1/THREAD: WHEN WAS IT CLEAR?

Oct. 8, 2020: The purpose of this thread is to document and timestamp when it first became clear that #Bitcoin was likely to become a major reserve asset for public corporations, and eventually states, with Square's purchase of $50M in BTC.

The purpose is to give something to cite when ppl later claim "But there was NO WAY OF KNOWING..."

h/t @ErikSTownsend who used the same format to call out the impact of Covid on Feb 8 and made me personally aware of the looming shutdown of the country https://t.co/opuiNgSeqC !
Bitcoiners smarter than me have been predicting the takeover of the dollar by Bitcoin for many years.

In 2014 with Bitcoin barely at $1B, @pierre_rochard wrote https://t.co/EGHa58KqHq, covering all the incorrect narratives of Bitcoin and stating it will overtake the dollar.
"[skeptics] misunderstand how strong currencies like bitcoin overtake weak currencies like the dollar: it is through speculative attacks and currency crises caused by investors, not through the careful evaluation of tech journalists and 'mainstream consumers'" - @pierre_rochard
I first became bullish on Bitcoin in the summer of 2016, around a $3B market cap, but it was still a toy project at that time in the eyes of most in the financial world, while many technologists thought of it as a v1 technology to be improved on.
My first writings on Bitcoin in the fall of 2016 after 4 months of study correctly identified the monetary importance, but incorrectly understood blockchain as an application platform and predicted the rise of Ethereum, which I no longer believe can work.
https://t.co/aKGjgSQMps
Today, at $200B, it is exceeding our wildest dreams, while skeptics look on bewildered, shouting "bubble", for ten years straight, being forced to shift goal posts from "it will go to zero" to "two public companies buying an aggregate $500M of Bitcoin is not a pattern".
But to my thinking it was the week of Oct 8, 2020 when it first became crystal clear, and that traditional financial media reporting on Bitcoin was out of touch with reality, with the announcement of Square's purchase of $50M in Bitcoin.
Media earlier in the year continued to talk criminals and bubbles despite the entry into Bitcoin space by financial giants such as NYSE, CME, and Fidelity, investments into Bitcoin mining by Peter Thiel, and entry of macro players like Paul Tudor Jones and Raoul Pal.
Bitcoin now receives daily coverage in the financial press, while the opinion arms of the same publications write FUD pieces, and mislabel Bitcoin news as "crypto", "cryptocurrency", or "coin", as if driven by some insane force to avoid stating the painfully obvious.
It was back in August that MicroStrategy, a billion dollar Nasdaq listed company, announced the purchase of 21,454 bitcoin, almost five times the amount Square did. Media mostly slept on the initial purchase by $MSTR, unlike the coverage of Square, which was widely publicized.
I immediately recognized that this was the first of many to follow, retweeting Saylor's Sep 15 announcement of the aggregate purchase of of $425M worth of Bitcoin for his company's corporate treasury.
Some in traditional finance analyzed this move as a hail mary by a wacky CEO who had voting control and didn't have to answer to anyone. But Mr. Saylor had been using his Covid quarantine time to study the hardest money ever to be invented.
A "perfect storm" for Bitcoin has formed in 2020, which will ultimately lead to the replacement of the dollar with Bitcoin on the balance sheets of many major corporations, and likely states, within the next decade.
The perfect storm is 1) Bitcoin is the scarcest and hardest money ever to be invented, with a fixed supply that is changeable by no one 2) More than 7000 clones and competitors have been created with near zero market uptake 3) Dollars are being debased on an unprecedented scale
4) The world is tired of US hegemony and censorship over its currency 5) Countries that are sanctioned by America need a neutral currency to trade 6) Corporations need a reserve asset that cannot be debased 7) Leading companies such as Square and MicroStrategy demonstrating...
…not only the safety of, but a necessity to hold Bitcoin on corporate balance sheets to avoid dollar debasement 8) Bitcoin has become incredibly deep and liquid, able to sustain a $500M purchase over a few days without major slippage.
To summarize, by Oct 8, 2020 - it was crystal clear that Bitcoin was going to eat all weaker currencies alive. That includes the dollar. Be long dollars at your own risk.
A major thank you to @michael_saylor and @jack for your leadership in showing the world that this is the way.

More from Bitcoin

I have a different take on bitcoin, tether, and dollars

Can also speak with authority on nation state violence

"Nothing makes you feel more free than taking another person's freedom"


and @profplum99 concerns with tether, bitcoin, and decentralization make sense yet I remain long BTC

They are correct on force, I worked in decentralized societies, they are dangerous because the state does not have a monopoly on violence

For those in the first world who have never seen a milita ride out of the desert, kill and enslave farmers, and the government cannot stop it because the 21st century slave trade pays better than the UN, the reality of decentralization is might equals right

I know, that isn't the decentralized future Buterin talks about while wearing a t-shirt with a cat fighting space invaders on it (love those shirts)

But we need to be real, disrupting the global centralized economy won't be like Uber putting taxis out of work

It will be war and faminine level disruption as old empires come alive again

For decentralization to rise the centralized global power of the last 70 years (US Hegemony) has to weaken

Yes we will be rich, but as the Big Short says,

"you can be happy, just don't fucking dance"
Ok, so what is the significance of the @lagarde statement on bitcoin?

We were offered a very open insight (but slightly flawed analysis) into top level policy perspective behind the crack down on selfhosted wallets.

https://t.co/1LTzrxHbgs 1/32


'It is a speculative asset, by any account. If you look at the price movements... '

It starts with an economic price perspective and we can learn that ECB is closely monitoring this price movement as one of the many indicators.

So we are in the classic central bank frame 2/32

'Those who thought it would turn into a currency. Sorry, it is an asset not a currency.'

Here she summarises a classic debate on what is currency and what is needed for that. Based on the holy three: unit of account, means of payment, store of value. 3/32

The summary is classic, but too narrow and does not incorporate the wider financial history viewpoints on money, currencies and the way we pay. 4/32

ECB overlooks the de facto unit of account role of bitcoin, having been used to 200 years of having cash around whic is both the unit of account and a means of payment. 5/32

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