I Know You Don't Want To Hear My Opinion On AI, So Here's My Opinion On Bitcoin Instead
Bitcoin does not work as a currency. Not because of technical limitations (though those exist), but because of a fundamental economic principle - deflationary currencies don't work.
Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million coins was supposed to be a feature, not a bug. No more money printing! No more inflation! Except this creates the opposite problem. When you have a limited number of Bitcoins never increasing, but the number of Bitcoin-denominated items keeps increasing, each Bitcoin has to represent more and more value. If Bitcoin were actually used as a currency, and the global economy grew by 3% a year, that means everything priced in Bitcoin would get 3% cheaper every year.
And of those 21 million coins, estimates suggest 3-4 million are permanently lost[1] - forgotten passwords, dead hard drives, that dude in Wales who threw away a hard drive with 8,000 BTC and has been trying to excavate a landfill for years. So the effective supply is more like 17 million and shrinking. Every year, more coins disappear forever through death, accidents, and human error. "Be your own bank" sounds great until you realise banks solved the "I forgot my password" problem centuries ago.
When you expect your currency to be worth more tomorrow than today, you're not going to spend it. You're going to hoard it. Now on an individual level this might seem good - "Oh cool, I'm getting richer while doing nothing!" But this is catastrophic for an economy. When people stop spending, businesses see less revenue. They cut costs, lay off workers, reduce production. Those laid-off workers spend even less. The businesses that survive lower wages to match falling prices. Meanwhile, anyone with debt gets crushed - your mortgage stays the same while your income drops. Eventually the whole economy grinds to a halt.
This is called the deflationary death spiral. We don't need to theorise about this - history shows us what happens. The Great Depression saw deflation of about 25%, and the result was catastrophic: unemployment hit 25%, GDP collapsed by 30%, and thousands of banks failed. Japan experienced mild deflation (1-2% annually) in the 1990s, and it led to decades of economic stagnation - the "Lost Decades." When money gains value by sitting still, economies die.
This is why economists generally agree that mild inflation (2-3%) is actually good for an economy. That 2% target isn't arbitrary - it encourages people to spend or invest their money rather than hoarding it, keeps debt manageable (your fixed mortgage becomes easier to pay as wages rise), and gives central banks room to cut interest rates during recessions. It also solves the "sticky wages" problem - it's psychologically easier to give workers a 0% raise during tough times (a 2% real pay cut with inflation) than to actually cut their salary by 2%. A little inflation is the grease that keeps the economic machine running.
And I say economists "generally agree" for a reason. Obviously, not all economists subscribe to Keynesian economics, although it is the mainstream consensus for a reason. Most central banks and governments have adopted these policies because they've proven effective at managing economic stability - the post-WWII period saw far fewer and milder recessions than the pre-Keynesian era of boom-bust cycles.
But the Austrian School economists would argue that deflation is actually natural and beneficial - when productivity increases, prices should fall. They see the Great Depression not as proof that deflation is bad, but as evidence that government intervention made things worse. In their view, artificial inflation creates boom-bust cycles by sending false price signals that lead to malinvestment. They'd prefer a return to hard money like the gold standard, where money supply can't be manipulated by central banks.
Interestingly, most Austrian economists remain sceptical of Bitcoin despite sharing its hard money philosophy. They prefer gold because it has intrinsic value and thousands of years of monetary history. Bitcoin might have a fixed supply, but it's still just digital tokens backed by nothing but consensus.
Austrian economists like Robert Murphy have noted that Bitcoin poses challenges to Mises's "regression theorem" - the idea that money must evolve from commodities that had direct use value. So while Bitcoin maximalists often use Austrian economic arguments to justify deflationary currency, the actual Austrian economists aren't necessarily buying in.[2]
The transaction fees and speed make using Bitcoin as a currency even more absurd. Even at current low-congestion rates, right now a Bitcoin transaction costs 350 sats (1) (1) A "sat" is short for satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin. One Bitcoin = 100 million sats. At current prices (~$100,000 per Bitcoin), one sat is worth about $0.001. We use sats when talking about everyday transactions because nobody wants to deal with decimals like 0.00005 BTC for a coffee - it's much cleaner to say 5,000 sats. It's like how you'd say "five dollars" instead of "0.005 thousand dollars." and takes about 10 minutes to confirm.[3] During busy periods, fees can spike to 50,000+ sats with hours-long waits. Imagine standing at Starbucks for 10 minutes waiting for your payment to clear, then paying 350 sats in fees on your 5,000 sat latte. That's the best-case scenario - during the 2021 bull run, you'd wait hours and pay 50,000 sats in fees. Visa processes 65,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin manages… seven.
Although, in reality you might have already seen stores that accept Bitcoin, and the experience was nothing like that. And that's valid, but it's because they're almost always using payment processors like BitPay that instantly convert your Bitcoin to dollars. The merchant never actually touches Bitcoin - they get fiat. Others accept unconfirmed transactions and eat the fraud risk. For true peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions, you're still looking at significant wait times and fees.
The Lightning Network is often proposed as a solution to these scaling issues. While it does enable faster and cheaper transactions through off-chain payment channels, it introduces its own complexities. You must still conduct on-chain transactions to open and close channels, incurring the original fees and delays. The network requires you to pre-fund channels and manage liquidity, creating a barrier to entry for non-technical users. And this tendency for payments to route through large hub nodes raises questions about centralisation. Most critically, Lightning doesn't address the core economic issue: if Bitcoin is primarily viewed as an appreciating asset rather than a medium of exchange, people will remain reluctant to spend it regardless of transaction efficiency.
Now, we like to be "Fair and Balanced™" here at quaso.engineering so I will admit there is some good to Bitcoin as a currency.
When Visa and Mastercard decide they don't like what you're selling, you're effectively banned from the modern economy. Steam has begun to remove adult games due to payment processor rules.[4] OnlyFans nearly banned adult content under the same pressure. Sex workers, legal cannabis businesses, WikiLeaks - all have been cut off from accepting payments because two companies control the rails.
Whether or not you oppose what's being sold isn't the point. (2) (2) I personally would rather not have porn games on Steam. But maybe that's because most of them don't seem very good. It's that two companies have the power to dictate what billions of people can and cannot purchase online. Today it's adult content, tomorrow it could be queer media, controversial books, or anything else that the duopoly decides they don't like, or is pressured into by a bunch of prudes.
This is kinda the raison d'être for Bitcoin, so it makes sense it can at least achieve censorship resistance to some level.
International transfers to developing countries can also benefit. Between developed countries, services like PayPal or Wise work fine. But sending money to countries with limited banking infrastructure or capital controls often means high fees (5-10%) or simply being unable to send money at all. In these specific cases, remittances to unbanked areas or transfers to/from restricted countries - Bitcoin provides an option where traditional systems fail.
So what about Bitcoin as an investment? This is where things get more reasonable, but with important caveats.
The general rule of thumb among financial advisors who aren't trying to sell you something is to allocate about 1% of your portfolio to Bitcoin. Why so little? Because Bitcoin is essentially a speculative asset with no underlying cash flows, no dividends, no earnings - its value is purely based on what someone else will pay for it tomorrow. It's digital gold, except gold has industrial uses and thousands of years of history as a store of value.
That said, a small allocation makes sense from a portfolio diversification perspective. Bitcoin has shown low correlation with traditional assets (though this breaks down during market crashes when everything correlates to 1). Its extreme volatility means even a small position can have meaningful impact on returns without torpedoing your entire portfolio if it goes to zero.
The key is treating it like what it is: a high-risk, high-volatility speculation. Not a currency, not "digital gold," not a hedge against inflation (it crashed 70% in 2022 while inflation hit 40-year highs). Just a volatile asset that might go up a lot or might go to zero.
But even as a pure investment, there are ethical considerations. Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than entire countries - current estimates put it around 190 TWh annually,[5] comparable to Argentina. The majority of this energy still comes from fossil fuels, despite industry claims about renewable adoption. You're essentially betting on an asset whose value creation mechanism is "burn electricity to guess numbers."
And while illicit activity represents a small percentage of total crypto volume, it still amounts to billions - Chainalysis tracked $22.2 billion sent from illicit addresses in 2023.[6] And that's just what they can identify.
The common defence is that Bitcoin's public ledger makes it unsuitable for crime - why would criminals use something that records every transaction? This misses the point.
For ransomware operators and online fraudsters, the alternative isn't cash, it's not getting paid at all. Pseudonymous addresses combined with mixing services and cross-chain bridges make tracing difficult without massive resources. It's like saying criminals won't use cars because license plates exist. When law enforcement shuts down one mixer like Sinbad, criminals quickly pivot to alternatives like YoMix.
The issue isn't that criminals use Bitcoin - it's that buying Bitcoin provides the exit liquidity they need to cash out. Ransomware barely existed before cryptocurrency because there was no way to receive practically untraceable payments at scale. Now hospitals and schools get shut down by hackers who know they can get paid. Any investment into it helps maintain the system that makes these crimes profitable.
To be fair, many investments have ethical problems. Housing speculation drives up prices and makes shelter unaffordable. Oil stocks profit from environmental destruction. Tech companies violate privacy and exploit monopolies. The difference is that these at least produce something useful as a byproduct - housing provides shelter, oil provides energy, tech companies provide services. Bitcoin's only outputs are speculation opportunities and a payment rail for ransomware, while consuming nation-state levels of electricity. But yes, if you're concerned about ethics, you probably shouldn't be investing in most things.
The fact of the matter is, the wealthy now primarily gain more wealth by moving money around in complicated ways instead of producing anything of value. Bitcoin is now undoubtedly part of that game, as all other investments are. It's up to you if you want to play along. (3) (3) Believe it or not I was planning on making this post a defence of Bitcoin as an investment strategy, because I do think, yeah you probably should have a little. But uhhhh yeah... this hasn't exactly turned out how I first thought it would.
Speaking of moving money around in complicated ways, have you heard about the latest trend: companies transforming themselves into "Bitcoin treasury companies?" The playbook was pioneered by MicroStrategy, a software company with an unprofitable core business that somehow became a $100 billion company by buying Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy seems to have discovered an "infinite money glitch," in which the found that investors would pay a significant premium for their stock relative to the actual value of the Bitcoin they held. So they'd issue more stock or convertible bonds, use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin, which drives up Bitcoin's price, which drives up their stock price, which lets them issue more stock at even higher prices. Rinse and repeat.
The CEO behind this strategy, Michael Saylor, isn't exactly new to creative accounting - he settled a $40 million tax fraud lawsuit with D.C.[7] But his Bitcoin strategy has been wildly successful, at least on paper. MicroStrategy can now issue convertible bonds with zero interest because investors are essentially buying lottery tickets on the stock's volatility, which exceeds even Bitcoin's notorious price swings.
Now, over 130 companies now collectively own more than 3% of the total Bitcoin supply, a nearly 170% surge in the past year.[8] The Smarter Web Company, a modest web design firm in Guildford, saw its market cap explode from £3.7 million to nearly £1 billion after announcing Bitcoin purchases.[9] Even GameStop, the meme stock darling, jumped on the bandwagon.[10]
The playbook is simple - announce you're buying Bitcoin, watch your stock price soar, issue more shares or debt at inflated prices, buy more Bitcoin.
So, why would you pay huge premiums for companies that just own Bitcoin when they could… just buy Bitcoin? Good question. Bitcoin ETFs already exist. But apparently, the complexity and leverage make it more exciting.
These companies can issue debt to buy more Bitcoin, amplifying both gains and losses. They attract options traders who want leveraged exposure. Some investors prefer the familiar structure of owning stock rather than dealing with crypto wallets and exchanges. Others are drawn to the volatility - MicroStrategy's stock often moves 2-3x more than Bitcoin itself, creating a high-stakes derivative play.
The risks are obvious. These strategies haven't been tested by a prolonged crypto winter. Companies loaded with debt to buy Bitcoin at $100,000 might struggle if it drops to $30,000. Shareholders who didn't sign up for their operating company to become a leveraged crypto fund might revolt. But for now, while the music's playing, everyone's dancing.
It is kinda funny though, Bitcoin was created in response to the 2008 financial crisis as a decentralised alternative to traditional finance. Now Wall Street has turned it into just another financial engineering tool, complete with derivatives, leverage, and all the complexity that caused the crisis in the first place. Companies that actually make things are abandoning their businesses to become crypto hedge funds because the stock market rewards Bitcoin hoarding more than actual productivity.
As for other cryptocurrencies? They fail even harder as currencies. They take all of Bitcoin's problems and add new ones - even less adoption, worse liquidity, and often centralised ownership where founders hold 20-50% of tokens. At least some people pretend Bitcoin is "digital gold." Nobody even pretends Dogecoin or Shiba Inu are anything but gambling tokens. They're purely speculative assets with meme-based marketing, riding on Bitcoin's coattails while offering nothing but more volatile casino chips.
I wouldn't consider gambling to be in the same vein as investing. Which is why all my gambling is limited to rolling for anime waifus, so I would stay away from all of these memecoins if I were you. (4) (4) Yes every cryptocurrency that isn't Bitcoin is a memecoin. That's a fact, and you can't convince me otherwise.
A few cryptocurrencies try to solve the utility problem, like Ethereum and Solana. But they just created new problems. DeFi turned out to be mostly circular lending schemes that regularly get hacked for millions. NFTs were supposed to revolutionise digital ownership but became wash-traded JPEGs. DAOs promised decentralised governance but discovered you can't govern by code when someone exploits your code, nor do you want a project governed by a bunch of terminally online LARPers.
Web3 didn't live up to the hype because it died, it was never alive to begin with.
Every year I try to find something that I want to spend my Ethereum on. What I talk about in this post is the closest I've ever gotten, and I conclude it with saying (paraphrased): "this only kinda works, so hopefully it gets better in the future."
So has it gotten better?
FUCK. NO.
Oh, but Justin it's only been 4 years since you wrote that! This stuff takes time!
Shut the fuck up idiot. Two years is the difference between OpenAI's GPT-1 and GPT-3, which was a jump so large I thought it would take three times as long at the time.
Look, I like cool and interesting technology. I really believed that this Web3 shit could have been that, but for whatever reason, (5) (5) I am 90% sure the reason is that all of this is treated as a speculative investment and a way to get rich quick by the majority of people in the crypto space. I do not believe decentralised networks and wealth generation are compatible ideas. They will always be at odds. Kinda like democracy and capitalism, but that's for another time. the bag has been fumbled majorly.
It'd be nice to be proven wrong on this, but I just don't see that happening especially with all the negative PR. The term "blockchain" has become so toxic that legitimate technologists actively avoid it. Say you're building a "blockchain application" and people immediately assume you're launching another rugpull token. The association with scams, NFT grifts, and crypto bros has poisoned the well for anyone trying to build actual useful technology.
The technology may have legitimate uses, but it's been so thoroughly associated with fraud that it's become a career-limiting move to work on it.
Epilogue
I do wonder if I'm treading the same ground as this with LLMs. Maybe in a few years you'll see me post "I Know You Don't Want To Hear My Opinions On Quantum Computing, So Here's My Opinion On AI Instead." (6) (6) I don't actually think quantum computing is anywhere close to being mainstream yet. I just don't have another over-hyped technology at the front of mind right now, nor do I believe I have the foresight to predict it.
So have you seen that gacha game that has become all the rage these days? The one where the girls are horses. Seems pretty cool. Though I've not tried it since I already play the gacha games where the girls are guns, which is a lot more appealing to me personally, and I don't really want to play two gachas.
And yes, that does mean I have been able to "Fill The Kakfa Shaped Hole In My Heart" with Makiatto (pictured).
She's such a dork. 😍
Anyway, I hope you checked the sources of my extraordinary claims in this post ;)