“No man sews a piece of new cloth into an old garment, because that new cloth will pull away from the garment, and the tear will be made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins, or else the skins will burst, the wine will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.
Men put new wine into new wine-skins, and both are preserved.”
That’s a quote from Jesus of Nazareth. He was trying to explain why his proposed system of morality was incompatible with what came before it.
Jesus’ model of morality is the golden rule. On the surface it’s very simple. But there’s a big nuance in there that I suspect a lot of people miss.
That nuance is this: Jesus defined an entirely new way of judging right and wrong.
Previously, laws and commandments from authority figures determined what was right and what wasn’t. With the Jesus model, a person’s actions towards others are what matter.
By treating others in ways that they would not like themselves, people condemn their own actions. And by treating others in a manner that they would like themselves, people justify their actions.
As simple as this model is, it threatened to completely upend the established hierarchy in Jesus’ day. That’s because it was simple, easy to understand, and better. For everybody.
Now I know we may be wondering – what in the world does this have to do with Bitcoin?
The answer is everything.
Bitcoin is the golden rule applied to money. Morality is baked right into the cake.
That’s because Bitcoin is a fully transparent system that cannot be altered or gamed in any way. By anybody.
It starts with the fixed supply. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist.
And 19.2 million of them are already here. That’s 91%. Talk about scarce.
Bitcoins are mined into circulation in “blocks” every ten minutes or so. And we know in advance exactly how many new bitcoins will be mined in each block. That’s all governed by an algorithm. Nobody can change it.
This means we can project in advance how many new bitcoins will enter the market month after month, year after year. It’s fully transparent.
What’s more, we can self-custody our bitcoins with just the click of a button. That’s how we take full control of our funds.
When we self-custody, nobody can stop our transactions or freeze our accounts. We have full sovereignty over our money. There are a host of mobile wallets and hardware wallets that empower us to do this.
Compare this with the legacy financial system.
The Federal Reserve (the Fed) has created about $5 trillion out of thin air since September of 2019. We had no say in the matter.
As a result, consumer prices have ballooned this year. We see that very clearly every time we go to the grocery store.
And within the legacy system, we can never take full control of our money.
There’s no option to self-custody the funds in our bank and brokerage accounts. We are always subject to the decisions of a third-party.
Now, that’s no big deal if we trust the third-party. But if we look out at our world today – trust is collapsing.
That’s certainly true here in the U.S. Trust in our core institutions appears to be at an all-time low.
The same dynamic exists on the world stage.
Simply put, the global financial system has fractured. The East (China, Russia, and friends) no longer trust the West (Europe, U.S., and friends).
Yet, the global economy is more interconnected today than ever before.
This is obvious to see when we talk about energy and goods trading hands and crossing borders. But it’s far more nuanced than that.
If we look at any final product sitting on a store shelf, we can bet that it’s composed of materials and parts that were sourced by countless different people across at least a handful of countries.
None of these people know each other. Yet somehow their work finds its way to a central location for manufacturing. Then the final product is shipped around the world for distribution.
And for larger trade deals, there are very complex systems of financing and collateralization that come into play. The modern supply chain is mind-blowing.
But here’s the thing… It only works if people have a standard medium of exchange and store of value that all parties involved can trust. That’s been the U.S. dollar for the last 78 years.
There won’t be a 100th anniversary. The dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency is diminishing right before our eyes.
Right now those countries interested in bypassing the dollar are orchestrating one-off deals using a number of different currencies as their medium of exchange.
That’s fine for now. But it still requires immense trust.
At some point I’m betting the world will want to move to a currency where trust is programmed right in. That currency is Bitcoin.
I was somewhat early to the Bitcoin scene. I got involved back in 2014.
Back then, there was a lot of talk about what Bitcoin’s “killer app” would be. What was the one major feature that would spearhead mass adoption?
My friends, that feature is Bitcoin’s morality.
Bitcoin is new wine in a new wine-skin. And it’s here at just the right moment in history.
That’s why this will be a six-figure asset. Bitcoin will trade north of $100,000 per BTC… likely within the next five years.
Best to buy while it’s cheap.
For more information on how to incorporate Bitcoin into a strategic asset allocation model, just go right here:
-Joe Withrow