I see your perspective and I also can't pay my bills with magic Internet money just yet. Lots of people are suffering and looking for a solution. If Bitcoin does not increase in purchasing power against pieces of paper it's not a solution.

They’re still counting worthless paper while we’re stacking sats, building layers of freedom, and watching fiat crumble #Bitcoin unstoppable

Thanks for your consistent reminders of this Jeff 🙏 that’s the only way to transform the fiat mindset we have known up until now

It doesn’t need to increase in purchasing power AGAINST anything. The adoption is what unfolds it as a medium not the fiat gains. A lot of people came for the NgU but once the properties of bitcoin are understood it’s irrelevant. I can provide you a service and request a payment in sats that has no bearing to its “conversion” into fiat. Everyone’s numbers are different just like everyone charges different amounts for similar services. Just because you can’t pay for existing bills in bitcoin doesn’t mean those services couldn’t be provided by someone who allows bitcoin as medium of exchange. It’s just in the very early stages.

Why does my steak in 2021 and in 2025 still cost roughly the same amount of bitcoin though? I’m measuring btc in goods and services and the deflationary collapse in bitcoin terms isn’t revealing itself. Is it because bitcoin is sniffing out the deflationary tech/ai/robotic collapse and the existing monetary system is just delayed in that realization so prices haven’t collapsed yet? Something is breaking my brain and I can’t figure it out! 😫

That is exactly it Matt. Lag time + greed and fear. As a small indicator of what you’re talking about - many PE funds in real estate have halted redemptions because if the assets were marked to market -insolvency would reign. While the market “waits” for more liquidity….ie - money printing. Trying to measure it in shorter time horizons, against an increasingly chaotic insolvent credit based system is what keeps us stuck. In time, it will be clear.

💡thanks Jeff

In general ai agree, however when the barrier to sound finance (without significant lifestyle compromise) is raised every year there are smaller and smaller percentages of people who can maintain the balance. Additionally in considering 60+ retirement age people there are 'fixed income' options, but all are risky and losing purchasing power from what I can see.

The future reality you are envisioning sounds nice. I'll look forward to that happening one day. Today a vast majority of what I need to live costs fiat.

This is absolutely understand. There's a difference between measuring bitcoin in fiat and measuring fiat in bitcoin. In a free market everything has relatively value to everything else and there is no moat against opportunity cost. What matters is where one places their focus.

You can pay for some bills using bitrefill or the bitcoin co.

Yes there are many work arounds, but the suppliers of a vast majority of goods and services are requesting fiat (for now). That transition could happen faster than many anticipate.

I mean, that is fiat that you’d be giving them. Or are you referring to cash?

Yep but you’re still paying in fiat. It’s not a p2p transaction.

🎯

And this is exactly why I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint. I did a pod last year with Jeff and have written articles using the Titanic as an analogy for this very position. You can recognise Bitcoin as the lifeboat, but if you're underwater on the bottom deck of the Titanic and you can't breathe, then a lifeboat won't save you in time. That's why I'm a big believer in reading the likes of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and 'The Richest man in Babylon' as a starting point. You've got to pay yourself first and save something (in bitcoin) for your future self. It's existential. You'll then start to see the polarity of the two systems, as one gets worse and the other gets better. And clearly, fiat inflation will make life more and more difficult in this system, but Bitcoin will reflect this, literally like a mirror image. It has to. Both paragraphs you've written are absolutely true. And it will get worse and worse. So the question should be which system are you going to give more of your energy to if you know this? Honestly, I tread a horribly fine line in my day to day life and have witnessed it as a small business owner getting progressively more difficult for several years. But transferring what energy you can into Bitcoin, both literally and financially, is the only thing I believe you can do. I just see it as a priority, not as something to do at the end of the month.

It behaves like a volatile stock in fiat terms because thats what most people see it as.. It will reveal itself to everyone with time .

I agree with everything you said there. I also wrote an article using Titanic as a metaphor. Personally, I put as much of my time and energy in the new system as possible. My whole life revolves around Bitcoin in most ways, which is great. However I think telling people not to measure bitcoin in dollars is ignoring the current reality we are living in. For example, if Bitcoin consistently lost fiat value year over year nobody would want to own it. It would have minor advantages over dollars (self custody/ censorship resistance ect), but I think NGU is fundamentally essential to bitcoin's success. Claiming otherwise ignores economic reality. Maybe that's not Jeff's point or yours, but that's what I'm hearing when I hear someone way to stop measuring bitcoin in dollars.

"Perception is reality, until you know differently"🧡

How did you pay your rent in Bitcoin? By finding a bitcoiner to rent from?

I’m on a bitcoin standard

Well, the price of steak in banker's permission slips went up 22%... I think Bitcoin is giving true signal. We also have to factor in the fact that destruction, waste and chaos are inflationary forces even for hard money. The real deflation is when the world actually gets richer in real terms, while the money stands firm. All the destruction of fiat malinvestment... waste, destruction and chaos will sap out real wealth gains for now. Bitcoin is more like a lifeboat when the fiat world is still crumbling. But it truly takes off as a deflationary rocket when real wealth creation takes over again. We're in our benedictine phase. Charlemagne is yet to come.

Impossible to explain it better

Absolutely! 💯 Jeff's point hits hard. Too many folks are stuck on just NGU without grasping the bigger picture. 🚀 Once you realize Bitcoin is the new base layer, you start vibing with the shift instead of chasing USD. It's all about contributing to the future, not just flipping for paper gains. Keep your eyes on the prize! 🪙✨ #Bitcoin #HODL

My read of Jeff’s “don’t measure bitcoin in the piece of paper” is: lots of people stop there in their understanding of bitcoin and all they see is NGU. That typically leads to thinking it’s ok to hold ETFs, playing leveraged games, and planning to one day sell back to USD. After you’ve understood that bitcoin is the new base layer and you choose which system you contribute your time and energy to, then it doesn’t hurt to make note of the USD price from time to time, because you won’t be going back and you’re just observing the natural disorder that must occur during a phase change like this.

This makes sense. I'm likely just reading into it too far because I'm too far down the rabbit hole to understand how most people are thinking about Bitcoin to begin with 🤙

How can we be sure that there won't be a hardfork in the future where the "winner" chain is the more centralized and less secure one? It's obviously extremely unlikely but isn't there a possibility of that happening?

Because the centralized one will fail due to the centralization. In other words…..those on the one that stays decentralized and secure will be on the longest chain - even if the price of it in usd terms falls for a time. Privacy is critical for that outcome but is already being solved.

@Jeff Booth

Makes sense, thanks!