As Bitcoin hovers around $50,000, expert thoughts have moved on to $100,000 as if this is Bitcoin’s next great milestone. But, as Tim Denning observes, this obsession with Bitcoin’s value to owners really misses the point.
Sure, if you bought Bitcoin a few years back, you’ll be delighted if it hits $100,000, but this Is not the end game of the leading crytocurrency. As Denning says: “Bitcoin isn’t an investment. Bitcoin isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. Bitcoin is a different way of thinking.”
What we should be focusing on is mainstream adoption regardless of the daily price. Because when that happens it will signal that society has moved from a centralised model to a decentralised one. Bitcoin has no country, no government, and no office. There is no single owner of Bitcoin, and if you don’t like Bitcoin, it doesn’t care, because it’s just a algorithm that couldn’t care less about your criticisms.
Instead, Bitcoin is a quiet protest about inequality. It is above all honest. It is a true democracy.
The existing financial system excludes millions of people, and people want that to change, so they are waking up to the ways in which digital assets, such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, which are on blockchains designed for payments, are offering financial inclusion worldwide. That’s why so many people are talking about the topic and coming around to the idea of cryptocurrencies.
Let’s remember that we are still at the early evolutionary stage of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. A lot of things could happen to any one of them. Denning even suggests it could get wiped out. How? Who knows, but such a thing has happened to tech companies in the past.
In a way, Bitcoin’s birth was an accident. Its mysterious creator/s were inspired as banking plunged the world into financial chaos. Nobody outside of the small community of crypto fans paid much attention to it until 2017 when it hit its first ATH. Governments could have banned it then, but didn’t, and it would be pretty much impossible for them to ban it now. The arrival of institutions in Bitcoin trading has protected the asset, besides the protest at such a move would be truly global, and probably led by Elon Musk.
The Bitcoin price barely matters at all: more importantly, Bitcoin is an idea that challenges the social view of ownership. Denning says: “When ownership changes, everything changes. Be open to the inevitable change coming. That’s the point of Bitcoin that seems to be missed.”