13- Bitcoin myths

“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”

Bitcoiners are often and unjustly made fun of.

One of my favourite songs ever. It also perfectly describes Bitcoin in a nutshell.
On your journey to becoming a Bitcoiner, you will face several hurdles: from market crashes and bear markets to inner philosophical debates.
The final boss, however, is much tougher than any of those. And you must defeat it, lest your path be interrupted before it even starts.
Indeed, coping with other people’s mockery, negativity, and distrust is incredibly hard. 
Your conviction, especially if not entirely formed, can be utterly destroyed by your peers’ opinions.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we give external validation a great deal of importance.
We are social animals, after all. We crave approval.
If what we are doing is perceived as positive, we know we are on the right track, and this only fuels our desire to carry on.
On the other hand, if our friends, family, or anyone within our circle disapproves of our beliefs and activities, we can easily lose faith, and stop altogether, regardless of how strong we thought our commitment was. That’s how strong social pressure can be.
This applies to several areas of our lives: from “harmless” and inconsequential matters like the clothes we wear, to more serious ones like the foods we eat, all the way to existential and life-defining things like our religion, politics, and–why not–Bitcoin too.

I am here to tell you that this will 100% happen.
You will be met with criticism, ridicule, and rejection. People will even make fun of you for being a Bitcoiner.
It’s cruel, but hey, one day you’ll be the one laughing, I promise!
This is why studying Bitcoin is of the utmost importance. 
They will come at you with all sorts of nonsense, but you must be ready to counter their BS.

The truth is that, despite Bitcoin being the best asset in recorded history (in terms of purely financial gains), it is still grossly misunderstood by the population.
There are two main culprits here, in my opinion.
Bitcoin is hard to grasp.
In reality, the “average person” doesn’t even comprehend fiat, which is, admittedly, overly complex by design. Bitcoin is actually simpler, once you delve into it. But getting started is not easy at all. We are lazy, far too lazy to get off our asses and study something new, alien, and innovative. 
Bitcoin is seen as too nerdy, too advanced; and that puts people off.

The second reason is there is no real incentive to promote Bitcoin education around the world. There is no money to be made. Of course, Bitcoin is not a company; it doesn’t generate profits. There is no marketing here, and no one is paying me to do this.
I do it out of pure passion, but you see what I mean: adoption is slow; because the spread of information is “hindered” by the lack of financial gains around Bitcoin. The fiat system doesn’t really want you to know about it; no one is “pushing” Bitcoin.

This is our last chapter. You made it. We understand the fundamentals; now, let’s quickly run through the most common myths surrounding the world of Bitcoin. 
There are many. And, if you paid attention so far, you already half-know all of the answers.
Let’s go.

Have you “made money” with Bitcoin? “He just got lucky!”

Myth #1: Bitcoin is worthless, it has zero intrinsic value, and it’s a gamble/scam

We’ll start with the most significant misconception, one that often comes from “traditional finance” or from the esteemed fiat system.
Politicians, suit-and-tie Wall Street traders, “gold bugs”: they love to hate Bitcoin. They are obsessed with it, and they can’t wait for the next opportunity to bash it. 
This is their main argument: Bitcoin has no value, no utility, and it’s not backed by any real authority or central bank, therefore it’s only a speculative asset, a bubble, and a gamble. Or a Ponzi scheme… a scam!

These guys belong to the mainstream school of thought called "Keynesian economics”.
They think money and state must be tied together, and they believe currencies have to be distributed and backed by governments or banks.
Ah yes, those are also the same people who think inflation is positive for the economy.
‘Nuff said.

Each to their own, but let me tell you: I don’t really have much faith in those who represent an often manipulated and unfair system that keeps failing us, day after day.
It’s true: Bitcoin is not backed by a central bank. Thankfully.
Bitcoin is backed by one thing: incorruptible energy.

“Austrian economics” is the opposing belief, one much more akin to Bitcoin.
Here, the concept of value is not absolute. No, those pieces of paper we call money are not valuable only because the prime minister said so.
Sorry fiat: you have to do better, if you want to be taken seriously.
If something meets and satisfies certain requirements, that’s when it becomes valuable: when the free market decides so. 
What would you trust more: an imposed decision taken by a few members of the elite, or one matured over the years by the free people? 

So, no. Bitcoin is not a gamble.
All of those visionaries who became rich, and saw their savings double every year: that’s not luck.
That’s believing in a revolutionary product, a new form of money that challenges the system, a tool people can use to better their lives.
Bitcoin is not a bubble, and it’s here to stay, whether they like it or not.
Does it have any real utility?
Well, that’s up to you to decide, out of your own free will, after having done research on it.

But see for yourself: an item that went from $0 to $100,000 in only fifteen years; do you call that worthless? Was that completely random and undeserved, or could it be that it’s actually extremely valuable? You know exactly where I stand.

Myth #2: I am too late to Bitcoin

This may be the most widespread Bitcoin cliché, at least among the general public.

I missed the bus. The ship has sailed. Bitcoin had its run. It’s too late to get into it now. It’s too expensive.

These are some of the comments you may come across on a daily basis, from people who heard about Bitcoin, but have absolutely no idea what it is.
And to be fair, their thinking is not entirely wrong.
In the world of investing, when a stock has reached multiple all-time highs, and its value increased exponentially, the general consensus is that you should not buy it.
It’s not worth it anymore. It may crash soon, or it may trade “sideways” forever.
You can’t make huge profits any longer; let’s look for the next NVIDIA, the next 1000x. You’d be surprised to see how many people actually Google “what’s the next Bitcoin?”.

But you are a good student, and you know Bitcoin is not comparable to any other financial product out there. It behaves entirely differently.
Bitcoin is money. It’s not an investment or a trading asset. You can see it as the world’s best savings account: with an average cumulative increase of 60% per year, that’s not too bad, is it?!

You are not late.
It’s true that you may not see another face-melting moon-shot like the “class of 2015” did, and so what? That’s not enough of a reason to just give up.
I wasn’t there in 2015. I wasn’t there during the beautiful 2017 bull run. 
When I started buying Bitcoin, it was near all-time highs. But I didn’t really care: I immediately understood the enormous potential this thing has. 
Please remember that today’s highs will be tomorrow’s lows.
Do not be discouraged only because a single unit now costs over $100,000. 
When Bitcoin jumped from $1 to $1000, I am absolutely certain, and you can actually still read their tweets, that people thought: “naaah, it’s too late!”
Repeat up until today’s prices. You get the idea. 

Now, how would they feel, knowing they actively chose to ignore it, only because they deemed it “too expensive” at the time? 
If you start your DCA now, I can assure you that one day you will look back, and remember these times very fondly. “Ahh, Bitcoin was so cheap, back in my day! Only 100K!” 
That’s what you’ll be telling your grandson, when BTC is priced in the millions.

Michael Saylor compared buying Bitcoin now to acquiring real estate in Manhattan in the late 1800s.
Would you have been early, back then? Well, not exactly.
Manhattan was already a prime, well-developed location with relatively high prices. An investor may have thought “I am too late! I should have invested 10 years ago, I missed the opportunity.” 
But did he? 
Not even close. House prices in Manhattan have increased some 200 fold since then.

And you will struggle, knowing you decided to buy some bloody “Dogecoin” instead.
Remember the “unit bias” we mentioned? It goes well with the “I am too late” myth.
Our minds love to play tricks on us.
We would much rather buy, say, 150 Solana than 0.001 Bitcoin.
We like big numbers, not decimals.
“I hold 1% of a Bitcoin” sounds awful, almost comical.
“I just bought 1500 XRP”: now we are talking! 
You simply need to see through the mist, and not get lost in it. Focus on what matters: to stack, little by little, 0.00001 at a time, the best money ever conceived by humanity. The rest is a mere distraction.

Ultimately, whenever you think you are too late to Bitcoin, please zoom out and remember: this thing has only been around for 16 years, and only a tiny percentage of the world currently holds it.
Bitcoin is often compared to the internet: a technology everyone now takes for granted and that we all use, which surprisingly took nearly two decades to become mainstream.
Moreover, please don’t forget: it’s never too late to let go of your rotting fiat and exchange it with Bitcoin. Even at $1 million!

Shitcoiners are in for a quick buck. Bitcoiners care about their financial future.

Myth #3: Bitcoin=crypto

This is easily the most triggering as a Bitcoiner.
I don’t blame them though. I am not mad when I hear it, but it surely makes me cringe.
We can’t expect everyone to be proficient in Bitcoin and “digital finance”, but let’s debunk this huge myth. 
Repeat after me:

Bitcoin is not crypto. 

If that’s your first time hearing it, welcome. Are you disoriented, do you feel weirded out?
It’s ok: apparently, everyone is in the same boat, and thinks the two are synonymous. After all, isn’t Bitcoin the original Cryptocurrency?
That is true, and this is the reason they get tragically, though not comically, mixed up. 
Indeed, Bitcoin is the O.G. from which every other digital currency originated. There are some 15,000 of them around these days. Crazy.

But make no mistake. These “alternative coins”, AKA “altcoins”, only share one single feature with the king Bitcoin: they are digital. That’s it, that’s where the similarities end.
Bitcoiners refer to them as, excuse my French, “shitcoins”, and for good reason.
Their sole purpose is to try and emulate, replicate, and copy what Bitcoin did. But they fail miserably. All of them.
Altcoins are, in fact, more akin to fiat than they are to Bitcoin. And, just like dollars and euros, they are all “going to zero”: they will eventually collapse and lose all of their value.

You know what makes Bitcoin so special: it is fully decentralized, it is “owned” by anyone who wants to participate in the network, it is incorruptible, it is based on the amazing concept of “proof of work” and it has a capped supply of 21 million units.
“Crypto” is essentially the opposite.

They are centralized companies, where the founders are also the CEOs, and they manage their operations from above.
The sole reason they exist is to make profits, just like any other business.
Altcoins are often “pre-mined” and distributed to “early investors”: people who are close to the “brass” and benefited from it.
The vast majority of these projects never succeed, as they are ALL backed by hype, rather than solid fundamentals and ethics. 
Yes, some of them “moon-shot”, but that’s driven by pure gambling and speculation.
The ones with the better marketing team and narrative behind them may have a spectacular bull run, before they implode and fall into utter irrelevance.
Altcoins are modern casinos, and I am not joking. People attracted by potentially massive and quick gains “invest” in them. It’s no secret that the world is suffering from a crippling gambling epidemic, and this is a perfect demonstration.

The average person would much rather try their luck and look for an “easy” 10,000%, rather than studying Bitcoin, which is seen as “boring” now, by many. 

“Bitcoin, not crypto”: your new motto.

Buying coke with BTC?

Myth #4: Bitcoin is the currency of criminals

This one is old, but still gold, a myth that took shape a long time ago and still persists, although greatly diminished, to this day.
The idea of Bitcoin being the perfect drug-trafficking currency is largely due to the Silk Road saga.
You may be familiar with it: the first-ever true open online marketplace, a website where one could acquire several illegal goods such as drugs, weapons, fake passports and whatnot.

We go back to 2011-2013, when Bitcoin was still in its baby days, and with an already damaged reputation. You could use it to purchase items on Silk Road, and that’s despite it not being anonymous.
It was nonetheless a better and more off-the-radar way to conduct your activities on the website; certainly “safer” and more secure than digital bank transfers.

Why is this a myth? That’s because Bitcoin is, in reality, the very opposite of “drug money”.
We are talking about a monetary system where every transaction ever made (at least on the base layer) is recorded on the immutable and public ledger known as the blockchain.
What sort of criminal would want their transaction to be permanently and irreversibly stored on the internet? None, I bet.
Bitcoin was used for many illicit activities back in the day; that’s actually true. But that’s only due to the fact there were no better alternatives at the time. Bitcoin is fairly private, it’s fast, and it’s digital. That was the best option available, back in 2013.

Many of the Silk Road users were in fact caught, and pretty easily.
Keep in mind that thanks to KYC on exchanges, your real-life identity is linked to your Bitcoin address.
As it turns out, authorities are able to catch you fairly quickly, just by using your blockchain data.
To prove my point even further, I can tell you that the US government allegedly holds around 200,000 Bitcoin.
That’s a lot of BTC, and it was all obtained from confiscation, not from direct purchases. 

These days, “Chainalysis” tells us that only a tiny 1% or less of daily Bitcoin transactions are associated with illicit trade. That’s pretty good, if you ask me.
There are several ways for drug traffickers and scammers to remain anonymous on the internet now, but Bitcoin isn’t one of them. 
Can you guess what the perfect “criminal currency” around the world is? Yep, that’s cash: any physical form of fiat currency is the preferred way to transact in secret.

Myth vs reality

Myth #5: Bitcoin is greatly contributing to global warming and it’s destroying the environment

This is a big one. It implies that, whether or not Bitcoin has any value at all, it is inherently bad because it requires too much electric power to be produced.
And there is some truth to it: Bitcoin does indeed use a ridiculous amount of electricity.
An investigation led by Oxford University revealed that Bitcoin mining is responsible for consuming around 0.05% of the world’s electric power. That’s quite a lot, and it’s undeniable.

But let’s not take every piece of data at face value, and let’s do some digging.
Bitcoin can help you become a critical thinker, so that you can develop a healthy scepticism towards the vast amount of information you are being fed on a daily basis.

What they don’t tell you is that roughly 55% of Bitcoin is “made” using “sustainable”, “clean”, or “renewable” energy. We talked about this in the mining chapter, and you are welcome to personally fact-check the data.
We know for a fact that’s where the industry is going. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, a decade from now, nearly 100% of Bitcoin will be “obtained” with hydro, solar, or wind power.
In 2022, coal was used to power roughly 37% of the global BTC mining operations. Today, after just three years, that figure is only 9%. 
And it’s going to keep improving, so please, don’t blindly buy into the global warming panic just yet. Instead, look into it yourself, and come to your own conclusions.

These days, there’s an alarming tendency to immediately reject any energy-intensive industry, product, or technology.
This is because of climate change: a topic surrounded by doomsayers and fear-mongers.

But let’s imagine we suddenly had to stop the making of any goods whose production requires “too much” power; we might even regress to prehistoric living: tribes, barter, and hunter-gatherer type of world.
The simple truth is that energy must be used and produced, in order to keep up with our society’s rhythm and standard of living. And there is nothing wrong with that.
It has been observed how, throughout history, the most successful and thriving societies were the ones with the highest rates of energy consumption.
It has even been defined as “the universal currency”: energy is, plain and simple, what allows us to produce, grow, and progress.

Let’s put Bitcoin’s numbers into context, so that we have a better view of how much electricity it actually uses compared to other industries, along with some “unassuming” everyday products.

Bitcoin mining consumes 140 TWh (Terawatt/hours) of electricity per year.
Data centres for AI, Microsoft, Meta, and “Big Tech” demand up to 600 TWh per year; with that number likely to exponentially increase in the near future.
The gold industry? Roughly 200.
Air conditioning around the globe? More than 2000.
“Vampire power”, or devices such as TVs, gaming consoles and appliances left on standby? Around 300 TWh per year.
Christmas lights in the US alone: 7 TWh.
Clothes dryers in North America consume roughly 40% as much electricity as Bitcoin mining.

Those 140 TWh don’t sound so bad now, do they?
How often do you see people protesting against gold? I have never.
Energy expenditure is the hallmark of an ever-advancing humanity, don’t let them scare you with their narrative.
Bitcoin is a true paradigm-shift: a technology that has the power to positively change the world, and we should not be put off by its immense energy requirements. 

No internet, no Bitcoin. Sure, but what else?

Myth #6: Bitcoin’s “killers”

We know that, in order to use Bitcoin, there is one thing that’s mandatory: an internet connection. There is no way around it. You simply need one.
Some critics love to dunk on Bitcoin, claiming it would instantly die, in case “they” shut down the internet.
It’s true: if that were to happen, the whole network would be rendered unusable: no transactions, no mining, no nodes. Nothing.
But is that reason enough to say Bitcoin is “risky”? No, that’s just absurd. Let’s zoom out for a second, and imagine a world where the internet is no more. It’s pretty bleak, I tell ya.

Seriously: do you think that, if that actually happened, Bitcoin would be on top of your priorities? It’s reasonable to think we would face civil wars, riots, societal collapse, and, basically, an absolute apocalypse, were the internet to go down.
The world as we know it today would no longer exist, and anarchy would likely take over. Now, would you still be worried about your Bitcoin, your money, gold, assets? I don’t think so. You’d have much, much bigger issues.

Another famous “Bitcoin killer” is quantum computing.
This futuristic and incredibly advanced technology would theoretically be so powerful as to “break” Bitcoin.
These machines’ computational power is, in theory, so extreme they could “steal” your private keys simply by looking at a transaction you made, which contains your public key. 
Needless to say, if this tech existed today, Bitcoin would not be safe, and the network would likely implode.

However, there are no real reasons to be panicking just yet.
For one, we can confidently say we are still far off. Quantum computers today are nowhere near as powerful as to compromise cryptography within Bitcoin. Experts agree that, in the “best” case scenario, it would take approximately 15 years for them to reach that level.
Moreover, the Bitcoin developer community is very aware of this looming threat; new theories, plans, changes, and measures are being implemented even as you are reading this. It won’t come “as a surprise”: we know it exists and we are preparing for it.

If that technology were available now, then yes, Bitcoin would be screwed. But you know what else would? Well, pretty much everything!
Just like the internet-apocalypse we just talked about, this is a similar nightmare-scenario.
If quantum computers were that powerful today, then all of the world’s digital security would basically be nuked. 

VPNs, emails, messaging apps, online banking, the SWIFT system, ATMs, stock exchanges, digital IDs, passports, secure boots in phones and laptops, software updates (Windows, IOS, etc), any data that has ever been encrypted with today’s technology, power grids, satellites, military commands: all of them would be compromised.

Once again: the fall of Bitcoin would not be on top of your concern when the world literally burns before your eyes.
It’s like saying: “dollars would be useless if an asteroid hits and destroys the Earth”. Thank f**k!

“Governments can just ban it”. This is the last myth worth discussing. You will hear this time and time again.
Let’s acknowledge the fact that Bitcoin is essentially every government’s worst nightmare: a form of money that cannot be manipulated. Damn. It’s no surprise that the fiat system despises it. And that’s, in truth, the very reason we love it.
The general public is mistakenly under the impression that a country can just cancel it. 
Not so fast.
Not only can’t Bitcoin be corrupted and: it cannot be owned, co-opted, hijacked, or controlled.
This is a decentralized and widely distributed protocol, operated by the largest computer network in the world: 40,000 nodes and counting.
Nodes are the entities that safeguard the protocol. As long as even a single node is online, no one has the power to shut Bitcoin down; not even a prime minister or a dictator.
Of course, politicians can make your life hard: they can order local banks to categorically deny every BTC to fiat conversion. They can raise the capital gain tax to obscene amounts.
They can seize your Bitcoin, but not directly. They can threaten you: give us your SATs, lest you face even more severe charges (in case of a criminal conviction).
But they cannot prevent you from sending or receiving Bitcoin. They can’t touch it, if properly held in self-custody. They simply cannot stop it.
Ahh, smell that? The sweet scent of freedom!

These were the most common misconceptions surrounding the world of Bitcoin. As you can see, pretty much no one has a clue about it. Finding someone that actually understands it is incredibly rare. And that should tell you something about the “I am too late” thing. 

We are early, my friend. So very early.

Do not let those myths discourage you from embarking on your Bitcoin journey. Study the fundamentals, develop an unshakeable faith so that you are able to dodge and properly dispel the false information they will hit you with. You got this.

We are nearly done! I’ll see you in the “conclusion”, for some final words of encouragement.