Will hodling Bitcoin make you rich? πŸ€”πŸ’°

in #bitcoin β€’ 4 years ago

Yes, most likely.

But the whole idea of being materialistically rich evaporates over time.

We eventually reach a point of abundance where life's basic necessities are dirt cheap or even essentially free.

As technology and economies improve, "stuff" becomes naturally cheaper over time. This is just conventional knowledge, that average and poor people in today's better economies live a lot more comfortably with more stuff than kings did a few hundred years ago. Laptops and televisions cost less and less over time etc.

As long as there's still scarcity though, you still want to have money and wealth. (Even though stuff has been getting cheaper, as long as there's some cost, then there's still a big need to have money.)

But if you imagine the pancake flipping to no more scarcity, then does money and wealth really mean anything?

The ways there would be no more scarcity essentially have to do with the evolution of robotics and AI. Right now a good robot, even for a simple task like vacuuming your floor, isn't particularly cheap. But as this technology improves and these costs come down, it evolves to where eventually you can pay very little for robots that i.e. build and maintain a garden in your backyard, design a house for you, etc.

Your neighbors have their gardens, you exchange ideas and tactics. You might trade a little, but it's probably more like just sharing, because it's all so limitless anyways.

3D printers and robots that can assist in building and maintaining all the stuff we use will get better and better. (It evolves to be really odd to wear generic shirts that say "Nike" or something on them, when it's easy for everyone to design their own clothes, and we look back and laugh.) And eventually there just isn't much of any cost associated with the "stuff" we need.

Maybe money still has a role in the sense of being able to travel more and buy more services. But maybe also there's a hot potato effect, where when we don't fundamentally really need money anymore, it evolves to lose its value and appeal, and you give a back massage to the people you like or the people who do nice things for you in return rather than you want money.

Maybe public infrastructure will be the longest lasting thing. Roads or whatever exactly transportation looks like in the future. But if they're maintained with sophisticated robots (read: not much cost), then there isn't much cost to being a patron of those things. There's a little bit of cost. And probably there's a cost in the sense of only so many people can fit at once.

Maybe energy has a cost. But we'll get better and better at solar panels and whatever other sustainable (free) forms of having it. Maybe the sophisticated micro chips behind those technologies will keep having a cost? And all the various things I'm not thinking of. πŸ€”

So maybe there always will be a lingering role for money. It's just a way of keeping score and keeping everything fair, whenever the relationship isn't so intimate that you don't care about the score. But its need and role, I think, gradually goes down over time.

And sometimes things change in a boom and bust, surprisingly fast, sort of way. In general, things are exponential. So could this category of change happen in our lifetime? Maybe. 🀷

Will Bitcoin have a dominant role as money before money stops mattering so much? Maybe. I hope so, lol.

But it's possible that it's a small sliver of time. That whenever Bitcoin is the boss (and largely because Bitcoin is the boss-- and now it's not so easy for a small group of people to destroy, control, and consolidate wealth into so few hands up top), it soon follows that scarcity vanishes and money starts to mean less.

And when money isn't really needed to have life's basic necessities, having a lot of it might be just kind of like having a lot of points on a pinball machine, and your social credit and relationships is what actually matter and what you'd fear losing.


Usually there's at least a kernel of truth in all things that are believed, or particularly in things that people are passionate about. So the money-hating communist SJW kids I think have it a little bit right in some ways.

They might see a glimpse of this wonderful future that I'm talking about..

They just need to stop being intolerant and hateful and wanting to use violence and control etc. or their social scores will be as bad as their bank accounts and they'll be malcontent in that world too πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ€£πŸ€£

Sort: Β 

I appreciate your optimism, and I think I expect things to play out as you've said here. However, if environmentalists are correct (and I'm not entirely sure they are), then we may have a power crisis to slow us down.

Because either, they say, we need to stop using fossil fuels or else.

Alternatively, others say, we must stop using fossil fuels because we are using them all...

I figure that's mostly just fear mongering, selling a new consumerism. If they can convince us to stop using oil, then we must buy solar and electric, etc. If done, maybe that can be the new consumer boom our failing global economy needs to stay afloat.

In the end, I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. Probably we need to be better to the earth, and probably we will expand solar and electric tech so that we are able to be better.

Probably it will spawn a new economic boom and the economic game will last longer than any naysayers (myself included) will expect.

And as likely, as a result, as you say, goods and life will get better for most of the world consistently. Hopefully.

Either way, I'm glad to hold food, water, bullion and BTC, just in case the house of cards falls harder and faster than we expect.

Good post bud.

Posted using Partiko Android

Ya it's interesting!!! Super hard to say how it will play out and what the trends will be. I think in general I lean on the idea that... humanity is built to succeed and we'll figure it out. But that's not to say there can't be big kinks and growing pains that make it suck for a while.

Because either, they say, we need to stop using fossil fuels or else.

Alternatively, others say, we must stop using fossil fuels because we are using them all...

I figure that's mostly just fear mongering, selling a new consumerism. If they can convince us to stop using oil, then we must buy solar and electric, etc. If done, maybe that can be the new consumer boom our failing global economy needs to stay afloat.

Something I wonder sometimes.. is if there's only so much petroleum etc in the Earth, maybe everyone wants more of it for themselves, and that's what all the fuss is about.

Especially armies and large vested interests who use it. On a smaller scale Leonard Di Caprio probably wants to keep flying his private jet, and he doesn't want to pay exponentially higher prices as we approach running out. So sometimes I wonder if climate hysteria is basically driven by people wanting it for themselves.. "the elites" convince the masses to use less of it simply because they want to use more of it.

My feeling is generally that the cleaner forms of energy have a natural benefit, like if you install solar panels you reduce costs. Walking or riding your bike gives you exercise, and electric self-driving cars and light rail trains and stuff like that are probably more cost-effective than everyone driving cars, and safer.

So while I wouldn't disagree with the environmentalists that fossil fuels are bad, I figure (1) they probably run out before we blow up the planet.. it's probably pre-installed like that and (2) you don't need to guilt and control-freak people not to use them, because there are natural advantages to not using them, and those advantages evolve over time.

It's easy for individuals to adapt to cleaner energy and whatever new solutions show up. Entrenched interests though are slow moving and I think have a mindset of wanting things to stay how they are. So they probably worry about fossil running out and need to convince the suckers πŸ˜†

🀷🀷

Either way, I'm glad to hold food, water, bullion and BTC, just in case the house of cards falls harder and faster than we expect.

I think that's a good mix! Defensive on one hand, but can boom with BTC.

So the money-hating communist SJW kids I think have it a little bit right in some ways.

Haha this is wild that you give the SJWs one. I bet if one of them could read this he'd be head over heels in happiness. "Finally - finally the great Full acknowledged that we may be a bit right in something. Oh my God. Oh my God what a day. Let's have a party!"

stop being intolerant and hateful and wanting to use violence and control etc.

Crazy...

yesss Rasssss

πŸ˜„πŸ˜„πŸ˜„πŸ€£πŸ€£πŸ€£

I'm cracking up, so funny

But then I slammed them at the end! They were feeling like you said, but then I ripped their heart out 😩

the Keynesians would never get even that much tho πŸ˜† so def a landmark day and def a lot to be happy about