This article is written by Quoth the Raven
Readers of my blog know that I started dabbling in buying Bitcoin in late 2022.
In fact, it was the best performing asset out of any of the names I wrote that I was watching for 2023. Similarly, and not to give away the suspense, I added Bitcoin exposure once again to my list of 24 stocks I’m watching for 2024.
So, it may not have been that much of a surprise when my subscribers saw me on X yesterday proclaim that my days of disparaging Bitcoin were over. However, given that I have about 210,000 more Twitter followers than I do Substack subscribers, it is safe to say there were still plenty of people who were caught off guard by my mea culpa, and, somewhat alarmingly, even more people who were voraciously willing to immediately sing my praises and welcome me to the community.
As far as the welcome goes, all I can say is, I genuinely appreciate it. I’d be lying if I said that a large group of people proclaiming me to be making an intelligent decision didn’t make me somewhat nervous. However, as I said in my post on X yesterday, I know I am also surrounded by people who are much smarter than I am.
As I also said in my post yesterday, I have been watching people that I know are much smarter than I am, specifically those in the sound money community, sing the praises of having exposure to bitcoin for years now. For me, that was the hardest thing to ignore. I felt like if I was looking to people like Lawrence Lepard, Luke Gromen and Lyn Alden for their incredible insights on the broken monetary system, why couldn’t I at least try to take them semi-seriously when it came to their take on Bitcoin? I knew deep down there was work they had done and an understanding they had achieved with Bitcoin that I wasn’t close to, despite understanding some of the basics.
I started to get a taste of this understanding while listening to my friend Lawrence Lepard describe Bitcoin as an invention all its own on this December 2022 podcast – comparing it as a parallel to the Internet, instead of just another Internet software application. This video is queued up to the first moment I changed my thinking about Bitcoin - Larry’s explanation starts at 36:00: