The Value Trilemma of FIAT, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and a ‘Spoiler’ for the discussion of ‘Handshake’

This article is not so much a short as a spoiler!

I was thinking about a post by Ndubuisi Ekekwe which I contributed to. On the LinkedIn post in question, the Prof was introducing a Tekedia Contributors work, not his own.

The article he introduced was about the demise of ‘Silvergate’ He made a comment ‘Bitcoin giveth and Bitcoin taketh’. While it had an essence of the biblical, it was a departure of biblical proportions.

To be fair to ‘The Prof’ he probably intended a quirky piece of ‘wordsmithing’ rather than a serious ‘blame game’ between Bitcoin and the demise of Silvergate.

Nevertheless, the mind of Ndubuisi Ekekwe sometimes resides in a special place where academia and hardcore business meet.. and the uncommon stretch to that place can be difficult for some.

I felt to keep the ecosystem stable, I had to offer a ‘market correction’.

While pointing out that a CEX is not the wares it decides to display on its virtual shelves, I got some piggyback action coming from the ‘Bitmax’ fraternity.

Now, while I will defend the notion of decentralization, and I take on board all of the FIAT bashing talk, (and agree with most of it), I’ve also been quite vocal on the function of cryptocurrencies in general as a transaction medium and not a store of value for any extended period of time.

I’ve listened to many Bitcoin Maximalists describe FIAT (such as US dollar) as being just ‘trash’.

Again, I agree with many of the points made to support this view.

But let me tell you something about TRASH

In the country of my birth, TRASH was something the government took away for free. Over the years, with pressure on cost of public services, government pushed trash disposal out into private contracting, and now citizens have to pay for it.

TRASH is therefore a LIABLITY. The more of it you have, the more it costs you.

So having called FIAT = TRASH, ok, I accept, but then when Bitmax clan claim BTC has risen in value, what do they do? They say 1 Bitcoin is now worth more TRASH than it was before.

Since TRASH is a LIABILITY shouldn’t it then be worth less, not more?

It is unreasonable to consider FIAT (TRASH) something that can flip from liability to asset status as the argument suits.

I am not going to take sides between Bitcoin, the Ethereum Ecosystem and FIAT. They all have notional advantages but they also have inherent weaknesses and problems.

FIAT has the biggest ecosystem and the most diverse execution on utility. It is however, the most vulnerable to politics, the erratic behaviour of sovereign actors, moving of Teutonic plates between the Dollar and the Renminbi and sleeping volcanoes of sovereign debt.

The Ethereum Ecosystem has more utility on it than any other in the blockchain space. However, with the US in particular taking an ‘anti-crypto’ stance, it is the most vulnerable of all to a sovereign war party, especially at the scaling edges, like anything off Binance or Polygon.

Bitcoin, due to its design, is the most impervious against interference. However, it doesn’t have a huge amount going on in the ecosystem compared to Ethereum. Lighting Network isn’t doing anything that is generating news. The impact of Ordinal is as yet uncertain. As economic challenges and human quality of life problems continue to grow, to maintain relevance, Bitcoin Blockchain is going to have to do a lot more than simply having the first cryptocurrency that was.

Bitcoin United won the first match of the league, we know. But that one is past tense. The league continues.

Whether Bitcoin giveth or Bitcoin taketh, the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

This is not the story of the tortoise and the hare. For fair races, we run the horse against horses,  greyhounds against greyhounds, nascar against nascar and camels against camels. Those that argue appreciation of a blockchain value instrument, let them demonstrate by comparable performance against other cryptocurrencies in the same period.

I started by saying this was a spoiler, and in the next visit I will talk about Handshake, a hard fork off Bitcoin – The most resilient blockchain of Web3 that has now minted approximately 9.7 million Web3 Top Level Domains, and why its native coin, HNS, has doubled its value against Bitcoin between approx. start of November last year, and last month.

It is time we started looking for Third Ways.

9ja Cosmos is here…

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Please refer to:

www.linkedin.com/posts/john-mc-keown-nigeria-expert_building-off-ethereum-reaches-new-lows-of-activity-7036472331241693184-thE4?

www.linkedin.com/posts/john-mc-keown-nigeria-expert_ordinal-the-not-nft-nft-tekedia-activity-7035012649058717696-DUMr?

www.linkedin.com/posts/ndubuisi-ekekwe-36068210_bitcoin-giveth-and-bitcoin-taketh-yes-silvergate-activity-7037465618467409921-KrZB?