Financial Fiction Friday #14

Bitcoin Price (May 30): ~$31,700
Bitcoin Price (September 9): ~$19,400

-58% YTD
-38% Since this tweet

False equivalency is a helluva drug.  

What bothers me most about cryptocurrency culture, which is dominated by Bitcoin maximalists, is that Bitcoin is everything and nothing.  In the hands of the true believer, it happens to be whatever it needs to be to maintain belief in a given moment, environment, or situation. 

This true believer likens it to the internet as an ever-expanding network that can't be stopped.  But Bitcoin is in fact nothing like the internet.  Although it's decentralized, "bitcoin simply isn't designed to function as the flexible infrastructure for a wide range of applications like the internet is."  Could other cryptocurrencies be like the internet?  Maybe, but Bitcoin won't.  

Bitcoin is like a currency or more simply, a fashionable piece of technology acting as currency.  Both of which can be surpassed but a newer, better, or more fashionable options.  Bitcoin the currency can go the way of any other currencies and fall out of favor or disappear.  Just ask the Deutsche Mark.  

If you're old enough to remember Betamax video cassettes, you know that even the better technology doesn't always win.  Utility, simplicity, cost, and good old fashion advertising crowned VHS the superior product.  

Adoption goes in both directions whether you want to believe it or not.