Should I only invest in Bitcoin what I can afford to lose? No, you shouldn't.

Bitcoin is a highly speculative, highly volatile investment that has price swings of up to 10% in either direction daily. It is fairly new, only a 12 year old technology that claims to be the future monetary policy of the world and the piece of computer code that ends all rulers. These are bold claims from some magic internet money that has been circulating around the web silently for a few years. Despite all this information that is being shouted at me about the largest cryptocurrency by the news and the media, everyone is telling me to buy some, so… would it be smart to only invest in Bitcoin what I can afford to lose?

NO, You should invest in Bitcoin only the money that you CAN’T afford to lose… and for me, I’m all in.

Bitcoin is not the once in a lifetime investment that everyone says it is, it is a superior savings technology to anything that history has ever seen. Bitcoin is the best way to preserve any fiat denominated wealth that you currently have, in a way that is completely out of the hands of central bank planners who have consistently breached our trust through money printing.

To understand why you need to save your money in Bitcoin, you first need to understand the history of monetary technology and how we got to where we are today.

Throughout human existence we have been trying to use goods or services as money. It started with barter; I want your shirt but all I own is chickens, so if I give you three can I have it? The world more or less operated this way until the first monetary technology was discovered (precious metals) and the world adopted the Gold Standard. This became the main store of value because it was rare, easily verifiable, easy to transport (than a cow or two chickens), non perishable, etc. A great description of the early stages of money can be found here with Vijay Boyapati’s Bullish case for Bitcoin, Nik Bhatia’s Layered Money.

The next significant monetary transformation in history was fiat, Latin for by decree, or paper currency backed by gold. Paper is much easier to transport, easily verifiable as currency, and easily divisible, making it great to use for smaller and smaller purchases. When Nixon ended the Gold Standard in 1971 by completely breaking the fiat relationship with gold, we experienced the first of many deteriorations of fiat money. Paper money when not backed by anything will always be newly created by those who have the power to do so. As Satoshi Nakamoto said on the history of the money printer,

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”

Gold has remained a store of value over the last 50 years, since 1971 and has outpaced the stock market in terms of capital growth showing that things denominated in paper money will continue to lag.

With all the past breaches of trust by government issued currencies, why would we trust our central banks who seem dead set on following the same path as Ancient Rome, Weimar Germany, Venezuela, Greece and Modern day Argentina and Turkey. Its time to defund these archaic systems that benefit the few and opt out before they steal all of your life’s wealth silently, without even asking your permission.

People in modern day Venezuela are experiencing 30% weekly inflation, meaning that every time they go to the grocery store their prices have doubled. Every government is heading to this same fate due to the simple fact that if they cut off the money printer now, the countries default on their loans.

The current path that the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and others are directing us down ends one way: Hyperbitcoinization. Convert your savings that you can’t afford to lose to Bitcoin. If all you have is 100$ then convert that 100$ to bitcoin and be a user of a network that will treat you equally and respect your time and energy.

Bitcoin is the final monetary innovation. You either buy bitcoin now, or get forced to sell everything you own for it later.