But the people who have the wealth don't care about that. They're happier leveraging it for speculation to increase their wealth. Things dont have value only because theyre scarce. There has to be demand also. Demand happens on the individual and social layer, not on the protocol. What forces the wealth into Bitcoin?

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Speculation isn't demand. Meat is scarce due to biology, not fiat. Your "protocol" can't feed you. We eat tissue for survival; you eat indexes.
Neve Farms's avatar
Neve Farms 9 hours ago
I don’t think anything forces wealth into bitcoin per se, it’s a permissionless protocol, non coercive by nature. The better question would be why would someone need bitcoin?Predatory governments, collapses in trust, a police state, complete anarchy with widespread violence and coercion like pre-Bukele El Salvador, Weimer-esque hyperinflations. Being able to take your life’s earnings anywhere in the world in your head is highly valuable. I would expect the central banking cartel, who benefit the most from seniorage, would be the last group to voluntarily adopt proof of work permissionless money. Their cronies can play the same casino games in the short term, but the games come to an end over time. And granted, a lot of us are from America or the first world, we don’t need bitcoin to save our families from starvation. We use it to to defend our wages and savings from debasement. But its properties are valuable, and without scarcity I don’t think it has the same value.