The majority of people who come into this circle have the initial intention of making quick money, and talking about ‘faith’ is quite vague. However, I do have faith. This article will casually discuss my faith in Bitcoin/Stablecoin.
There are a hundred different interpretations of the faith in BTC, because it involves personal life experiences and different focuses.
I have been to Cambodia before the 818 gambling ban. At that time, the real estate and land market there was booming due to the abnormal development of online gambling and fraud. I visited Phnom Penh, Poipet, Sihanoukville, which later became infamous, and everywhere I went, there were Chinese investors and construction contractors. Looking back now, it’s like the 1920s in the United States depicted in The Great Gatsby.
Everyone is imagining that this place is the next Macau, the next Shenzhen. People in such a distorted, rough, and vibrant environment still hope to participate, but fortunately they did not.
This all collapsed after the gambling ban in Cambodia, but that’s another story.
Do you think I’m going to talk about all the urban legends of the big brothers in the park? No, besides, as a visiting guest, I can’t even get in.
What surprised me was the currency and banking system of this country.
Here is the US Dollar, Dollar Le, US Dollar Le, the local currency Cambodian riel is like waste paper. If you use it to pay for tutu car fare, the driver will stare at you.
The bank account opening here is completely without Compliance and risk control. Individuals can open an account, and it is said that tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of US dollars are transferred every day, including not only transfers but also cash deposits and withdrawals, without any Compliance documents required.
fren living in mainland China may not understand, while overseas Chinese should know how difficult it is in any other SWIFT system bank.
Countries like Argentina and Ecuador have also completely abandoned their local currencies.
How large is the underground US dollar system here? I’m not very clear about the data in Cambodia. According to the data of the Tax Justice Network, there are about 80-100 trillion US dollars of assets hidden in offshore financial centers worldwide, including Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, and so on.
Actually, this is the true upper limit of Bitcoin (BTC), ultimately representing a portion of the offshore/underground USD system SOV (Store of Value) shares.
Offshore banks may still freeze assets and may be blacklisted or disconnected from the SWIFT system due to Compliance. If you have transferred funds to the Cayman Islands/Gibraltar, you know what I’m talking about.
BTC, besides its volatility, is an excellent choice for concealing wealth for gray-market tycoons/warlords, and there is no problem with capital circulation at all.
Because of the existence of PoW, theoretically, big brothers can still exchange their wealth for Computing Power to mine new coins, and the new coins have no traceable source (that’s why the United States has Compliance Mining guidelines, and Mining Pools have stricter KYC).
Like MEME coin, MEME coin has no valuation system, rise is the reason for rise, the higher the rise, the better the Liquidity. The higher the rise of BTC, the better the Liquidity, and the volatility will also drop relatively, and the capacity of SOV will also be larger.
But this demand is actually being diverted by Stable Coin, because USDT / USDC is a more wild existence than the Cambodian bank, although both can freeze stablecoin assets on user Addresses at the root.
Does this change the fundamentals of BTC? It’s like a corporate competition, where the market share of two companies, Bitcoin and Stablecoin, is different because the competition is differentiated. Stablecoin still has the constraints of Compliance, so no one can kill each other, only the change in market share percentage.
But will Bitcoin + Stablecoin replace the US dollar business in traditional offshore financial centers? There is some possibility of this, because the competition in the underground dollar system is homogeneous. When young tycoons replace the elderly tycoons, the market share of traditional offshore financial centers will gradually flow to the Bitcoin + Stablecoin system.
Note that what is being discussed here is the US dollar business in traditional offshore financial centers, and there are many other businesses that cannot be temporarily replaced, such as entity establishment, Capital Gains Tax incentives, trusts, etc.
In the end, there may be an offshore free port that fully embraces digitalization, such as the Hong Kong government, which is clearly aware of the nature of the money it earns and makes efforts to embrace it, but…
Once upon a time, I thought the most brilliant use case of blockchain was DAI / LUSD, which created unregulated underground USD credit in a decentralized way. Although it is limited by ETH Market Cap / Liquidity, the value is too significant. As Millet put it, how great is the value of freedom?
Now Maker has upgraded to Sky, with Address blacklist added and VPN access prohibited. This is a betrayal of the spirit of encryption after the team has washed white and retired.
The timing of the Decentralized Finance boom, Ethereum (ETH) with PoW actually had the opportunity to transition to a Store of Value (SoV) position, but now it’s all just historical nihilism.
ETH is still a public chain, just as SOL is a public chain, and public chains have income. With income comes a valuation system, and having clear accounts is no longer a dream. Without dreams, there is no market share.
As for the “belief” in Shitcoin, I will write about it separately later, which is completely another system, in fact, I have also written about “better securitization of gray”.
Let’s conclude with a quote from Wu Jihan in 2012. The reputation is judged by the world. At that time, he wrote such wonderful words, undoubtedly he is a very smart person with great vision. Vision is a state of mind, not a function of the eye:
BTC seamlessly integrates a virtual offshore free financial environment into the world.
The Bitcoin network is the Hong Kong, BVI, and Macau of cyberspace. Buying BTC now is like owning a building on the Mid-Levels in Hong Kong.
Don’t just see nothing on the mountain except trees now, but see the skyscrapers at the foot of the mountain in the future.
Open a savings account at will, easy to keep depositor identity confidential, low Money Laundering, no taxation, free trade, free gambling, strict monetary discipline.
Welcome to the Bitcoin network, a financial free port, tax-free trade zone and anarchist paradise on the internet.
