I usually ignore Bitcoin critics.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s the right move. I’ve spent years thinking through the objections, stress-testing the thesis, and running the numbers. I don’t feel the need to rehash the same arguments just to prove something to someone online.
But every once in a while, one is worth engaging - not because it rattles me, but because it sharpens my own thinking.
This week, an early architect of the internet argued that Bitcoin likely doesn’t implode. He admitted the network works, the code runs, and it probably survives. But survival, in his view, doesn’t justify a premium valuation. His thesis is that over time enthusiasm wanes, capital rotates elsewhere, and what remains is a niche asset supported by committed believers rather than something foundational to the global monetary system.
It’s a serious critique, resting on two core claims: Bitcoin isn’t a widely used currency, and it isn’t a store of value.
If the scoreboard is whether you can buy coffee with it at Starbucks, then sure - Bitcoin hasn’t won that battle. But that framing ignores something important: most holders don’t want to spend it. They view it as a savings asset that’s still monetizing. Stronger money tends to be hoarded, not circulated. Gold didn’t fail because people weren’t buying groceries with it - reserve assets sit underneath systems; they’re held, not swiped.
On the store-of-value point, judging Bitcoin by a single 12-month window misses the broader arc. Over 15+ years, through multiple cycles and sharp drawdowns, the long-term trajectory has been upward as adoption and infrastructure expand. Gold earned its reputation because of its properties - scarcity, durability, portability, and divisibility. Bitcoin offers those properties in digital form and improves on them, with verifiable fixed supply, frictionless global transfer, and native cross-border settlement without intermediaries.
Ultimately, the disagreement isn’t about whether Bitcoin can fail - it’s about how probable that outcome really is. I’ve always said this is an asymmetric bet: it either embeds itself into the global financial system over time, or it stagnates and becomes marginal.
When I look at how institutions are positioning, how governments are talking about it, and how the surrounding infrastructure keeps expanding, it looks far more like integration than irrelevance.
These debates won’t be decided in threads. They’ll be decided over decades. I’m comfortable holding Bitcoin while time does the scoring.