Bitcoin: What I Hate, Love, and Fear About Cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin was born on January 3, 2009, when its genesis block (block zero) was mined. The first transaction took place on January 12 between “Satoshi” and Hal Finney. Bitcoin’s first “value” was set at 1,309.03 bitcoins for $ 1. That’s right, it was a fraction of a paisa! And now that she’s gearing up to be a teenager, Bitcoin is valued at over $ 44,000 and has even become legal tender in one country! So what do I hate, love and fear about Bitcoin?

What I hate about Bitcoin

In my opinion, Bitcoin is lousy as a medium of exchange. It is very volatile and suffers from slow transaction speeds. Compare it to UPI payments in India and Bitcoin seems like a cruel joke.

It makes no sense to use Bitcoin for payments in any country. There are so many better alternatives available in the crypto world. You can use stable coins pegged to the dollar. You can use secret / confidential coins like Monero or you can use old regular coins like Litecoin. All of these are faster, cheaper and less volatile.

The second thing I hate is the concept of HODLing hanging on to life. There are so many memes out there that a lot of people actually think it’s a good investment strategy! The concept is that if you buy a little bit of Bitcoin and keep it forever, you will get super rich. I wish life were that easy.

This internet meme shows what HODL really looks like

The third thing I hate is the concept of “buying the dip”. This means that every time Bitcoin prices go down, you buy more Bitcoin. It is an extension of HODLing. This means that you think Bitcoin prices will continue to rise forever. So every time the prices go down, you buy more.

“Buy the dip” is now turned into memes

The fourth thing I hate is Bitcoin maximalists. They believe that Bitcoin is the only viable digital asset and that all other cryptos are sh * tcoins. They are oblivious to the massive innovation being achieved by Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Theta, Filecoin and so many other awesome crypto projects.

What I like about Bitcoin

In my opinion, Bitcoin is a great store of value.

A store of value is an asset whose value stays the same or increases over time. Some of the most popular stores of value are precious metals, real estate, treasury bills, and even art.

If Bitcoin becomes globally accepted as a store of value, then in my opinion its total market cap would be equal to that of gold.

Depending on your source of information, the market capitalization of all the gold in the world is between $ 8 trillion and $ 10,000 billion. Thus, the long-term market cap of Bitcoin could be in the range of $ 8 trillion to $ 10,000 billion.

Considering a maximum supply of 21 million bitcoin, I think a fair price in the long run would be between $ 380,000 and $ 476,000. I expect to see this price by 2030 AD.

This is subject to two critical caveats: blockchain technology is not “broken” and no meteor crashes on our beautiful planet 🙂

What I fear about Bitcoin

Bitcoin is totally dependent on technology. If a major flaw is found and exploited, then Bitcoin will immediately lose its value and drop to zero.

Although blockchain is a robust technology, it was hacked in the past on August 15, 2010 when a transaction created 184.467.440.737.09551616 Bitcoins.

That’s over 184 billion! Yes, you read that right. We all know that the total number of bitcoins that can exist is 21 million. But here we suddenly had hundreds of billions of bitcoins!

The problem was resolved within hours. This “bad” transaction no longer exists on the blockchain. The billions of bitcoins created by hackers either. But 0.5 bitcoins that were consumed by the transaction still exist and are indelible proof of bitcoin hack!

Can another successful hack take place? Of course he can. And that’s what I fear the most.

Rohas Nagpal is the author of the Future Money Playbook and the chief blockchain architect at the Wrapped Asset Project. He is also a retired amateur boxer and hacker. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Interested in cryptocurrency? We discuss all things crypto with WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty and WeekendInvesting Founder Alok Jain on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Cryptocurrency is unregulated digital currency, not legal tender and subject to market risk. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, business advice or any other advice or recommendation of any kind offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV will not be liable for any loss resulting from any investment based on a perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.

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