I've been in crypto for a while, but this weekend a realization crystallized for me that I had never fully considered. Would love to hear other leftists thoughts re: if I'm making sense or if I'm on some austrian bunk.
Bitcoin is now the worlds most "pure" store of value, that is to say it far and away possesses superior properties compared to things like metals, real estate, stocks, etc for anyone looking specifically to preserve and protect excess wealth which is not currently busy "being productive" in a physical form. The majority of the worlds recorded wealth is in this immaterial form, arguably disconnected from and materially irrelevant to productive realities, the result of creative if not generally exploitative financial instrumentation. Yet, since the immaterial numbers interact on paper with the material numbers this "imaginary majority" of world wealth essentially creates a handicap on financial access for the 99.5% percent of people who do not have the immaterial leverage to compete. The imagined debt of civilization is crushing us.
Now that bitcoin exists, it makes sense from a "rational actor" perspective that immaterial wealth currently harbored in stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals - Things that possess sub-sets of bitcoin advantages but none which posses all of its advantages - Should start flowing wholesale into bitcoin instead. With bitcoin you don't have to worry about asteroid or terrestrial mining ruining your precious metal holdings. You don't have to worry about the inevitable collapse of nation states wrecking your stock and bonds. You don't have to worry about and climate catastrophe ruining your tracts of untouched real estate. And since it's a new scarce asset, you can get in on the ground floor and ride the tide to make an even more absurd profit. Obviously "rational actors" don't exist in reality, but it makes sense that the wealthy who are attempting to think rationally will inevitably make this choice whenever the regulatory time is right for them (Moving these mountains of wealth is often a taxable event). At least, for the 99% of investments that are done strictly for profit and not out of any personal passion for the thing being invested in.
So assuming the above, that the world's immaterial wealth (I suppose you could call it "World debt") flows mostly into bitcoin, this would imply a financial drain on material assets that were previously used to harbor immaterial wealth. The price of electronics plummets as precious metal financial stores evaporate. The prices of real estate are literally decimated as centuries of speculative investment are lifted from them, and by consequence rents as well. Many nation states lose the ability to materialize massive made-up funding for unilateral war as the bonds market withers. While this would likely have the temporary (decades-long) side effect of creating massive social upheaval, it would also result in the reclamation of reliable price discovery of all these commodities. With the majority of speculation and debt moved into a digital realm designed specifically to host it, the $500,000 house again becomes the $75,000 house. The $1000 computer becomes the $500 computer (Or heck stays $1000 and we remove slave labor from the electronics industry). Your rent might go from 50% of your paycheck to 5% of your paycheck. The exploitation of capitalism is not removed, but it's coercive speculation could be lifted from these material goods, exorcised as it were into the digital realm. I don't know what happens from there, but this seems like it could at least be a good thing that could enable other, tangential good things. Thoughts?
TL;DR I think bitcoin will become the dominant and default vehicle for most of civilization's debt, thereby returning traditional price discovery to material goods currently used as investment assets like precious metals and real estate.
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