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Everyone calls Bitcoin a risk asset. It swings 10% in a day. It dropped 50% from its all time high. It goes in the same bucket as tech stocks and speculative bets.But what if the way we define risk is the actual problem?In this episode I break down what risk really means for people who are trying to save and build wealth over time, not trade on a Tuesday afternoon. I walk through the five core properties that make Bitcoin structurally different from every other asset, what happened when Iranian citizens used it to move money during airstrikes while their banking system was dark, and why the things most people consider "safe" might be the riskiest things in your portfolio.
If you ask people in finance, whether Bitcoin is risky, they won't even hesitate. They will say,
well, of course it is, it swings 10% in a day, it trades alongside tech stocks, it dropped 50%
from its all-time high in just a matter of months. It goes in the risk buckets and that's the end
of the conversation. And I mean, to be honest, I get why people see it that way. If the only thing
you're looking at is how the price moves, well, Bitcoin can look absolutely wild at times. And
especially for people who are used to the steadiness of a treasury bond or a savings accounts,
that can then well feel like chaos. But for me, well, I've never really seen it that way. And I think
the reason comes down to something that sounds simple, but can change everything once you really
internalize it. And it really comes down to how you define risk. Because in this financial world,
we've gotten so used to equating risk with volatility that we've stopped asking an even more
important question. And that question is, what are the actual chances that the thing I'm invested in
actually loses value permanently. And why? I think Bitcoin may be the least riskiest thing
you can own right now. And I know how that sounds, especially in today's world. But give me a few
minutes to explain my reasoning and tell you why I think that's the case. So as I was talking about
earlier, most of the financial world right now describes risk as volatility. If the price goes
up and down a lot, that's considered risky. And if the price doesn't move much, then it's considered
safe. That's how portfolios get built. That's how assets get categorized. And that's essentially
how your financial advisor tells you what to put into your portfolio. But in my opinion,
that's a trader's definition. It makes sense if your job depends on reporting smooth returns
every quarter. And so if something moves 15% in a week, regardless of which direction,
that could be a problem for you. But for people who aren't traders or who aren't targeting a low return
or a two, three percent annualized return, whatever it may be. For the rest of us, people in my
generation, younger, older, people trying to build wealth for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years,
and so on, the real risk is completely different. The real risk is that your money loses its
purchasing power and doesn't get it back. The real risk is holding something whose fundamental
properties can be changed by someone else without your consent. The real risk is trusting a system
that only works if the people are running it to keep their promises for decades across
administrations, across crises, across different wars. And so when you think about it that way,
volatility really starts to feel like a distraction. Question is whether what you are holding actually
has fundamental properties that protect you over time or whether it looks stable while quietly
bleeding value. Bitcoin has five core properties that I don't think most people know about or actually
have thought through enough. And let me show you exactly what they are. The first is Bitcoin's
fixed supply. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. This is not a target that anyone can
adjust. It has been that way since the inception of Bitcoin in 2009 when the code was released.
And more importantly, last week, the 20th million coin was mined. So what that means is that
over 95% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist is already out there. And the rest will take
over a hundred years to materialize. And in a world where every major government is running deficits
and then printing money to cover that gap, an asset whose supply cannot be inflated is a very
remarkable thing. The second property is that Bitcoin has no counter-party risk. If you hold Bitcoin
in your own wallets, you do not need anyone's permission to use it. No bank, no broker, no
government in between. So for example, if banks fail, your Bitcoin doesn't fail with it. And
banking systems failing may sound extreme, but there have been plenty examples of history of this
happening. Just look at last week on February 28th, air strikes hit Iran. The banking system then
essentially went dark. And within minutes of that happening, crypto outflows from Iran's largest
exchange spiked by over 700%. People converted their realis into Bitcoin and then moved them
somewhere the war could not reach. Even during a nationwide internet blackout, outflows continued
to go. People found a way. Number three is that Bitcoin is decentralized. No single person,
no single company, no single government controls it. Compare that to the dollar where 12 people at
the Fed meet eight times a year to essentially decide the value of your money or even gold,
where most people don't hold physical gold. So in that case, you're trusting a fund manager or
vault to protect the thing they say they're holding for you. And number four is it works everywhere
all the time. No weekends, no holidays, no capital controls can stop Bitcoin. When those
air strikes hit Iran on a Saturday, Bitcoin was the only global liquid thing that was able to be
traded and moved. Stocks were closed, bonds were closed, gold futures were waiting for Monday.
And number five is that Bitcoin's monetary policy is completely predictable. The issue in schedule
was set in 2009 and it hasn't changed since central banks won't even tell you what they're
doing in the next meeting and Bitcoin has essentially already said what is doing up until 2140.
And all of these things, all of these five properties, they're not opinions or narratives.
They're just how the system works and it's been working the same way for 17 years since Bitcoin
was founded. So if Bitcoin has all of these properties that we just talked about, it's interesting
to compare and question if the other things that people commonly trade or own have even remotely
the same thing. So let's go first with cash and government bonds. They're what your financial
advisor call low risk, but what they are is they are IOUs from the government. The dollar has lost
95% of its purchasing power since 1913. Dead levels are at historic highs everywhere and the way
that governments have always dealt with this is by printing more money. This means that the
safe thing that you're holding is being quietly deluded by the same people who are supposed to
protect it. Next, let's go to gold and gold has been around for thousands of years and there's
obviously a lot of respect that has been built around gold and for a good reason. But the main
problem with gold is that you can't send it anywhere easily. You need to trust someone to essentially
hold it for you if you're holding a significant amount and then also trust someone to transfer that
if you again want to transfer a significant amount across borders. And gold can also be confiscated.
The US government confiscated it from its people in 1933 and a few weeks ago during an actual war,
the war that we're currently in, the largest gold ETF lost $3 billion in a day while Bitcoin ETFs
were gaining. Lastly, one of the most common investments that people own is stocks and stocks
historically, especially if you're investing in things like an index fund, have been historically
great over time. But every stock requires you to trust the management, trust the regulators,
trust the economy and trust the currency that it's priced in. There are layers and layers of people
and institutions between you and your money. And so the points that I'm trying to make here is that
all the other assets that I just mentioned, they aren't inherently bad, right? People have built a
lot of wealth over time with these assets. But the problem with these assets is that they all require
trust. They require trust in someone, a government, a company, a regulator, whatever it made me.
And Bitcoin is the only asset in the world that doesn't require trust, but actually lets you
verify everything yourself instead. And I know I'm going to get a lot of pushback on this
and this video, people saying, yeah, but Bitcoin has crashed 50% since October. How is that not risky?
And I get that. It's a fair question because if you needed that money over this period of time,
obviously the 50% drop could have hurt you. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise and say that
there aren't people who weren't affected by this price crash that we just went through. But again,
the main point that I want to distinguish here is that risk and volatility are not the same thing.
For example, a savings account can look perfectly stable on a chart. But if you're earning 2%
on a savings account, an inflation is 4%, and we all know real inflation is much higher than that,
you're losing purchasing power every single day. You're essentially getting poorer slowly
enough that you don't notice. And in my opinion, that is not safety. That is just invisible risk.
And Bitcoin does the opposite of that. Bitcoin shows you all the risk in real time right on the screen.
Nothing is hidden when it comes to Bitcoin. Okay, so to wrap this all up and to understand
where I'm going with all of this, I think the main point that I want to make is that we're living
in a moment where the things that people have always assumed to be safe are increasingly becoming
less. So governments are spending more than they earn. That is at historic highs. A war that's
being funded in real time and central banks are stuck between recession and inflation. And the
same people who are rewriting all the rules of the financial system are also asking you to trust
that it's all going to work out. And so Bitcoin fundamentally changes that because Bitcoin
doesn't require trust. The network runs regardless of who's in power, what countries are at war
or what a central bank decides to do on a random Wednesday afternoon. Fixed supply in a world
of unlimited money printing. No counterparty risk in a world of institutional fragility,
censorship, resistance in a world of increasing controls, predictable rules in a world where
the rules keep changing. And so I know that saying that Bitcoin is the least risky thing you can
own may sound strange right now. But I think in five or ten years it won't sound strange at all.
It'll sound obvious. And the people who figured it out now while it's still uncomfortable
are going to be the people that are eventually very happy that they did. And so that's it for today's
episode. I hope that kind of helped with your perspective on risk and not equating risk with
volatility. Understand Bitcoin, take time to learn about it and especially why it's important
in today's day and age. If this was valuable to you, please share it with someone who you think
might take value from it as well. Please subscribe. And as always, I will see you on the next video. Thanks.
