I am involved with many different crypto projects, dapps and I thought I will think about my crypto journey, what impact has it had on me and how will adoption of crypto increase.
I don't quite remember when I first heard about cryptocurreny but surely it was bitcoin. I used to work for a bank and once in a while, one would hear someone applaud the bitcoin whitepaper and the technology around it. I did not pay a lot of interest in the beginning and being unaware, I always thought that some government would ban it if bitcoin got too big. And bitcoin did get big. In Dec, 2017, Bitcoin touched nearly $20k and that sparked my interest. From thousands of bitcoin worth a pizza to one bitcoin being worth thousands, BTC had come a long way. I started reading up on it, followed Andreas Antonopolous on YouTube, other bloggers, and vloggers and bought my first bitcoin at 19k. In hindsight, you can laugh at how stupid I was, but I was so convinced about its long term prospects that the fall from 19k to 10k did pinch but not as much as some other investment.
Since then, I have been involved with other blockchains, some that have helped me earn money, such as steem. However, my favourite continues to be bitcoin. I am not a maximalist and I understand that the use cases for bitcoin are few compared to ethereum or steem but there are a number of reasons why I think BTC is the best cryptocurrency. Let me go through them one by one.
Bitcoin was the first. Thanks to the genius of Satoshi Nakamoto, the first decentralized store of value came into existence. When I learnt about the decentralized, trust-less features of bitcoin, my mind was blown. I have worked in finance for a long time and I know how valuable trust is. The whole financial system is based on trust. When something comes into existence that removes the requirement of trust, that is truly disruptive. For me bitcoin was the greatest invention since the internet. I have always abhorred banks, for not the reasons that many hate them, but because consumers are never given any importance by banks when they are the cheapest and easiest source of liability for any bank. Not treating such customers fairly and pretending as if the bank is doing people a favour by providing a deposit account is the biggest scam of all times.
Bitcoin is the easiest and safest way for people to store value. I think bitcoin is the best way for mass adoption of crypto. Over time it has evolved from being a way of value transfer to an investment to a store of value. For me bitcoin is the best way to hold value that is known only to me. It was a great way for me to reject the banks. Once it is in my wallet, it's mine and no one knows about it. No bank knows about it, no stupid fees, no cheating, no deceit.
Bitcoin opened up a way for others to come into existence. Lastly, when one idea comes up, creative and intelligent people think about its shortcomings and what can be done to better it or to create something similar for a different purpose. Had it not been for this, Eth would not have come into existence, and forget the newest buzz i.e. DeFi.
Over time, I have become more certain that bitcoin is here to stay. While I do not use it for much other than as Digital Gold, that is the best use case of crypto for me. I have never sold bitcoin, in fact only acquired more of it. Any earning from any other projects that I have sold have all gone into bitcoin. Will I ever sell it? perhaps, yes, it is also an investment and may get over or under valued. However, it is not something that I will ever sell fully.
Talking about bitcoin, there is a number of platforms I have traded/purchased it at. Coinbase, Binance, etoro. I think Binance is no doubt the best crypto exchange. I live in India and have not yet bought anything here to know how good Indian exchanges are, although WazirX is owned by Binance now.
I must say here that knowing about bitcoin, buying it, holding it gave me a tool to get away from banks, it introduced me to the world of crypto and helped me land on steemit. If I was less busy and able to post regularly, this would have been decent income to survive. But I must say that just knowing about something such as bitcoin and getting in relatively early did help me know about an important development and also helped get some perspective on risk reward in life.
Now I have said about why I like bitcoin but will others like bitcoin? Will businesses like bitcoin?
I think over time it has been proven that bitcoin, or well at least I believe that bitcoin cannot be more than a store of value or an asset class for investing. It is not going to be a way to transfer money or definitely not in the long run. Steem is a better way to transfer value as it is free. So to understand how bitcoin will be used by businesses, we need to understand what businesses will use them? The primary audience is investment firms and financial treasuries of companies. Many advances have been made in that direction already and as more people do that, a network effect will lead to more firms buying and holding bitcoin for its investment potential. Hedge Funds, MicroStrategy, Family offices are all involved and with interest rates so low, the optionality embedded in bitcoin should seem quite lucrative. It's just that the anarchist agenda around it needs to stop or be overpowered by the more meaningful opinions from financial experts.
I think over time when bitcoin finds acceptance as an asset class and more people use it, it can be used for lending and borrowing (DeFi) and also as a payment method. What can be done? Get more people to learn about it and discuss it and get the stalwarts of financial industry to discuss why they are accepting crypto. People will listen and pay attention if Jamie Dimon talks good about bitcoin more than Andreas A, if we want mass adoption that is. Some intelligent 'celebrity' over a super intelligent person.
I still think that buying and holding crypto is still not mass adoption ready. It is still geeky and may be it will always stay like that. In that case Custodians needs to come up that make it easier for people to buy and hold crypto without compromising security. Once we have enough people accepting crypto, businesses will automatically follow.
Those were my 2 cents. What do you think? let me know in comments below. :)