Companies may move a portion of their cash into Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.

I'm guessing they assumed the reader was familiar with Bitcoin and the narrative of "digital gold".

> Companies may move a portion of their cash into Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.

Sure, but Bitcoin isn't even a particularly good way to hedge against inflation, given the wild volatility and speculative nature of the investment.

There are any number of other ways to hedge against inflation.

This is why "If we could capture 1% of the TAM..." arguments are flawed: They're worthless without an explanation for why this particular product is more likely to attract 1% of the TAM than comparable products.

Its volatile, but first principles says volume should shake this out over time as it scales and becomes adopted.

For now, its an asymmetrical bet with more upside than downside. For the right company (Apple? Tesla?), buying in basically guarantees instantaneous capital appreciation as it signals an endorsement to the market.

I don't think a large co. buying is necessary for Bitcoin to keeping growing, but if it does, game theory suggests other treasuries will look at that action and say, "well, why not us?"

If the best argument for an investment is "if other people buy it, it will go up"... that's a pretty unimpressive sales pitch.

The best argument for Bitcoin growing in value is it's a social phenomenon that will continue for some indeterminate time. Over half a trillion dollars buys a LOT of people becoming intellectually invested in Bitcoin. Almost like a religion, but it's like money so even better.

So, it's an irrational bubble. Got it.

The market cap is very misleading, as it values the entire pie based on what someone paid for the last slice. Much less than half a trillion has gone into BTC.

Absolutely. But people THINK they have half a trillion in Bitcoin “assets,” so that impacts their behavior. They will engage in all sorts of motivated reasoning to justify why it makes sense, to protect that and grow its a perceived value. And don’t underestimate the power of that, collectively.

I agree. It’s no different with other speculative “assets”.

That isn't even really practical, since the throughput is only a few transactions per second and each transaction costs $17USD. Other cryptocurrencies could be useful, but not bitcoin.