This post was originally published on my website. Check it out for more crypto, travel, and Tesla content!
Hello friends.
If you’ve been following my Instagram stories, you know that I’ve been dabbling with crypto for a couple of years now- but it wasn’t until back in 2019 that I started taking its potential more seriously.
Over the course of 2019, I made a handful of Bitcoin swing trades while backpacking in Australia, starting with very small amounts of money, and gradually building the pile as my confidence grew. Thanks to my extremely low living costs, I was able to use the profits I made from these trades to cover 100% of my living expenses (plus some extra) for my entire 1 year of living in Australia.
I made several Bitcoin trades in 2019, but this was my biggest. Didn't hit a home run on the bottom or the top, but still managed to nearly double my money!
But I'm not here to talk about my lucky trade gains...
In fact, I've almost entirely moved away from this short-to-mid-term thinking, and begun accumulating Bitcoin for the long-term.
Here's why:
What is Bitcoin?
The USA has the US Dollar, the EU has the Euro, and the internet has the Bitcoin. This is the idea- it's just a currency like all the others.
BUT, there are a few key differences:
- It's de-centralized. Banks, governments, and credit card companies control the money today, so of course, they abuse their power in every way they can. For example, they collect massive amounts of fees on everyone's transactions, and pocket the profits for themselves. Money should NOT be controlled by humans, it should be controlled by MATH. Math doesn't have emotions.
- It's an actual store of value. Like gold or silver, it's a limited resource--there are only 21 million Bitcoins in existence, and that's all there ever will be. As long as governments control the money supply, they'll continue to print an unlimited amount of it to save their own skins, while passing burden to future taxpayers.
For a breakdown of how truly fucked up this system is, watch this brilliant video (and don't feel bad if you need to watch it a few times--there's a lot to digest):
Eventually, the current scam of a system will come to a disastrous end, and those who hold scarce resources like Gold, Silver, and Bitcoin could stand to benefit massively as a result of this implosion.
Now, let's take a look at how Bitcoin has performed in terms of investment potential:
Comparison of Recent Success Stories:
Microsoft
If you invested $100 in Microsoft 20 years ago (2000), that’d be about $294 today.
That's almost triple!
Nice.
Amazon
If you invested $100 in Amazon 20 years ago (2000), that’d be about $4,500 today:
WHOAH, that’s 45x!!
Nice.
Bitcoin
Now, let’s say you invested $100 in Bitcoin only 10 years ago (half the time period of the previous two).
Any guesses?
That’d be about $13 million today, a modest 13,313,857% gain.
Yeah.
So what can we learn from this?
The numbers speak for themselves. The long-term potential for crypto is absolutely absurd. High risk, but absurd. For those that can't stomach the uncertainty of the crypto market, I have a quick definition to run by you:
Asymmetric Opportunity (n): When the risk of a trade is exceeded multiple times by the profit opportunity.
To explain this, let's look back at one of our blue chip examples from earlier. Let's say you want to make a $10,000 investment:
Amazon (next 10 years):
- Worst case scenario: Goes to zero. You lose $10,000.
- Best case scenario: Grows at same incredible rate as it did the last 10 years (13x). Your $10,000 grows to $130,000.
Bitcoin (next 10 years):
- Worst case scenario: Goes to zero. You lose $10,000.
- Best case scenario: Follows the historical rate of human technology adoption, and becomes the standard for the entire global financial system. Your $10,000 grows to $10,000,000 (or 1,000x).
Humans are accepting new technologies faster than ever before. This means huge potential for newcomers like Bitcoin.
Since Bitcoin and companies like Amazon have the same worst-case-scenario and drastically different best-case-scenarios, I'm willing to take on that added risk.
That's why I'm a Bitcoin investor. Will you join me?
Thanks for reading, friends!
If you enjoyed this post, consider visiting my full blog, where I post content on crypto, clean energy, travel, photography, and more.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram!
-Ben
<link rel="canonical" href="https://benwehrman.com/the-bitcoin-talk/" />
