Old kids on the Blockchain: Waiting loses everything

There is fear and there is visible bafflement. For years, German media had strongly warned their readers and viewers not to get the idea of investing in these questionable cryptocurrencies. They were an attack on the money monopoly, which was not good, they said. One can only lose money there. One will also lose it. Everything. Bitcoin is only for Internet criminals. The money of the dark net. Not guaranteed by the state. It would certainly be stolen quickly. Hands off!, they said everywhere.

Why all the warnings

When Michael Saylor of the U.S. software company Microstrategy invested part of the company's assets in Bitcoin, the payment service provider Paypal announced its intention to accept Bitcoin, and finally Elon Musk parked three percent of Tesla's cash reserves in Bitcoin, there was noticeable unrest. The niche product cryptocurrency stuck its head into real life in an unmistakable way. And where blockchain deniers had hitherto spoken in firm conviction of a temporary phenomenon in which anyone could be happy who didn't burn their fingers on it, it was now suddenly no longer enough to claim that only criminals and hackers, cranks and the tired of life would use cryptocurrencies to invest money outside the fiat money system governed by central banks.

The German media houses didn't do that. Like the Internet back then, they missed out on the blockchain revolution. If the Springer Group, for example, had invested just one-third of its then annual profit of 300 million euros in Bitcoin in 2015 - or an bit of the yearly profis since then - , this Bitcoin asset would be worth more than eight billion dollars today - significantly more than the entire group, which today only has a market capitalization of seven billion euros on the stock exchange.

The need for explanations

So there is a great need for catch-up explanations as to why it was right to ignore the development and not to alleviate the pressure of the shrinking core business by investing part of its profits in a possibly growing business segment. No German company put money into the emerging competition from the Googles, Facebook, Twitetrs and Apples. But no one dared to experiment with building blockchain either.

So now they are appearing everywhere, the profound analyses of why it is all nonsense, not to be advised and why everything will soon be over with the hype. The speculation bubble will burst, the non-existent value of Bitcoin will cause total losses everywhere, the states will regulate the cryptos away, because a technical revolution that "puts an end to the monetary sovereignty of the state" (FAZ) cannot be tolerated in the long term. Elsewhere, it is again - for example in the german newspaper "Tageszeitung" - the climate damage that Bitcoin mining causes - quite in contrast, apparently, to the copper mines from which the raw materials for the useless euro cents are dug as if the small change still had any sense.

Elon the Enemy

The fact that Elon Musk's Bitcoin investment gives the impression that all those who have always warned might be wrong after all, and those who believe that Bitcoin is the new gold, a storage vessel whose contents cannot be diluted by the central banks with their permanently rotating money printing machines, makes the Tesla boss, who is not well-liked, a speculator who is not advised to follow.Without "the regulative of a central bank, the value of the virtual currency depends solely on supply and demand," it warns.

This is particularly absurd in light of a central bank policy that has been purposefully expropriating savers for a decade by depriving them of any opportunity to park money safely and receive a small interest rate as payment for it with its zero interest rate policy. Instead, the free money devalues the savings from year to year - who had saved 10,000 on his savings book in 2010, has today just an asset with the purchasing power of 9000 euros. When the person retires in 30 years, there will still be 7,300 euros left.

Both sides are risky

Is Bitcoin a risk? But yes, compared to the security with which a savings account eats up assets, it certainly is. Is it worth it? That will be known at the end. And then it is also certain which pain will be greater: That of having been there. Or that of having stood idly by. On one side you will loose, that's safe. On the other side you can win, probably.

Your choice.

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