It'll be interesting who's left "holding the bag" once its the end of the MLM-ponzi scheme of who you can convince to buy into it - save regulatory capture somehow forcing the rest of society to buy into it.
That's what happens, some little scheme gets too big to fail, so the taxpayer bails it out. Those that are in the schemes win, those that felt the scheme was stupid lose.
I remember seeing adverts on the London underground for icelandic banks offer 5% more than any other savings account. I chuckled and thought "surely nobody's that gullible".
There were many. Both individuals, who got bailed out by me (the taxpayer), and many councils (who lost money which belonged to the taxpayer)
For 20 years I laughed at these various get quick schemes. Then I realised that they don't fail. Profits are privitised, losses are socialised, and they taxpayer always loses.
When you realise that, you have to look at dodgy schemes in a whole separate light. Sure bitcoin is stupid, but as it gets larger and larger the chance of it failing without bailing out large institutions reduces, meaning the chance of me riding on the coattails increases.
Yes, the former is just straight up gambling, the latter is investing in a company that makes good products.
40% of the US can't afford a 400$ emergency. Someone who had arguably more than that has improved their position from hodling... by 400x.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em...
I understand why you'd want that, fairness is a strong human instinct, but I don't see where it has any bearing on the likelihood of this future occurring.
People don't enjoy having a high number in their accounting system, they enjoy being wealthy. If, say, African central banks start purchasing BTC, and India joins them, early adopters will cash out at whatever value makes them feel like they got their money's worth. Some people will only trade for real property. Some are in a position to hodl until they can buy a whole cruise ship or whatever.
Or they could lose it all when BTC crashes to the natural value of any completely hypothetical asset, which is zero. This still seems more likely to me than central banks taking up a position in BTC, but sadly, I lack the ability to predict the future.
Is it really that different from buying the first iPod, and thinking to yourself, "y'know this is a brand new Apple, I'm putting a few thousand bucks into their stock"?