Saifedean Ammous

@saifedean
npub1gdu:ksd76nak
Author of The Bitcoin Standard, The Fiat Standard, and Principles of Economics. Teaching economics on saifedean.com.

Recent notes

Saifedean
Saifedean Ammous · 66d ago
@saifedean

No, you did not miss the bitcoin train. We are just getting started. Just because bitcoin went up a lot does not mean it cannot go up a lot more. On the contrary, the more it goes up, the more it demonstrates product-market fit, the more likely it is to go up. Bitcoin is different from stocks, bonds, and commodities because it has a much, much larger addressable market. Let's compare: Apple's total addressable market is 8 billion people who can own an iphone and laptop. A lot of them already do, and a lot of them are too poor, so there's just not much more room for growth. Maybe Apple can increase by 5x, or 10x, but it would need to introduce new products that are wildly popular to do so, which is very difficult. Ultimately, an Apple stock is a claim on cashflow, and it is priced based on expectations of Apple cashflow, and it is not easy to continue to increase cashflow once you're a trillion dollar company. But bitcoin is money, and its total addressable market is all of the planet's cash balances, which currently include something in the range of $100 Trillion in physical government cash and checking and saving bank accounts, plus ~$120 Trillion in government bonds, ~$22 Trillion in gold, and arguably, a chunk of the world's real estate and stock markets, which people are holding to beat inflation, and not to take risk in search of return. All in all, bitcoin's Total Addressable Market is in the range of $200-300 Trillion, which is about 100 times larger than what it is now. All of these assets are trash compared to bitcoin, and there is no reason for anyone intelligent to hold a significant position in them. Everything held in these assets has lost ~90% of its value against bitcoin in the last 5 years, and will likely keep losing another 90% every few years. The only things maintaining significant demand for these assets at this point are their holders' old age, intelligence deficiency, and susceptibility to government propaganda. They can continue to hold these assets as they decline, making them poorer, or they can shift to bitcoin and start getting richer. Either way, and regardless of what they do, the world's wealth is going to end up in the hard money, and not in the obsolete moneys of the twentieth century. Bitcoin has no cashflow to price it. Most nocoiners think this makes it a ponzi, but that is only because they have never experienced real money, and only have as a frame of reference the hot potato trash fiat money which everyone smart tries to exchange for hard assets as soon as they can. They are incapable of understanding people demanding to hold money for its own sake, for its ability to hold value, and not for cashflow. This is how gold became the money of the world without generating any cash flow, and this is why bitcoin, which is infinitely better money than gold, is going to continue to monetize and grow. Nonetheless, bitcoin's demand is highly variable, and with leverage, it will likely continue to be significantly volatile for the foreseeable future, so always keep in mind that it could decline significantly, and manage your position accordingly.

Saifedean
Saifedean Ammous · 260d ago
@saifedean

Bitcoin has now been working and trading for 15 full calendar years. It's time to see how it's doing and run some numbers. On Jan 1, 2010, there were 1,624,000 bitcoin in circulation trading at around $0.001 each. The total market capitalization of bitcoin was ~$1,624. On Dec 31, 2024, there were 19.803 million bitcoin trading at around $93,389 each, for a total market capitalization of $1.85 trillion. In total over the 15 years, the size of bitcoin cash balances has increased by 110,400,000,000,000%, or around 110 billion percent. If, during the next 15 years, bitcoin grows at only 1 ten millionth of its growth rate over the last 15 years, it grows to a total market cap of around $210 trillion, making it larger than all the world's fiat currencies and government bonds combined. In such a world, a government may be able to keep its shitcoin alive if it doesn't inflate its supply too much (a big if, and an even bigger may). Whether they do or do not is largely inconsequential, because either way, inflation won't be able to touch the majority of the world's wealth. Any bitcoin bearish thesis needs to present a coherent explanation for why bitcoin's next 15 years are going to have a growth rate that is significantly lower than a ten millionth of the rate of the past 15 years. Don't expect to hear one from people who get paid from the inflation bitcoin will kill. Happy 2025! Fiat is over if you want it! https://image.nostr.build/ca557c49ced382d356a89d5ef181f3cbe68dc1eecd8b56619f7f102bb8bdd0ec.jpg

Saifedean
Saifedean Ammous · 889d ago
@saifedean

1,044 pages in 326,000 blocks! https://i.imgur.com/THIaKrj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/IWkwUz8.jpg