Bitcoin is Here to Stay — Key Takeaways from the B Word Virtual Conference

The last B Word virtual conference hosted by Ark Invest was honored with presentations from leading luminaries including Nic Carter and Lyn Alden among others.

The presentations were followed by a virtual call panel moderated by Steve Lee, which featured Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, CEO of Ark Invest Cathie Wood, and Elon Musk.

In this post, we look at some of the key highlights and comments made during the conference. We’ll also look at a few charts and provide some commentaries about the current state of Bitcoin.

Some of the Highlights from Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Jack Dorsey, and Steve Lee

Elon Musk:

“Money is just an information system for labor allocation.”

“I own Bitcoin, Tesla owns Bitcoin, SpaceX owns Bitcoin.”

“Government is just a corporation… it’s the biggest corporation of all and it has a monopoly on violence.”

Jack Dorsey:

“You don’t have to trust anyone, you can verify with open source code.”

“[Bitcoin is] not controlled by any bank, state, or corporation.”

“A lot of our monetary policies and systems cause so much distraction and cost.”

“Bitcoin incentivizes renewable energy.”

“My role through the companies I run is to push for more decentralization.”

My hope is that [Bitcoin] creates world peace by fixing a fundamental level of society.”

Cathie Wood:

“Money has powerful network effect qualities.”

“Bitcoin is a hedge not only against inflation but also deflation (counter-party risk).”

At the end of the day, the conference was a big success. You could even say that it was watched closely by some institutions with deep pockets.

“[Bitcoin is] not controlled by any bank, state, or corporation.” — Dorsey

Inflation Rate Of Bitcoin

The terminal inflation rate of Bitcoin is actually zero. However, its distribution rate happens in an asymptotic fashion.

The last satoshi is expected to enter circulation by the year 2140. Bitcoin is, therefore, more superior compared to fiat money systems where reserves are stored in commercial banks and central banks and money created through credit expansion acts. One notable quote from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto states:

“Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

There’s a powerful tenet in the world of Bitcoin that goes: Don’t trust, verify. That means when using Bitcoin, everyone plays by the same rules whether you are Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, or a resident of a developing nation.

“You don’t have to trust anyone, you can verify with open source code.” — Dorsey

Equation For The Bitcoin Supply Issuance

One of Bitcoin’s biggest value propositions is the fact that no government, financial institution, or individual can manipulate the crypto’s monetary supply.

This is because consensus rules on the Bitcoin network are enforced by full nodes that anyone can run on the network using a computer with an Internet connection.

“Money is just an information system for labor allocation.” — Musk

U.S. M2 Money Stock

In its basic form, money is simply an information system. Aaron Segal states it more clearly in his Bitcoin Information Theory where he says:

“In a free market society, the greatest network of information by far is price, which itself is, at its core, an intersubjective agreement of value. Money is the abstraction of that value.”

It, therefore, means that in cases where the supply of money is manipulated using expansionary policies, the information money is trying to convey gets distorted.

“A lot of our monetary policies and systems cause so much distraction and cost.” — Dorsey

You cannot also ignore the fact that Bitcoin is such a huge idea that a majority of people struggle to understand the implications of the coin on society as a whole. In the Western world, Bitcoin is even referred to as Gold 2.0, a portfolio diversifier, or even as a “hedge against inflation.”

The statements may have some merit but fail to completely capture the massiveness of Bitcoin’s meaning to humanity. For the first time ever, humans have a flawless ledger of accounting and communication of resources and economy.

The Bitcoin economy has created a world where nobody or organization can arbitrarily steal or redistributed resources with the stroke of a pen. Bitcoin has made the current reality of fiat money a thing of the past.

Circulating Supply Of Bitcoin

During the B Word virtual conference, several notable ideas were explicitly explored but the key point to take away remained that Bitcoin is an idea whose time has finally come.

We are sure that the institutional capital was also watching and will soon realize what most Bitcoin holders have always known — that Bitcoin is here to stay.

The question most probably on institutional capital minds now is what value an incorruptible monetary network that provides a bridge between the digital and physical realm using computer codes brings to the society.