In the global family of financial assets, gold is #Bitcoin's closest cousin. They are both non-sovereign monetary goods valued for their superior monetary properties (relative to fiat).

However, the ownership distribution of these close cousins is very different. A thread👇
A very large fraction of gold is owned as jewelry (dominated by India) and (ironically) by global central banks. Investment usage in the form of bullion is the next dominant usage and this, in turn, comes in large part through demand from gold ETFs such as SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). ImageImage
Much of the jewelry demand for gold is actually use as an ostentatious store-of-value. This is particularly so in India.

However, outside of India, there is very little retail demand for gold as a store of value, especially among younger savers in Western nations (millennials). Image
#Bitcoin's ownership distribution on the other hand is dominated by retail investors and, in particular, the technologically savvy and ideologically motivated early investors who still own a large fraction of its total supply.
Ownership of #Bitcoin skews much younger and the trend is likely to continue. If millennial investors were surveyed, only a tiny fraction will have considered gold as an investment, let alone put meaningful savings in it. #Bitcoin on the other hand is their darling investment.
It is possible to see the future in the present, if one has a keen enough eye. The transition of investment interest among the young from gold to #Bitcoin is likely to accelerate in the coming years. However an important question is whether current gold demand will shift to BTC
It is unlikely that in the current bull market cycle that gold's main sources of demand (central banks and store-of-value use in India) will dramatically decline. However family offices that invest via gold ETFs are likely to consider the greater upside of #Bitcoin.
Where gold is an ancient store-of-value, #Bitcoin is a *nascent* store-of-value with superior monetary properties to gold. If one were to believe it eclipses gold's market capitalization, due to these superior properties, #Bitcoin becomes a very attractive asymmetric bet.
We are now seeing billionaires and corporations slowly come to this realization and this trend will play out meaningfully during this bull market. We will need to wait for subsequent cycles for gold's core demand to drain out into #Bitcoin, however.
In the current bull market while some investment demand will shift from gold to #Bitcoin, it is more likely that "risk-on" money will dominate flows into this nascent store-of-value. #Bitcoin will be draining fund flows from the stock market, primarily.
Only when established as a store-of-value of comparable size to gold will we see a major global transition away from the ancient means of wealth preservation to the primary store-of-value that will be used by our posterity.

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More from @real_vijay

18 Nov
At this stage in the 2016 #bitcoin bull market cycle, the price dropped about 29%, which in today's terms would be a fall to a bit below $13,000.

Is it possible we have a correction like this before taking the all time high? Yes.

However...
This cycle is clearly being driven more by institutions who generally have much stronger hands than retail buyers.

For instance MicroStrategy has stated their purchase of #Bitcoin is a long term allocation - those bitcoins have been taken off the order book indefinitely.
The larger institutional interest may help dampen volatility in this cycle. Institutions are not looking at #Bitcoin to seek returns of 10 or 20%. They're looking for an asymmetric bet. When they take a position they're looking for 10 or 20x upside. They are also patient.
Read 4 tweets
10 Nov
There are four main valuation frameworks for #Bitcoin and I wanted to summarize them with a target valuation that one would assign if one subscribed to that framework.

Thread 👇
1) Bitcoin's rise is equivalent to the Tulip Mania. It has no real comparative advantage to any existing monetary good or to the current fiat monetary system and is a bubble that will eventually pop.

Long term target price: $0.
2) Bitcoin is a new monetary technology whose appeal is largely limited to technologically savvy and libertarian minded people who can tolerate its volatility, which will be a permanent feature of its existence going forward.

Long term target price: $10,000 - $100,000
Read 7 tweets
15 Oct
1/ @Facebook, @Twitter and @Google have all built internal tools to implement systematic censorship. The tools are little different to the tools used by China's authoritarian government. They may not be used as frequently (yet) but they are no less chilling.
2/ Large tech companies have been complicit in censorship for a long time. When I was at Google I was asked to implement tools to censor news in China

3/ As Silicon Valley's largest companies replace legacy media as the primary gateway for information dissemination they have become dangerously powerful in shaping what can and can't be said online.
Read 6 tweets
27 Jul
1/ Bitcoin and gold are on the rise. A thread explaining why.

All monetary goods are in constant competition with each other to attract the pool of global savings. They compete primarily on the attributes that make for a good store of value:

medium.com/@vijayboyapati…
2/ Fiat monies, while being inferior on the standard attributes that make for a good store of value, have one advantage over market based monies: you are paid interest to hold them. This interest can be paid because the sovereign claims seigniorage over their money.
3/ In effect, a state can pay interest on the money it issues because it parasitically profits from the productivity of the population over which it claims dominion. States also use the interest rate in a counterproductive attempt to keep their national economies growing.
Read 10 tweets
23 Jun
1/ In their embryonic form many species appear alike. But imprinted in their various DNAs is the code that will evince their great differences in the fullness of time.

A thread on the great debate about what #Bitcoin is and why only one of the two major visions makes sense
2/ In its first few years #Bitcoin appeared to be both a disruptive payment rail (near zero transaction fees) and a promising store of value (dramatically increasing in value over time).

Yet written in the code that powered its network were rules that guaranteed only one outcome
3/ #Bitcoin's "consensus rules" are the set of rules agreed upon by all computers running on the Bitcoin network. Only those computers abiding by these rules are accepted as a part of the network. Perhaps the most famous rule is the number of bitcoins that are created per block.
Read 15 tweets
11 Jun
1/ Nature abhors a vacuum and it's the same with power vacuums.
2/ When the State makes something illegal that is in high demand (or abandons the provision of justice) it's saying there is no power structure to enforce property rights in this sphere, creating a power vacuum.
3/ The power vacuum is usually filled by a strongman, kingpin or drug Warlord who metes out his own justice according to his strength and guile. He becomes a monarch in his little economic fiefdom.
Read 4 tweets

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