Do you want a world without Bitcoins ?

I recently searched for Bitcoin on Coinmarketcap and perhaps there was a glitch in its search function and it threw up this result

This set me thinking ....

What if there was no Bitcoin ?

If you are an adult then you can think of a time prior to 2009. To be precise let us consider 3 January 2009 when the bitcoin network was created when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block.

So how would be life in a world without Bitcoin ?

Let us try to understand this with the experience of little Bill.

Little Bill wants to eat an ice cream so he goes to his father to ask for some money.
His father is busy looking for his car keys which he has misplaced.

His father believes in the importance of working to earn your money and wants to instill the same values in his son.

So he asks little Bill to search for his car key and as a remuneration of finding the keys he can get his ice cream money.

The idea of earning his own ice cream money get little Bill all excited and he gets down to work.

Little Bill's hard work pays and he is able to find the keys.
As promised his father hands Bill $2.

Bill takes his money and goes to the nearest ice cream parlor.

There he sees the ice scream at $1 for two scoops.
He eats two scoops and saves $1 for later.

He comes home and puts his $ 1 in a piggy bank. Perhaps a little saving for the future.

After a few months he wishes to eat some more ice cream so he goes back to the ice cream parlor.

There he sees the cost of ice cream has doubled to $2
Thus he finds he can no longer buy the ice cream.

Do you think this could happen to only Bill ?

When a person is working and doing a job he is earning and spending money on food, paying bills and other stuff.

He also aims to save money for a time he is old and no longer working.
There would be a time when he would experience the same phenomenon that little Bill experienced with the ice cream.

The money that an adult saves for medication and treatment may be sufficient today but the same money may become inadequate a few years down the line.

If I played Bitcoin's advocate

Well the story of Bill could go like this. Instead of giving Bill fiat money Bills dad transferred $2 worth of Bitcoins to his digital wallet and he Hodled it.
Remember that was the time no one had heard about Bitcoin it was a geeky experiment and literally worth nothing.
One would have to spend 10,000 BTC to get a Pizza right ?

Cut to November 2021 Bitcoin is at an all time high and young bill checks the value of his Bitcoins and jumps with joy.

With the Bitcoins he has he can buy not just a scoop but the entire shop. He can get a swanky car get him self good cllege education and has good savings for his future.
however it is not about Bitcoin.

The ice cream phenomena at play

This results due to the fact that money keeps losing its value.
The $1 that you had twenty years back could buy you a certain amount of things.

However today those very things are far more expensive.

One reason why this is happening is that paper money is not backed by a real asset like gold.

Instead it can be printed in any quantity that is controlled by the government.

Bitcoin is an attempt to change things

Bitcoin works on the principal of proof of work. It can be used both as a store of value as well as a medium of transfer of value.

It is an attempt to see the problem from another way of storing and transferring value.

The other alternative could be to back fiat money by real world assets of value like gold or silver.
However hardly any country would have that kind of resources.

Thus going the Bitcoin path seems a viable way out of the situation. It may not be perfect yet it shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that there are other ways of conducting business without using fiat money and its draw backs.

What if we choose to live in a world without Bitcoin

Such a world would be reliant solely on fiat money and the shortcomings associated with it.

It we were to take this path then Bill would not be able to buy that scoop of ice cream and many of us may get deprived of medication food and a lot more in the near future or in old age.