Written by: Cai Leilei
I saw an interesting viewpoint that says Bitcoin has nothing to do with ordinary people; it only matters if you enter the game. If you don't enter, then it's just internal mutual cutting, and the wins and losses are unrelated to you. Whether it rises to 1 million dollars or 10 million dollars per coin has nothing to do with you because it is just a zero-sum game casino.
Really? Whether it’s Bitcoin, gold, or houses in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, what is it essentially? It is the process of participating in wealth redistribution. If I buy it for 1 yuan, and you buy it for 1 million yuan, doesn't that mean your ten years of labor results belong to me? You say you won't buy it. Similarly, you can also choose not to buy properties in major cities; you can choose not to buy anything at all. But in what form is your asset stored? Cash? For the first 20 years, if you hold cash while others buy houses, was your labor really not deprived? You are mistaken; when the wheels of fate start to turn, whether you actively participate or not, you will be drawn into it.
The resources in this world are limited, and they will be allocated to specific people through various carriers and rules. For example, we work to create value for society, thus participating in the distribution. Those who create more value get a bigger piece of the pie, while those who create less value and stay at home can only blame themselves for getting a smaller share—if you don't consume, does the amount of money in your hand remain unchanged, and therefore you won't get cut? No, money is simply a way to calculate the ratio of social resources; if there is a total of 10,000 yuan and you hold 1 yuan, you have a social resource voucher worth 1/10,000. If the country sees it can't produce your money and simply opens a new venue to grab money, then the total amount changes to 100,000, or even 1 million. It doesn't need your money, and your money naturally disappears—why? Because under the premise that social resources remain unchanged, you can only exchange for 1/100,000 or 1/1,000,000 of resources.
So I say the absolute value of money doesn't represent much; it's the proportion it occupies of the total amount that determines how much you can exchange for. In the agricultural civilization era, facing the yellow earth and backing the sky, a person with a hoe obtained social resource distribution through the creation of social wealth. However, entering the industrial civilization era, some people can do the work of 1,000 people by using more efficient tools; is that fair? No, it’s just that you didn't have the right tools to seize it, so you end up getting robbed.
This is 'creation logic,' which is easy to understand and many people agree with—it’s reasonable that while he took 1,000 shares, he contributed 1,000 times more to society. However, this logic around Bitcoin is harder to understand because it involves financial logic, predictive logic, consensus logic, risk logic, and shareholder logic. Given that we have been on a wrong path for a long time, there is a natural misunderstanding and aversion to this 'earning through judgment' in user education, so many people find it hard to understand and think it’s unfair.
It's actually easy to understand. If there is something that everyone wants, no matter what it is, even if it's just a painting for show, if everyone wants to hang it in their home, then realizing 'this thing might be desired by more people' leads to more people coming to grab it. Should this 'awareness' make money? Of course, because I also bear the risk of 'what if no one wants it and it drops in value.'
So it's very simple; if more people want Bitcoin in the future, then everyone will invest their hard-earned money into this pool to participate in the game of wealth redistribution. As everyone keeps pouring their wealth into it, it inevitably draws blood from other pools. Can this be understood? For example, if there are only two pools in the world, the stock market and the crypto market, as everyone keeps investing their wealth and resource shares into the crypto market, isn't the capital being drained from the stock market, causing the price of every stock to plummet? Those who chose the wrong pool, isn't their wealth being taken away? If you don't play and just hold cash, essentially, you are still passively playing because in an ever-expanding large pool, if you don't seize, you lose; if you don't seize quickly enough, you still lose.
So is it a game of 'mutual cutting among friends'? Of course not. New wealth keeps coming in, so how can it be called 'mutual cutting among friends'? Bitcoin is a ruler; the proportion of your coins to the total amount determines how much fiat currency you can allocate. You say it doesn't create new value? Then I have to start popularizing the value of being 'the world's first and largest decentralized value transmission system without trust.' Just think about it; how much is the Internet worth? If you were the 'original shareholder of the Internet' or the 'original shareholder of SWIFT,' how many times would your stocks have multiplied over these decades? You might already be the richest person in the world.
You can choose not to buy Bitcoin, and you can also choose not to buy anything else, but you must remember that cash is also an asset. Essentially, using cash to occupy a proportion of society's wealth to participate in social resource distribution is the same as using any other asset. What’s the difference? Some assets gather increasing consensus, so other people's wealth flows to you; while some assets lose consensus, and then your wealth flows to others.
This game is compulsory for anyone who is a member of society, whether they want to participate or not; there is no escape for anyone.
