Transcription
This is Matthew Cat's Bitcoin University. Today I want to talk about why Bitcoin and not crypto. And this video is made in response to a question from Mike Baya. Recent subscriber here was wondering if you could do a breakdown of why shipcoins or shipcoins and bitcoin is the only way to go. Shipcoins obviously meaning altcoins or cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin.
Bitcoin is for people who like winning. Crypto is for people with very short attention spans who like jumping from fad to fad. And cryptocurrencies come and go. New cryptocurrencies come and go all the time while only Bitcoin remains on top year after year after year. We can see that Bitcoin has had the largest market cap since 2015. And if we updated this for 2024 and 2025, this would still be true. The only thing that never changes is that Bitcoin is listed number one here. And that in itself should tell you something very, very important because that's over 10 years of this.
You cannot dethrone Bitcoin by creating a new better coin, a new crypto. That always fails. As we just saw, we can see that this no one ever dethrones or unseats Bitcoin. So, Bitcoin has never been dethroned in 16 years. You also cannot dethrone Bitcoin by copy pasting it. All forks of Bitcoin, in other words, all copies of Bitcoin itself have trended to zero over time. For example, Bcash, BCH, the chart looks like this against Bitcoin, trending to zero against BTC. And then we have BSV, Bitcoin, Satoshi Vision, which is neither Satoshi's vision nor real Bitcoin trending to zero against Bitcoin against BTC as well. So this is what happens if you try to make a copy of Bitcoin. That fork becomes worthless over time.
Also, the best money in the world has ever seen before Bitcoin was invented has also been trending to zero against Bitcoin, namely gold. If we look at a chart of gold versus Bitcoin, as a chart moves down, that means Bitcoin is strengthening against gold. And it looks very similar to what happened to Bcash and BC uh BSV as well. Also, the most successful currency of the 20th and 21st centuries is also trending to zero against Bitcoin. That's the US dollar. If we looked at an inverse of this chart, that would show the US dollar collapsing against Bitcoin, which uh this is just the opposite version, BTC versus USD. But we can see even the most powerful currency of the last 100 years is dying when denominated in Bitcoin terms.
So, Bitcoin continues to climb the ranks on its way to becoming the most valuable asset in the world. It's now trading in terms of market cap above Amazon, just below Google. And the only large assets listed here that are above it are are Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia. And then, of course, gold, which is about a 10x from here. And then after that, Bitcoin will continue to take market share from other stores of value like art, cars, collectibles. We said gold already, equities, real estate to a certain extent. There's no reason for it to be a store of value. It should just be trading based on its utility value. So, Bitcoin will continue to eat all of these asset categories as it grows over over time.
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So, what exactly makes Bitcoin so special compared to other crypto other cryptocurrencies? For one thing, Bitcoin is very, very difficult to change. And that means if you buy some Bitcoin and fall asleep for 20 years, like Rip Van Winkle did, Bitcoin will be the same when you wake up and you'll be able to access your Bitcoin. By contrast, if you fall asleep for 20 days, not 20 years with some other cryptocurrencies, you might wake up to a completely different version of Ethereum or Cardano or Monero or Caspa, which do hard forks all the time, and change even really basic things that should never be changed. For example, like the consensus mechanism, Ethereum moved to an inferior consensus mechanism called proof of stake, where basically whoever is richer has more power. This is not what we really want to move to, but that's what Ethereum did. They moved to proof of stake in something that's called the merge in November of 2022. I'm sorry, that should actually be September of 2022. And the result has been disastrous for Ethereum holders. So, they did the merge September 15th, 2022. If we take a look at the chart of Ethereum versus Bitcoin, that is right about here. And so, Bitcoin uh has been appreciated against Ethereum with a small recent bounce, but basically this has been disastrous for Ethereum, which was Bitcoin's number two competitor in terms of cryptocurrencies.
Ethereum has many more changes coming to all of these centrally planned by a small group of insiders. We've talked about this before. We had the Ethereum merge and Vitalic says, "Get ready for the surge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge." Not only are these silly names, but these are hard forks that are all centrally driven by a core group of insiders. Here's Vitalic posting the updated road map for Ethereum. Here's the Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, and Purge. Only very centralized protocols that have some sort of centralized control are able to come up with a road map like this. Bitcoin for example has no such roadmap because a community is so decentralized and so uh so diverse and varied that people can't come to any consensus about very large changes. Same with Cardano. Cardano is a lot more like Ethereum than it is like Bitcoin. This is input output which is basically a company that was or a foundation company whatever it is that was funded by dumping Cardano on people. And this is another thing here is the uh the road map for for C card Cardano which you can only have from very centralized protocols where people can get together and make a road map. Same with Caspa here. Here here's the Caspa development milestones revealed. So these are all much more centralized projects than Bitcoin.
If your crypto has a living founder or foundation that influences the future development roadmap, that's a good sign that your crypto is not very neutral or decentralized. And therefore, your crypto will always be worth much less than Bitcoin since your crypto is much easier to change or modify simply by influence or compromising the founder, leader, or development team. If you're fine with captured money, then probably you should just stick with US dollars and other fiat because they're accepted everywhere. But if you don't like captured money, your only real choices are Bitcoin and physical gold at this point. We've talked about physical gold before. I don't really want to go into that in depth, but the summary of physical gold not the ideal monetary solution as humanity enters further into the digital age. You can't quickly zap physical gold around the world. So, you end up having to rely on IUS and the whole mess that led directly to the end of the gold standard and and the end of of the US dollar being convertible into gold uh by Nixon in 1971.
Unlike crypto, truly neutral money like Bitcoin doesn't have a center that can be disrupted or captured. So for example, Cardano has Charles Hoskinson at the center. Ethereum has Vitalic Buterine at the center. XRP has the Ripple Corporation and their slimy execs at the center. Bitcoin has no one at the center. Satoshi left the project in 2010 and has not been heard from since then. Satoshi exerts zero control over protocol development. Satoshi's not telling us the road map, the quote unquote road map for Bitcoin in 2026. like Charles Hoskinson and Vitalic Buterine are doing for for Cardano and Ethereum. Satoshi has never moved or dumped his coins. By contrast, Vitalic Buterine and the Ethereum Foundation and Charles Hoskinson and others are always dumping their coins on their followers and using them as exit liquidity.
Unlike many other cryptos like Ethereum and Monero, for example, Bitcoin doesn't do frequent hard forks, which are non-backwards compatible changes to the code. Mostly Bitcoin doesn't do this simp simply because it's too difficult to get consensus for a change. Why is it difficult to get consensus for a change to Bitcoin or a large change to Bitcoin? Because there's no small group of insiders who are in control of the protocol unlike Ethereum, Cardano, Monero, Caspa, etc. So many different kinds of people and institutions all around the world hold Bitcoin that it's virtually impossible. There's so many different kinds of people. It's virtually impossible to get them to agree to any changes that are not both urgent and existential. For example, we will have some changes to Bitcoin eventually. We we'll come up with some quantum resistant Bitcoin addresses. And this will not be at all controversial as it becomes a real risk as we get closer and closer to having powerful quantum computers, which are still fairly far away from, but that would be an example of a change that would be urgent and existential and people would come around to that, but they wouldn't come around to anything less than that. That's exactly what you want the base layer of your money to look like. You want it to look to be constant, stable, secure, unchanging.
Bitcoin's base layer has been kept quite simple on purpose as well because it's the best way to limit Bitcoin's attack surface. Ethereum did the opposite, adding a lot of very complex smart contract functionality that now makes it really easy to make a mistake and have your ETH stolen, even by exchanges. They mess this up all the time, as I talk about in this video from 5 months ago, why your ETH is not safe anywhere. Now, the real problem is signing these smart contracts can have these knock-on effects, and there's so much complexity that you can mess up even if you're a very large exchange, much less uh much more an individual holding Ethereum.
What else makes Bitcoin so special? It's been around the longest and everyone has heard of it. So, it's got great brand recognition, the kind of recognition that would be impossible for a new coin to achieve without spending tens or maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars. That's another reason why your latest newest crypto doesn't stand a chance against Bitcoin. You may have a very short pump and dump, but Bitcoin is here for the long term and Bitcoin will keep going up forever. Bitcoin has no top because fiat money has no bottom. Bitcoin also has a very large market cap, which is great. It's highly liquid. It trades 24/7. It trades on weekends and evenings. Bitcoin can easily accommodate both very small investors if you just have $5 to invest or very large investors if you have $5 billion to invest. And coins that have a $5 billion market cap obviously cannot accept a $5 billion investment from a nation state or a billionaire. So Bitcoin can easily accommodate people along all along the whole wealth spectrum. And as we said, Bitcoin is more difficult to change, to influence. It's more difficult to capture or control than any other cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has no living founder who's a central point of failure like Hoskinson or Vitalic Buterine. Bitcoin is decentralized and distributed. There are Bitcoiners in every country on earth running nodes and mining and there are Bitcoin communities really everywhere.
Now, Bitcoin mining pools and Bitcoin node software are still much more centralized than I'd like to see. But fortunately, we have good people. Bitcoin knots datam and ocean mining are all helping to working to help fix these problems. But even with these problems, no other crypto comes close to Bitcoin. No other crypto is even in the same ballpark or playing the same game. Really, Bitcoin has only one competitor in the world. That's the US dollar, which is the biggest shipcoin, biggest altcoin in the world, biggest fiat money in the world as well. Problem with the US dollar is it is a really crappy currency. There's just one node on the network, which is the Federal Reserve. It's run by corrupt insiders. It has infinite potential supply, which is why it keeps being devalued versus real goods and services. The US dollar is highly politicized and captured. It's easy to censor. It's a terrible melting ice cube when it comes to store value. and certainly not looking good for this competitor to Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin's largest competitor. It's a melting ice cube and we can see it's especially melting fast against Bitcoin as Bitcoin continues to take over the world.
In conclusion, Bitcoin has already won the money race. Just the world is slowly waking up to that fact and it's slowly being priced in because Bitcoin is unstoppable. So, don't waste your time with crypto or Bitcoin ETFs or Bitcoin treasury companies or anything like this. There are many distractions out there. Just get yourself some real BTC, some real Bitcoin. Put it away. Don't look at it for 5 years. Withdraw it. Hold it on a hardware wallet in cold storage like a cold card, and don't look at it. Don't trade it. Definitely don't leave it on an exchange. Not your keys, not your coins. Put it into cold storage. Don't look at it for 5 years. And I think you'll be quite pleased with the result.
Some good places to buy Bitcoin that I like these days, River, River.com, Strike, Strike. And of course, Bull Bitcoin if you're in Europe or Costa Rica or Canada. I'm not going to be able to make a video on Wednesday, so I'll see you all on Thursday, God willing. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the subscribe and like buttons. Hit the notification bell if you want to be notified when I publish my next video, and let me know your questions and comments in the comment section below. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next.