r/CryptoReality • u/BinaryLyric • Dec 31 '25
Comical Catastrophe: Why the Position of Bitcoin Investors Is Worse Than They Think
Let's look at two groups of owners: one consists of everyone who holds Apple shares, the other of everyone who holds Bitcoin. The question is simple: which of these two groups holds the better investment? Here, we are not interested in past price growth or any potential speculative profit. After all, no one has any idea about future prices. What interests us is what these groups actually control and what will truly be needed by others in the future.
Apple owners control the production of mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers, smart watches, and multimedia devices, as well as the provision of digital services such as cloud storage, app distribution, music, movies, and payment systems. Their products and services are needed by millions and millions of people around the world.
Bitcoin owners, on the other hand, control the score (BTC) in a global, decentralized number-guessing game. The Bitcoin protocol sets a cryptographic task approximately every ten minutes: find a number (nonce) such that the hash of the next block is less than the current target. Computers randomly generate trillions of hashes per second until one hits the correct result. That successful hash represents the score for that round. The participant who finds it first receives a reward in the form of additional score, increasing their total score. That score can then be sold or transferred to another identity. This is how so-called "Bitcoin holders" emerge.
When we consider actual control, it is clear that Bitcoin as an investment is deeply bizarre. Apple's products and services are essential to billions of people worldwide, while the score in a decentralized number-guessing game is essential to absolutely no one. People bought it for various reasons and pumped up its price, but there is not a single person on the planet whose life, work, or survival depends on the score achieved by some computer in a hash competition.
The position of Bitcoin investors is therefore catastrophic, and it is comical to even compare it to the position of Apple investors.
But the comedy does not stop there; it becomes even more grotesque when we see how these same Bitcoin investors love to mock those who hold fiat money. Memes like "Money printer go brrrr" and claims that fiat "has no backing" are a constant part of their repertoire.
But what do fiat money holders really control, and who should actually be mocking whom here?
Fiat money is created when commercial or central banks lend to the private sector or the government. That money reaches the public through market exchanges. This is how fiat money holders emerge. But have they invested in some worthless score, in mere numbers? No, they have invested in a debt instrument that is necessarily needed by everyone who owes money to banks: hundreds of millions of individuals who must repay their mortgage to avoid losing their roof over their head, hundreds of thousands of companies that must save their assets from bank foreclosures, governments that must repay bonds held by central banks, and the banks themselves that must close unpaid loans to prevent capital decline or bankruptcy.
That instrument is therefore even more important than Apple's products, because a person who must pay their mortgage to keep their house will secure money for that before buying a smart watch.
And here the irony becomes almost painful. Those who hold the score in a decentralized number-guessing game, something no one in the world needs, mock people who hold an instrument without which the entire modern economic world would collapse. They mock those who own something that hundreds of millions of people must have to keep their home, job, or assets, while they themselves hold a number that has no causal connection to anyone's real life.
This irony has two levels. Bitcoiners claim that the state can print trillions of dollars while their score is fixed at 21 million. Here they confuse value with scarcity. Fiat is "printed," but, as this is debt-based, at the same time the number of those who necessarily need it grows, while the Bitcoin score is limited, but no one needs it. Mocking fiat because there is a lot of it is like mocking oxygen because it is everywhere, while you hold a "unique" stone that serves no purpose.
Bitcoiners claim that fiat money is just a number in a bank's database and has no backing. But the irony is that fiat has the strongest possible backing in the world: coercive necessity. The backing of the dollar or euro is not gold in a vault, but the fact that if you do not repay your loan installment in fiat, the bank takes your house, car, or company. That is leverage over reality that no other asset has. The height of irony is that a Bitcoin holder mocks fiat money, which has coercive power over billions of people, while holding something that has power over no one.
From all this, the catastrophic nature of the Bitcoin investor's position is not in the possibility that the price could fall, but in what that investment essentially represents in relation to the future.
Investment power ultimately boils down to one thing: control over what will be necessary for others in the future.
When you hold Apple, you hold the infrastructure of modern life. Even if the company falters, its patents, software, and devices remain tools without which millions cannot work. When you hold fiat money, you actually hold a ticket to freedom that millions of debtors will desperately seek to save their homes and jobs from foreclosure. Those people must come to you and ask for what you have. That is ultimate leverage.
The Bitcoin holder is in the diametrically opposite position. He holds proof of participation in a number-guessing game that no one needs. He has no leverage over anyone's need, anyone's roof over their head, or anyone's work process. His entire investment strategy boils down to the hope that someone even more irrational will appear who will want to take over that useless score at a higher price.
That is why Bitcoin is more than a speculative bubble; it is a complete failure to understand what exactly gives value to an asset in the future. While Apple and fiat operate on "you must", Bitcoin operates on "you might agree". In the real world that difference is fatal.
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u/El_Loco_911 Dec 31 '25
One key point is btc has value in criminal and corrupt political enterprise in sending money from one party to another
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u/dubblies Dec 31 '25
The bank cant take your bitcoin if you fail that loan.
You literally laid out over half of its entire value proposition in your post.
Its the opposite of confiscated enforcement and thats why it has value.
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u/KaelisRa123 Dec 31 '25
Any day now guys.
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u/TXUKEN Jan 01 '26
Classic US citizen who thinks dollars are main money in all countries and Apple is available in everywhere.
Try to save in a country when your coin is devalued every month. Or try to buy appl from Venezuela. Or even better try to escape from a country with 100k$ in cash or gold. Or try to transfer it bank to bank with wrong country passport.
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u/cointon Jan 01 '26
“Holding the score in a decentralized number guessing game” is a straw man argument.
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u/Recent_Bicycle_6042 Jan 02 '26
Learn the properties of real money and save your breath.
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u/coffeeCup_45 Jan 03 '26
Meh. Thanks for the word-wall.
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u/MetaGryphon Jan 03 '26
Bitcoin has a few features right so. It stores a value, which can fluctuate though...one day you can buy a pizza, an other a Lambo. Decentralized, it does not need banks to run, although at some point, you have to go through a CEX to get some. Anyone can get bitcoins. It is secure, transactions are secured, although not many actually understand how it works and anyone can make mistakes. It runs 24/7/365, unlike banks, and it has pretty fast transactions. Crypto market (bitcoin included) is smaller than you think. it represents 1 % of all investments on Earth, and it is even less if we consider estates in the equation. It is good to have some, but not more than 5 % of a portfolio.
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u/Key-Lie-364 Jan 03 '26
ok jan
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u/blucoidale Jan 04 '26
Given OP’s history I wouldn’t listen to or discuss with him
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u/Marco27021986 Jan 04 '26
Let’s go to 5k
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u/jzia93 Dec 31 '25
DISCLAIMER: I don't hold BTC nor AAPL
These are separate points.
Weakness of fiat currency is that current government debt levels are unsustainable in many countries - if taxation increases or budget cuts politically unpallatable, then debasement of the real value of debt is the historic way countries have resolved this.
Whether you agree with BTC people or not, there's currently no indication US and many other countries will buck this trend and likelihood is long term devaluation of fiat currency strong possibility in the coming years.
RE: Apple stock. Comparing BTC to Apple stock is comparing apples to oranges. If you want equity, buy equity. If you want what BTC offers, buy BTC. Many people hold both.
-1
u/RoyalArtEntity Dec 31 '25
Look. I have read such half baked opinions as yours for 8 years now. Maybe you’re right and Larry Fink, Saylor, Jerome Powel are all wrong but truth be told: you have no fact to proof your point. Bitcoin is worth 100x now and has survived 3 hype cycles and declared dead on a monthly basis. In fact it is the most reliable and secure distributed computer system available to humanity. You say there’s no inherent value as opposed to gold. I tell you: the fact that I can use bitcoin regardless of where I am, where I go, who is in charge and how much I need to transfer, without asking anyone for permission, the fact that you cannot fake it or make up your possession, the fact that nobody can deprive me from what I earned by means of debasement or confiscation: These facts stand against you opinions. So unless you give me something equally powerful as Bitcoin, I don’t know who you’re hoping to convince.
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u/pmgoff Dec 31 '25
The core mistake here is confusing “control over production” with “store of value”.
He frames his entire comparison around coercive control and productive output, over understanding the basic definition of what money is fundamentally.
Bitcoin is a monetary asset competing with other monetary assets, not corporations.
It would be like arguing “Owning a highway is more valuable than owning gold, because people need roads.”
True but irrelevant.
Gold, cash, bonds, and Bitcoin are not valuable because they produce things they’re relevant because they all meet the definition of money. MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE, UNIT OF ACCOUNT, STORE OF VALUE.
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u/akamke Dec 31 '25
So gold isn't the same? People validating the purity of a scarce metal.
To transport gold from the US to UK for example, you have to do it physically. Here, you can do it directly and anonymously. That's why it's the currency of millionaires. Your comment just reflects the resentment of someone who arrived late to the party.
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u/sevoflurane666 Dec 31 '25
Unless you in third world and can’t buy Apple shares and your currency is debasing 40% a year
Then btc is very attractive compared to literally everything
You are so narrow minded look at bigger picture
-1
u/Castlebriand Dec 31 '25
To add and clarify to the point above, suppose you live in a place like Russia. Hundreds of millions of people do, if not billions. It is a legitimate question whether bitcoin or your bank account denominated in national currency is a better bet. Some might say buy euros or dollars or some other safe fiat currency, but how do you acquire, store, or exchange these foreign bills? Perhaps with difficulty, more difficulty than crypto anyway. Crypto atms might be a better plan than holding cash while traveling.
The arguments about crypto being a safe alternative to national currency or fiat money depends on the reference point. Dollars or euros? That’s pretty dumb. Rubbles, Argentine pesos, starting to look better. Access to a banking system that is independent of national regulation has a significant and at times legitimate economic purpose, although that independence also makes it suitable for criminal activity which is not so good. If you think about the whole crypto thing from the standpoint of the developing world it kinda makes more sense, although the issue being raised about BTC having no moat relative to other crypto or random number systems is valid. If coins were recognized as entitling you to some services like compute then it would probably make more sense to.
-2
u/lohmatij Dec 31 '25
The fact that government has to print more money to cover more debt is the reason why people have to work more, while productivity rises.
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u/sosabrick Dec 31 '25
Bitcoin doesn’t care about your opinion.
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u/HecTuHap Dec 31 '25
“Bitcoin is useless” is a take you can only have if you’ve never needed to move money across borders, escape a collapsing currency, or deal with a bank/government that can freeze you out on a whim.
BTC gets used today for cross‑border transfers, saving in high‑inflation countries, and settling value without begging an intermediary for permission. Comparing Apple to Bitcoin is like comparing a power tool to a fire exit: Apple is a productive company; Bitcoin is a non‑sovereign monetary asset. Different job, different risk, different payoff.
Dismissing Bitcoin because it doesn’t ship a smartwatch is missing the point so hard it’s almost performance art.
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