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Delayed adoption? Political pushback? hashrate declines?
In the short run, which I guess you could say is 5 years, removal of all fiat on ramps will crush price. This will be good news in the long run.
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  1. Improved fiat rails damping Lightning hype. LN startups are pitching investors and comparing themselves to ACH and wires either because they are charlatans or they are just really oblivious to fintech. Fiat has two fast payment protocols coming out soon: RTP/RFP via TCH and FedNow. Combined, these will offer a Venmo/CashApp like user experience, but with actual instant settlement and between arbitrary bank accounts at almost no cost. Given expenses of LN, it will actually probably be cheaper than LN. Direct bank payment apps will begin competing with Visa & Mastercard, triggering a collapse in interchange fees. With that, the LARP use case of Lightning will go away.
  2. The emergence of software tools to better use pseudo-monies as monetary instruments e.g. the introduction of a stock index as a fractional value standard within a composite currency. This would be taking monetized stocks, and monetizing them further in ways that go beyond store of value. You can do it with equities and commodities, but real estate cannot be hypermonetized in this way to idiosyncratic risks and poor fungibility. I talk a bit about this from a transitionary perspective more than about being bearish since it happens in a bull thesis too. https://heaviside.substack.com/p/the-forgotten-fourth-function-of
2b) The elimination of capital gains taxes on securities used as parts of composite currencies so that they may better compete with Bitcoin.
Notice, the things that are bearish are a bit like a shorting bear who might trigger negative market sentiment, but long term pushes prices upward by being short and having to buy later. Similarly we have the root of the saying "everything is good for bitcoin," which means there will be unintended consequences and Bitcoin will always transform attacks toward it to make itself stronger.
Hashrate is downstream of futures, lol, the ground being wet does not cause rain. Political pushback can just as easily be bullish for bitcoin. That we did not get hyperbitcoinization in 2017 when the pump made it more broadly known means we are already in the "delayed adoption" universe and it is now abundantly clear just how regarded most bitcoiners are.
All those things combined, with a stretch of the imagination, if we're in a bear market in 5 years I suppose I could imagine as $250k, but don't forget, hyperbitcoinization has short squeeze dynamics -- it is nothing like building a factory where it takes time to put in one machine after another. It is not actually growth, but a thing going to zero, like a nearly dry lakebed where on some day in the future there simply will be zero water in it. Bitcoin is already here and works just fine at any price for a number of things. Now that exists, it can never die no matter what the price does. Fiat hitting 0 though was always inevitable, and that is also a possibility for the next 5 years.
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Good stuff, thanks
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The only bear case I can think of is the possibility of a decrease in general public intelligence. Bitcoin is money for an intelligent, sovereign society. If the people are stupid and domesticated enough, they may never understand the need for Bitcoin and continue to be afraid of it.
This is not my base case. We have more tools than ever for increasing education and sovereignty. I think this will increase Bitcoin adoption. But it's the only potential bear-case I'm worried about.
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At this point, there is no bear case for the next five years. All paths lead to bitcoin. War and warmongering, famine, hyperinflation, floods, droughts, massive storms, dislocation, wealth inequality, Big Brother, or Nanny State. You get my point.
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