit cards that payout crypto currency rewards. The savvier amongst you even have private crypto brokers to do all of your fiat based shopping for you, for a fee.
But this is all besides the point: it is still (almost always*) faster to send a BTC or ETH transaction then it is to send an international transfer. As such it is more convenient for most people then fiat.
Many people missed this, but UK banks following EU rules began to prohibit a number of countries from receiving international bank transfers from UK citizens. This inconvenience reduced the value of fiat over owning Bitcoin.
As the infrastructure of crypto on and off ramping improves (held back primarily by regulatory capture) we shall see this convenience naturally improve.
9. Education – crypto incentives people to learn more
Bitcoin has forced many people to think about what money really is.
The argument for apathy can always fall down to “as long as the people managing my money have the same interests as me then learning about the complexities of money is pointless”. This has been a fine excuse for for years, but those days are over.
Interest rates, inflation, monetary policy, and fiscal stimulus you don’t understand? Well that’s going to cost you money my friend!
The world is becoming a harsher place, bitcoin has forced people to think about how the financial system operates; and has ultimately made many people realise that they are not happy with the current status quo.
To conclude, Bitcoin incentives education in a way traditional fiat does not.
Bitcoin has created a generation of sharp eared animals that know that education is key to protecting their wealth. To me, this is a great reason to own Bitcoin because once you do so incentives you to learn, study and educate yourself about the world we live in. (As a financial economist I am ruthlessly biased on this point but it’s my list so w.e)
8 The Technology is always improving
In comparison to legacy banking systems crypto financial systems are constantly improving regardless of the price of the underlying crypto currency.
https://gfycat.com/importantgleefulfrogmouth
One thing is for certain: the cryptocurrency space is constantly evolving.
The simple days of providing banking to the bankless and solving the issues of trust in a decentralised system have been replaced with an ever evolving and growing basket of technical innovations, that are at times hard to navigate.
The technology behind major crypto currencies is constantly improving and changing. Many of the original decentralised Altcoins like Dash where protests to changes in the original bitcoin protocol or suggestions for improvements in it.
These shifts in opinion birthed entirely new communities’ and ideologies - with their cryptocurrency acting as the practical application of those ideologies.
We created Causevest Coin because we didn’t like some of the changes that were made and wanted to experiment with some of the proposals that were omitted from bitcoin.
xcvesting.io
There have been improvements to security, capacity, transaction loads, privacy, and new use cases have constantly become apparent in the cryptocurrency space, despite what the mainstream media would have you believe.
I’ll never forget the first time I installed the NXT desktop wallet. I was in awe at its design and feel. So where many banks who all went on to copy the style. I’m not sure if you remember your banks old internet banking screen, but it didn’t change by luck. NXT is responsible for improved UX and UI functions across many mainstream banks. The point is that these improvements have leaked and benefited the traditional banking sector as well.
In this, I give every new entrant a message: ensure that when you buy a cryptocurrency it has a use case or an ideology that you believe in, beyond the speculation that you value.
7 Income Generation- cash FLOW is still king
This point relating to income generation has been missed, ignored, and very much underappreciated.
In a low interest rate environment, crypto owners have been quietly and calmly generating income on a massive scale.
Luckily for now it’s still relatively easy for users to generate a crypto income.
Away from prying eyes, many people are living on crypto income streams around the world.
In fact, the ability to generate income from the crypto currency space was a massive innovation with POW (Proof of Work) coins mining and POS (Proof of stake) chains staking, anyone can generate a crypto currency income. There are also new and innovative methods of generating income streams as the Causevest network runs on a dual Proof of Stake (POS) and Proof of Cause (POC) systems. Both ways allow income generation for ordinary users.
If there’s interest, I’ll make another article on the wide variety of income streams available in the crypto space, and more importantly: the ease of access to these streams of income make crypto superior to fiat, regardless of the current price.
Nowadays, you can earn an income now lending your crypto to others and providing liquidity directly.
These income streams are not necessarily safe, but with enough education (as highlighted in point 8) they are very real.
6 Financial capacity- I have the capacity to do more with bitcoin
Financial capacity, as opposed to the often discussed subject of financial literacy, is one of the biggest reasons to enter the crypto currency space that has nothing to do with price.
One definition is as follows: “Financial capacity refers to the ability to satisfactorily manage one’s financial affairs in a manner consistent with personal self-interest and values”
At it’s core, financial capacity its a measure of your power within financial services and your ability to act upon that power to benefit yourself.
You can think of it like having a tool box. Cash is your hammer, equities your screw driver and derivatives your saw. Each tool has a different job, the more tools you have the more things you can do, the greater your capacity.
You don’t have a saw? That means no way to cut down the trees; and, while you’re lacking a saw, other people might have a chain saw.
You want to have as much capacity as you can, this means a bigger tool box as well as lots of tools. Why do we care so much about financial capacity?
Financial capacity directly impacts your ability to generate wealth, your knowledge, and your ability to apply that knowledge is key.
In regards to bitcoin, when I was first looking at learning how to trade, I had never seen a level 2 trading screen. To access one, you had to pay professional brokers significant up front fees. Retail traders are now allowed to see the true depth of the market, which used to only be reserved for professionals. They are given additional tools to compete with. The first Bitcoin exchanges arrived with level 2 trading screens (where you could clearly see the depth of the markets you where trading in) for free. As a student, this blew my mind. FOR FREE??? (This exchange doesn’t exist any more, but level 2 screens are still standard in many exchanges)
To conclude, with cryptocurrencies you can increase the number of moves you can make, which increases your capacity to generate wealth. Whereas with fiat you may find yourself restricted. With the crypto space those limitations are weakened. This extra capacity does not come without additional risk - I’m not denying that there more ways you could cut off your hand. However, I would still prefer a chainsaw to a handsaw when it comes to job of chopping down a tree and stacking the fire wood.
5 Governance and oversight – more power please!
Another reason to own crypto that has nothing to do with price is that the average person with a computer has more direct personal power over a cryptocurrency then over the government and financial institutions like the Federal reserve or other central banks.
In 1815, Rothschild made his famous statement: “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls the British money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”
This is important, because despite being in a democracy where the financial services sector impacts so many people’s lives, actual people have little to no ability to influence the money supply. That is kept separate and far from the democratic levers of control.
The aim is to make make us all mini-Rothschilds as opposed to the current reality where we have absolutely no control over anything.
4 Privacy – Live unseen
René Descartes
“I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen.”
Inside the crypto space, privacy is possible – not guaranteed – but possible, and the technology is improving. This has nothing at all to do with the price of the asset, and this use case is almost universal around cryptocurrencies.
There are individual and institutions that focus on finding people in the crypto space; however, if you are careful and educate yourself you can keep both your funds and your activities hidden from prying eyes.
This has been argued as the number 1 reason to own crypto for a long time hence the large push towards privacy coins.
3 Trustless - Minimized the need for trust
I have a question for you – what are the names of the people who sit on the monetary policy committee and control the interest rates in your country?
Don’t know? No problem, here they are: Monetary Policy Committee | Bank of England I have a more important question: do you trust them?
No, neither do I. But maybe your answer was yes.
The point is, we shouldn’t have to trust them in cryptocurrencies, you only need to worry about the incentives and the rules of the protocol, which are clear for all to see.
In fact, I personally don’t trust anyone with my money so I’m building an entirely new blockchain where I can trust people even less by activating on chain vaults that help me revert transactions sent to people who prove themselves to be untrustworthy.
Blockchains minimize the amount of trust required from any single person, less trust means less risk, less risk means your money is safer. So you won’t have to worry about some greedy banker from Northern rock running out of your money - again.
You can read more details on trustlessness within the crypto currency space here its a great article by
Preethi Kasireddy
What do we mean by “blockchains are trustless”?
- Wealth protection -
Before worrying about making money, ensuring you can protect what you already have is pretty useful, and cryptocurrencies are vastly superior at this job then fiat currency, regardless of the price.
I have personally had my bank accounts frozen and the experience changed my view of money (fiat) and wealth forever. Barclays bank decided to freeze my bank account with no explanation, no compensation, and as I used to work at the FCA, I learnt a brutal lesson.
My money was not my money at all, it was the banks money. It’s actually in the terms of service that you probably didn’t read. The truth is, our fiat money in our bank accounts belong to the bank and ultimately to the state, not to you.
I only survived because I owned crypto. This life lesson has been burnt into my skull, but hopefully you don’t need to experience your money taken from you to realise that the first step to protecting your wealth is holding your money yourself.
I could continue to talk about confiscation, government mismanagement of public funds, fiscal tightening, volatility, corruption and even inflation. I could give examples of Japan, Venezuela, confiscation in Cyprus or capital raid in Argentina, but it wouldn’t matter until the problem was right in front of your own doorstep and you have to act.
1 Build new social systems
I would argue that cryptocurrencies incentivize people, in new and innovative ways beyond purely perpetual wealth creation, making them superior to traditional fiat.
The original question that Satoshi asked the world was this: Do we need central banks to operate monetary policy? Or can it repurposed and decentralized into new incentive systems?
Once upon a time, there was the promise of bringing banking to the bank less and its name was Bitcoin a new system of payment with no fees that would record transactions for the masses and help give everyone access to financial services.
This might have been a short lived dream, but for a small period, it was a reality. I was lucky enough to be around during the period before fees were made mandatory.
In that early time, the space was much more altruistic, with a focus on the possibilities for a positive impact rather than just the price of the underlying digital receipts. This sector still has that possibility - if there is a will to see beyond greed and steer the ship back towards altruism. This is exactly what we are doing with Causevest Coin.
As stated by Daniel Greber in his amazing book Debt the first 5000 years “It is the annihilation of money that is ultimately divine”
The original bitcoin paper only has a few sentences on this topic, but they had a big impact on me as a financial economics student back in 2012. Since then my dream has been to create a new systems that have a positive impact regardless of the desires of its users. Which can carry the voice of billions of people who feel like their voice is not heard. This dream is being born in the form of the Causevest Network.
