Black Market Money
Black Market Money is the True Freedom Money.
Why should we prefer bitcoin be used as black market money, and not as an investible asset?
bitcoin is volatile. it will always be volatile. its supply is inelastic to demand. demand fluctuates wildly. its price is primarily determined in the aggregate by a collective belief regarding its value and the premium market participants place on a digital good that is scarce. regardless of whether they actually use it or take possession.
market participants will value scarcity highly at times, but less so at other times.
there is no predictability to market sentiment or price.
therefore bitcoin cannot be used as a reliable store of value.
the people that put all of their money into bitcoin and live off of it, the so-called "Get On Zero" (fiat) crowd notwithstanding. these people are far and away the exception to the rule. they might as well live in a different dimension they are so divorced from the "next ten percent" of people that are being targeted for orange-pilling efforts. and more power to them, really. but they are the exception.
most people won't hold 50%, or even 10% in scarce hard money-like objects. how many people in the western world own gold and silver? probably less than 20%. and half at least of these people are immune to however-rational-of-argumentation bitcoiners can level at them. they. will. not. buy. bitcoin. PERIOD. ... they. are. goldbugs.
sadly the voices of the people proclaiming similar things about bitcoin, you know, like that 'it should be used and not coveted', get drowned out constantly. they get overpowered in the marketplace of ideas (twitter shouting matches) by the lightning-network-buy-your-salvadoreno-coffee-bean types and the macro-speculator-newsletter types and the surely-nation-states-can-be-trusted-with-bitcoin types and the suck-up-to-saylor crowd. constantly.
remember our friend ragnar? yeah, he doesn't post anymore. remember your hydra (bravetheworld)? she's gone off the grid. i have another OG friend who pivoted into a franchising and homesteading lifestyle. nothing to do with bitcoin. and i'm super happy for him.
bitcoin is non-productive. it can give you gains when measured in monopoly money. sometimes even when measured against gold. but it is not reliably productive as an investment. when used in the white market, it is sanctioned and taxed as property, limited and leveraged in commodity trading, and generally handicapped. read: tracked and taxed.
what white market gains it may produce simply produce headaches for the diligent, compliant tax payer. and these are illusory in large part because of fiat debasement. is my asset going up, or is the dollar/euro/yen going down?
stop trying to shoehorn it into the 'productive investible asset' round hole. bitcoin is a square peg. it is jagged and will give you splinters. it. does. not. comport.
so what if it's not well suited to be an investment? so what if it's volatile and not a great store of value? bitcoin's greatest utility is in its use. so use it!
ignore me if you want. i'm sure you have a lot of great points about institutional adoption and how we can scale it to infinity and we can have it all...
maybe all your reasoning is sound and your heart is in the right place.
but remember: you can be wrong for all the right reasons. just look to silver investors for a beautiful case study in this particular flavor of despair.
you can bury your head in the sand. ignore the privacy devs that have been imprisoned for writing some code that lets you send bitcoin to yourself. this doesn't affect the value of fidelity's stash in a 13 of 19 multisig, right? no way... the future is bright! right?
sadly i'm afraid the future does not look like the past. the days of 1000% yearly gains are over. you should have no expectations about the price. there lies ruin and despair.
you can keep at your daily grind trying to pump your subscriber count with gains more rapidly diminishing than the bitcoin block reward...
or you can wake up to this reality. the reality that bitcoin is better as black market money.
bitcoin is the black mamba.
watch out or you might get bit.
How to use it then?
if you've read this far, you are now likely asking "ok how can i use bitcoin in these "unsanctioned" ways of which you speak?"
peer-to-peer: two friends settle a personal debt or split a bill by sending bitcoin directly to each other's digital wallets. this bypasses banks, governments and all the traditional forms of financial surveillance and control. works sorta like cash, you know?
across borders: send money to your family back home. avoid high fees that remittance services charge.
online purchases: buy a smartphone with grapheneOS on it, buy a VPN package, rent a server, buy ammo, etc. depends on the merchant how "black" or "gray" these transactions are. ideally, merchants should be using their own self-hosted BTCPayServer or the like.
donations: donate to causes and organizations that you might not otherwise be able to contribute to. a famous example from history was wikileaks accepting bitcoin donations during the tradfi blockades.
raise funds: raise funds for your own cause or creative project without 3rd parties or middlemen.
tip people: tip the creators and artists you like with bitcoin.
refugees: get across borders with your life savings stored in a twelve word seed phrase. convert back to cash or whatnot on the other side as and when needed.
access restricted markets: buy goods and services you wouldn't otherwise have access to.
energy arbitrage: harvest local power sources (hydro, geo, solar) and mine bitcoin with it (e.g. instead of selling back to the grid or wasting it)
hire people: hire people abroad to do jobs for you and pay them in bitcoin. programming, graphic design, translation work, etc.
access AI tools: use LLMs without links to your real-world identity. e.g. ppq[dot]ai
local barter: try to convince local folks at farmers markets and fairs to accept bitcoin instead of other forms of fiat currency.
these are just a few ideas of how to use it freely, as it was designed to be used.
happy hunting!