Flip on the TV or surf the internet and you’re bound to come across stories about the impending collapse of the bitcoin bubble. The vast majority, if not virtually all of the stories feature the infamous tulip mania incident as a comparative device. While the comparison is inevitable due to the price surge involved, it has a critical, logical vulnerability.
Underlining tulip mania was a physical commodity. Thus, if this event was to be compared to modern investment dynamics, the target asset must also be a commodity, or share similar characteristics. The so-called bitcoin bubble, on the other hand, is a derivative digital currency based on a radical technology called the blockchain.
Eventually, the blockchain could upend the way we conduct business and financial transactions. The tulip mania, in contrast, was an asset with very modest value driven up to extreme levels. Ownership of a tulip bulb almost completely lacks utilitarian value; hence, its comparison to the “bitcoin bubble” is faulty. But another concept, the “satoshi,” makes the comparison even more spurious.
What is a satoshi? Technically, a satoshi is “the smallest unit of the bitcoin currency recorded on the block chain. It is a one hundred millionth of a single bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC).” However, the actual granularity is not what’s important for our discussion. Rather, it is the implication behind the satoshi that renders the bitcoin bubble story completely different from all other investment bubbles.
Mainstream critics fail to understand the simplest concepts of the “blockchain markets,” to no one’s surprise. They’re blinded quite literally because of their biases.
A core example comes from the tulip mania stories that have proliferated globally. Anti-bitcoiners claim that families put up their homes as collateral to buy tulips on margin. They then claim that a similar situation is occurring in the bitcoin bubble. However, unlike tulip mania, bitcoin can be purchased in incremental units.
Rather than selling expensive assets, almost all American families can afford to invest in Bitcoin. The trick is that you don’t have to invest in one, complete bitcoin. That would certainly be out of reach for most people. But virtually everyone can afford to buy multiple units of satoshi.
And don’t give me the old “I don’t have any money” line. We’re the fattest country in the world – even our homeless population appears well fed. As a collective, we Americans have more money than we know what to do with. A satoshi will not break the bank.
In fact, a satoshi is a bitcoin; just a partial one. Try buying a partial share of Amazon stock. It’s not going to happen. Attempt to go to a brokerage house with only a few hundred dollars with which to invest, and you’ll be laughed out the door.
Do that with bitcoin, and you’ll gain immediate entrance. How deep you want to go with the journey is entirely up to you.