$3.454 Trillion is a Good Enough Reason to Buy Bitcoin

It’s no secret that Bitcoin has been having a hard time holding on to it’s monetary value lately. It dropped from over $1100 in the beginning of 2014 to $270 in January 2015 – that’s a 75% drop.

But while most people are obsessed with Bitcoin’s price in relation to the dollar they fail to understand that it’s real value lies with the fact that it’s disconnected from “fiat” currency – what we know today as “traditional money”.

Since the US decided to decouple the dollar from the gold standard back in 1971 it basically meant that all the dollar is, is a pretty looking IOU. It doesn’t stand for anything, it isn’t backed by anything and that’s exactly why the US government doesn’t have an issue with printing as many of these as they want – because they aren’t being held to any standard.

The whole world is just printing away pieces of paper

The global debt in the beginning of 2014 was around $100 Trillion. Here’s a nice way to visualize just how much debt each country is in around the world

Now just to get things straight, have you ever thought to yourself what’s the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion?

How much do you think are a million seconds? 1 day? 1 week? 1 month?

1 million seconds are equal to 12 days.

Now how much do you think are a billion seconds? 1 year? 10 years? Maybe more?

32 years….

And 1 trillion second – 32,000 years.

And what happens when a country can’t pay its debt ? well a lot can happen. One example that happened in Cyprus in 2013 resulted in the government seizing civilians’ bank account in order to “bail itself out”. Another thing that can happen is that another country will bail you out – exactly like what happened in Russia not so long ago. This of course is just another IOU by the bailing country on top of the defunct IOU which started the whole bailout process.

The System is Designed for Failure

So why can’t we minimize this global debt ? why not just up the taxes, reduce our costs and start paying back our bills ?

Some will say that countries around the world are acting like teenagers who are spending more than they make without thinking about the consequences. Another way to look at it is that the system is just rigged for failure. And when I say “rigged for failure” I mean that there’s no way in hell these countries will be able to even get close to paying off their debt.

At this post I want to thank Tony Robbins and Iowahawk for giving me the inspiration to write this post. The example I’m going to give now is based largely on Iowahawk’s original post from 2011 named “feed your family on $10 billion a day”. I got acquainted with Iowahawk’s blog through Tony Robbins’ excellent book “Money: Master the Game” which speaks exactly about this issue. So let’s begin with our example:

Can the United Stated Survive 2015 Financially?

Before I begin – Even though I’m giving the USA here as an example I believe that many countries you’ll compare this too will achieve similar numbers.

The total cost or “outlay” for running the United Stated of America in 2014 was $3.454 trillion. So to operate the US for one year alone costs $3.4 trillion – which if you divide it by 365 means $9.46 billion each day.

We’ve just celebrated the new year right ? Let’s see how we can make it through 2015 by perhaps raising taxes and not even creating a profit for the ?United States but just stopping our leaky bucket of money called the deficit.

January 1st 2015,

let’s start out by going after the big guns straight away. Let’s take all of the profits from America’s 5 most profitable companies. I’m talking about Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway and Apple. Just tax these companies 100%. Well this will brings us a total of $126.531 billion and get’s us up to….

January 14th 2015,

Huh ? Just 2 weeks ? hmmm…I guess we’ll have to dig in deeper. How about profits from All of the Fortune 500 companies – that’s $1.08 trillion ! This should get us a long way, and it brings us all the way up to…

May 8th 2015,

You gotta be kidding me, we’re not even half way through the year and this is after we’ve basically destroyed the whole businesses industry of the United States ? Well, we’ve run out of corporate cash but perhaps we can go after the movie industry as well ?

Let’s go after the top 688 grossing films of 2014 – We’ll just take all of their money as well. This gives us a whooping $9.715 billion and now we’re at

May 9th 2015,

Well we basically destroyed the movie industry and earned one day, pretty cool. I guess we need to bring in the big guns. Maybe we’ll go after all of the richest people in the US. Let’s  seize all of the top 400 forbes list combined net worth – that’s about $2 trillion. Oh yeah!! That’s what I’m talking about, now we’re at

December 10th 2015,

Great, we’re almost there, just 21 more days to go. Well since it’s almost Christmas, in the spirit of the holidays why take only from the rich ? Let’s consume all the money given to charity – that’s $416.5 billion which buys us time right up to Christmas.

December 25th 2015,

Merry Christmas everyone! 6 more days and $56.76 billion to go. I wonder where can we turn to now….Why not tear down a whole  country as well ? I think Uruguay might fit well. With 3.3 million people and a GDP of  $57.11 billion we get right to where we want to be, January 1st 2016.

This is a good enough reason to buy some Bitcoins

Well, we did it. We managed to get through one single year in the history of the United States without increasing our deficit. On the way we’ve demolished the entire business industry, entertainment industry, a whole country, charity work and any chance of future growth. Good luck in managing 2016.

So as you can see it’s an impossible game to win, even the government reports throughout the years show that although the annual deficit is shrinking we’re still accumulating more debt every year. So the debt will keep rising until people will have enough of it, and then…all hell can break loose. By the time that happens I wouldn’t want my money laying in the bank waiting for the government so seize it.

I’m not saying you should panic and start hiding gold nuggets inside your closet. All I’m saying is that something is seriously fucked up with the system and that Bitcoin seems to me today to be an extremely well built and proven fallback.

When people ask me if I trade Bitcoins I usually say that I don’t – I buy them for the long run. And this is just the reason why.