Perhaps the biggest cultural change in my eleven years in bitcoin has been the transition from the techies who emphasize “don't invest more than you are willing to lose”, to the Michael Saylors of this world who tell everyone to sell their house, his car and his wife. (and then go into debt) to buy more bitcoins.
Whenever I listen to macroeconomic commentators in this space (who for the most part started appearing about five or six years ago), I usually feel like there's a key point they keep missing. Of course, bitcoin is no longer just the new experimental project it was more than a decade ago, but can still fails.
The list of things that could go wrong is too long to include in this Take, but suffice it to say that they include everything from too much centralization to too much decentralization. (If, say, mining becomes too centralized, bitcoin could be regulated to death. While the project could literally and figuratively fall apart if people can't even agree on a single set of consensus rules; something which we got uncomfortably close during the block size wars.)
I believe that bitcoin can overcome these problems. The incentives for bitcoin to succeed are strong and, perhaps most importantly, smart, motivated people around the world can help find solutions to any challenges bitcoin may face.
But to achieve this, it is first necessary to recognize the problems and then solve them. Selling your house, your car, and your wife simply to buy and hold bitcoins is not going to be enough.
This article is a Carry. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
