1/ The Price of Bitcoin

- Why price is entirely what matters
- How the price helps build Bitcoin

A thread👇

2/ Marketing viral loop

“A viral loop is a mechanism that drives continuous referrals for continuous growth.

It’s how you drive your existing customers to refer others to your brand, and in turn, get those new customers to tell even more people about you." - @ReferralRock
3/ Most of us heard about Bitcoin in 2013, 2017, when friends and family were talking about the rapid price increase. It’s through this viral loop that Bitcoin grows in adoption.
4/ The price is that signal to folks that Bitcoin is interesting, solves a problem, and that others are recognizing it as a new money. If Bitcoin’s price had stayed at $100 none of us would be here. While there is volatility, we keep seeing higher lows = long term trend upwards.
5/ Satoshi built a viral loop into Bitcoin.

“As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.” - Satoshi
6/ Satoshi wrote this before Bitcoin was even worth $0.01. In the chart below, we have Bitcoin’s price, inflation rate (aka issuance of new coins), and halvings which are the dotted lines. As we can see, a bull run has occurred after each halving.
7/ It is hypothesized that halvings induce these cycles (a reduction in new supply). The idea being a reduction in supply + increase in demand = number go up.
8/ What is unique to Bitcoin vs gold or oil is that there is no supply response to increases in demand.

This means that no more Bitcoin are produced as demand for it increases. With gold or oil, they can be sourced from increasingly more expensive/difficult places when demand ⬆️
9/ User Adoption

In bull runs, user adoption increases. For Bitcoin, as SoV, adoption = buying and HODLing. As we can see with the below chart of Coinbase users, 2017 and late 2020 had enormous increases in users as Bitcoin price started to climb.

https://t.co/6P3WIDxGBU
10/ Funding

With the price increase, more funding is thrown at the space to support a variety of existing and new businesses: exchanges, wallets, data providers, etc. This ensures that there are easy ways for people to buy Bitcoin, store it, and run full nodes.
11/ As we can see in the below chart, in 2018 there was an enormous surge in fundraising activity (Late 2017/early 2018 was the bull run).
12/ Liquidity

As the price rises, so does trading volume. When Bitcoin becomes more liquid, that enables larger and larger participants (ex: Institutional traders/Telsa) to buy substantial amounts of Bitcoin without too much slippage.
13/ This leads to a flywheel effect: as Bitcoin’s liquidity increases, the number of potential new traders does as well (more can get in and out of the position).
14/ Bitcoin core development

The below chart represents code commits for Bitcoin over time. As Bitcoin’s price has increased, so has developer activity and review of Bitcoin core code.
15/ Patron/corporate funding of Bitcoin developers has dramatically increased over the years as well. On the corporate side here is the breakdown of funding as of a year ago:
16/ And Bitcoindevlist is a more grassroots approach to core developer funding where you can fund different Bitcoin developers directly to their personal wallets. With the price appreciating, more of them receive funding!
17/ Security Model

As the price of BTC increases, the value of the block reward increases as well, which incentivizes miners to bring more hashrate online to mine. The higher the hash rate of a cryptocurrency network, the more expensive to 51% attack.
18/ In the early stages of the network, Bitcoin miners are rewarded more heavily by the block subsidy (newly minted coins) than transaction fees. With Bitcoin’s disinflationary monetary policy, approximately every 4 years the block subsidy drops by 50%.
19/ This creates both volatility and a price increase: if demand remains constant (or increases), the reduction in supply means demand is chasing less freshly minted Bitcoins hitting the market. Reduction in supply + increase in demand = price go up.
20/ While the two represent the same security budget, the block subsidy and transaction fees are very different. For the block subsidy, its value is both as a rational way to issue new Bitcoins and as a viral FOMO loop built into the protocol....
21/... which increases the number and network effect of believers in Bitcoin. It further stretches out the need for transaction fees to solely provide security. Hence why it’s called a “subsidy."
22/ Over the long term, a tradeoff occurs: as network effect becomes larger, demand for block space increases, thus decreasing the need for a block subsidy.

We’re seeing the miner % of revenue from fees start to climb up in the 2017 and 2020/2021 bull runs. Bitcoin is fine.
23/ Conclusion

Bitcoin’s price is the singular function that enables Bitcoin to grow in user adoption, liquidity, funding, security, and core development.

It is the most important aspect of Bitcoin. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
24/ Enjoy this tweet storm?

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More from Bitcoin

The #Bitcoin fundamentals of four generations of inflation, entitlements, and regulations are separate and apart from #Bitcoin the technological innovation. If we had sound money there would be little demand for Bitcoin. (1/13)


The notion that gold futures hold down the physical gold price or subjects the gold price to long-term manipulation is a canard. CME gold futures deliveries are settled with warrants meeting exact specifications met by approved refineries, carriers, and warehouses which (2/13)

ensures the integrity of delivery apart from the exchange. https://t.co/CpV1OBSsAT One need look no further than the 1980 Hunt Silver fiasco which illustrates how deliverable futures contracts provide for the discovery of an untapped silver supply resting in people's homes.(3/13)

Not so for Bitcoin. The CME Bakkt Bitcoin contract is for Bakkt Bitcoin. It is not Bitcoin. Bakkt Bitcoin is a cash-settled monthly futures contract. While the Bakkt Bitcoin has geographically storage of private keys, they are not your private keys. (4/13)


Not your keys, not your bitcoin. The Bitcoin Warehouse is an internal ledger The internal ledger operates separate and apart from the Bitcoin blockchain. The only interaction with the public blockchain is during the deposit of bitcoin into the Bakkt Warehouse and the (5/13)
The is no Devcoin Gold yet. But then again, we've never been one to "peg" to anything. I came across an interesting article about 'recreating' addresses with Bgold that @bitcoincoreorg cut out since 0.13.0 - perhaps one day we can do a similar thing in future Devcoin software :)


https://t.co/cv4UqsaVAK

That being said I hold some Doge @blockio in an "A-" address myself after 0. 1. "9-" versions :). Don't believe Bitcoin Core the Coin (Utility) is the only visible value on Core chain. Color me crazy. I believe in script. And FOSS that is used to export📜


And that's just a guy @MeniRosenfeld who put his identity and ideas out in the public to build a Web of Trust back when the web was much less of a safe place. His identity at stake and the implementation of a branch in source code by another unsung hero @killerstorm reveals value

Some of those who set up our bright future quietly implemented it in a branch on the main source code before it was officially the Bitcoin Core main repository, before a "Bitcoin Core" entity existed

Just because Bitcoin Core nodes dominate and do not read "smart" colored satoshis or display them, doesn't mean they do not exist on chain. The example of recreating P2WSH-over-P2SH address from BTC https://t.co/ZWSP2MO5bY wallets in Bitcoin Core Gold I shared proves -rescan's $

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