I'm afraid the investment thesis of HODL & number go up, is coming to a critical point of marginal returns for BTC given the block limit, supply schedule, & lack of adoption.
Gold is a hell of a base layer. Central Banks & war served to centralize Gold, however, & debased it with dollars as a proxy, & eventually unhinged the dollar from Gold with the Nixon shock in 1971, and proceeded to back the dollar by chattel (taxpayers) & oil (military occupation/protection of oil-producing territories).
Gold can still serve as this base layer today as a check on fiat money & endless inflation/devaluing of the money, but the transmittance/portability of Gold as a value exchange tool represents trust in a third-party, and represents counter-party risk for the custodians who hold the Gold. In addition, govt globally all benefit from having their own respective currency to control. Hence, the value proposition of BTC.
Enter private banks. This portability problem can easily be solved with the current technology when it comes to gold & silver. Banks can effectively act as a kind of LN node for metals, given the cost of transacting/settling metals by trade in the real world. Banks can make trading digitally cheap. This is what was attempted & operational in 1998 with the Liberty Dollar, exchanging metals for Fed Note Dollars. But was tragically railroaded in a 2007 raid by agents posing as Americans protecting the Constitution & individual rights, but acting as domestic threats to individual Liberty. Namely, the FBI & USSS. Liberty Dollar was effectively shut down at court with the following indictments.
Indictments
"Bernard von NotHaus is charged with one count of conspiracy to possess and sell coins in resemblance and similitude of coins of a denomination higher than five cents, and silver coins in resemblance of genuine coins of the United States in denominations of five dollars and greater, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 485, 18 U.S.C. § 486, and 18 U.S.C. § 371; one count of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341 and 18 U.S.C. § 2; one count of selling, and possessing with intent to defraud, coins of resemblance and similitude of United States coins in denominations of five cents and higher, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 485 and 18 U.S.C. § 2; and one count of uttering, passing, and attempting to utter and pass, silver coins in resemblance of genuine U.S. coins in denominations of five dollars or greater, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 486 and 18 U.S.C. § 2.[25]"
Convictions;
"March 18, 2011, von NotHaus was convicted of "making, possessing and selling his own coins", after a jury in Statesville, North Carolina deliberated for less than two hours.[27] The jury found him guilty of one count under 18 U.S.C. § 485 and 18 U.S.C. § 2, one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 486 and 18 U.S.C. § 2, and one count of conspiracy, under 18 U.S.C. § 371, to violate sections 485 and 486.[28] He faces up to 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and may be forced to give $7 million worth of minted coins and precious metals to the government, weighing 16,000 pounds.[27] Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Anne M. Tompkins, described the Liberty Dollar as "a unique form of domestic terrorism" that is trying "to undermine the legitimate currency of this country".[29] The Justice Department press release quotes her as saying: "While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country."[29]
Appeal & Post-Trial Treatment
"Since his trial, The New York Times has said that some people describe von NotHaus as "the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement."
He appealed his conviction but his appeal was denied on 10 November 2014.[31]
On Nov 11th, 2014 Judge Voorhees denied von NotHaus' Motion for Acquittal.[32] On December 2, 2014, despite prosecutor demands that he serve as much as 23 years in federal prison, he was sentenced to 6 months house arrest, with 3 years probation.[33]As part of his reasoning for delivering a greatly reduced sentence from what Federal Prosecutors demanded, Judge Richard L. Voorhees considered von NotHaus' appeal, which stated:
...if anything is clear from the evidence presented at trial, it is that the last thing Mr. von NotHaus wanted was for Liberty Dollars [to] be confused with coins issued by the United States government...His intention – to protest the Federal Reserve system – has always been plain. The jury's verdict conflates a program created to function as an alternative to the Federal Reserve system with one designed to [deceive] people into believing it was the very thing Mr. von NotHaus was protesting in the first place...the Liberty Dollars was not a counterfeit and was not intended to function as such. The verdict is a perversion of the counterfeiting statutes and should be set aside.
The conviction, which was seen as a victory for the government, has now defined 18 U.S.C. § 486 as prohibiting the use of silver bullion, or any other metal coin or bar not issued under government authority, from being used as currency in commerce. The Silver Certificates issued by Liberty Services were not considered any form of counterfeiting or violation of law."
The above statement by Judge Voorhees regarding the legitimacy of Bernard von NotHaus' Liberty Dollars, & acknowledging the farce under which he was convicted, created a new landscape for banks to operate under the same model, solving for critical debasement & portability models of metals as money, & reintroducing competition in the market of commodity money, with the backing of the Constitution & this legal precedent.
Those behind the Liberty Dollar were renegades of reason & liberty, and way ahead of the curve. Foreseeing the dysfunction of fiat, it's inevitable hyperinflation, the unconstitutionality of fiat, & utilizing the current technology (digitalism + internet) to combat that in a free market. They were only centralized because they were the only ones solving this portability issue for the value transfer of sound, hard, metal money, as they saw the writing on the wall, which of course got us the 2008 financial crisis & massive artificial stimulus, QE, expansion of the monetary supply. funny that they were shut down a year before 2008. Operating with "God's Money" separates you from Gov't money which they are capable of printing at will. States are beginning to mobilize in protecting such renegades using the rules which govern the fed, aka the Constitution, and having a natural pivot of banks towards offering deposits of metals with digital tokens, thus easily enabling them to become a medium of exchange during this digital age. Super easy & feasible measure for banks to take in this environement of fiat QE artificial stimulus.
This network was effectively built by a small team of liberty lovers seeking to end the unconstitutionality of the Federal Reserve, hence their name, "National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Code" by providing age-old metal money as represented by digital tokens (eLD), & restoring the power back to the people & providing a check of powers onto the gatekeepers of the money printer. The idea is simple enough, and the system functioned as follows; "The currency was issued in minted metal rounds (similar to coins), gold and silver certificates and electronic currency (eLD). ALD certificates are 'warehouse receipts' for real gold and silver owned by the bearer."
What do you think the World will do in the advent of hyperinflation & global collapse of the Dollar? All the banks across the USA & the world could easily set up a similar system to protect against inflation/devaluation of the money they hold. It is simple enough. And Gold has much better brand value & reputation than Bitcoin.
The security is adequate & counter-party risk minimal enough to justify opting for such a network to transact. Especially in comparison to something like Bitcoin & the Lightning Network. In addition, the masses evidently do not care about privacy. We see this everywhere. They'd much rather trade privacy for cheap & easy to use things. Banks using tokenized metal as a fast, cheap, easy to use medium of exchange would CRUSH the adoption needed for BTC to maintain the security model of the network. It would be way easier to convince & onboard the masses onto the same payment systems they use today, just using sound money metals instead of fiat.
In this environment, I feel the benefits of BTC are marginal. Not compelling enough to garner more adoption, which fuels the price, which fuels the miners, which fuel the network, thus putting the project in a precarious position. The main value would then be #1) higher degree of monetary sovereignty & ownership, #2) with more censorship-resistant payments, yet with high fees & poor ux for layer 2 off-chain payment solutions, #3) & better privacy features, but privacy features that cost @ ~$800 for CoinJoin.
On the other hand, the value of Bitcoin Cash being extremely accessible & easy to use, easy privacy, cheap & fast to transact, full ownership with no trusted third party, offers SLP tokens for digital assets (which could be utilized as network for banks to tokenize metals), and also serve tokens such as SPICE, can be used for company equity with dividend capabilities, to certificates of ownership, titles, etc. BCH would still be competitive in such an environment where BTC's value proposition would be marginalized as metals provide significant competition as a base layer, & banks offering very competitive services as a payment layer.
In a world where a sufficient base layer & payment layer exists, BCH has much more competitive edge, and a better investment thesis, based on censorship-resistance, fast, cheap, & reliable transactions, & easy privacy (providing better fungibility), that can seamlessly be sent to anybody across the world.
For those thinking Bitcoin is so obviously superior than existing systems? The prospect of banks implementing a hard money transmittance network in response to hyperinflation is a considerable possibility that cuts significantly into the value of BTC given the sentiments of most people. And in this possibility, Bitcoin Cash maintains competitive with a sufficient edge given these properties.
You can learn much more about the Fed, the govt, & the current Bitcoin environment by learning more about the Liberty Dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_currency)
What do y'all think?
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Wow u are weldon Sean