Bitcoin passes $120k milestone as US Congress readies for 'crypto week'

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Original Vision vs. Current Reality

  • Early hopes: bank the unbanked, cheap global payments, disintermediate PayPal/banks.
  • Many posters say this largely failed: almost no everyday retail usage in Europe/US; fiat payment rails got “fast and cheap” anyway.
  • Bitcoin is now framed mostly as:
    • Speculative asset / “store of value”
    • Tool for illicit use (sanctions evasion, laundering, scams, illegal markets)
    • Hedge against fiat debasement in unstable countries (with stablecoins mentioned more than BTC).

Regret, Luck, and “Mistake” Narratives

  • Several personal stories of selling early or never buying; common theme: hindsight makes normal decisions look like catastrophic errors.
  • Others push back: treating missed crypto gains like “not buying the winning lottery ticket” – impossible to know, and most would have sold much earlier anyway.
  • Some argue that using crypto windfalls for real-life improvements (housing, debt payoff) was rational, not a mistake.

Ethics, Inequality, and Power Concentration

  • Strong criticism that Bitcoin’s main “real” value is enabling crime and evasion of rules.
  • Concern that wealth and control are highly concentrated:
    • Lost coins, early hoards, whales, banks, and centralized exchanges dominate supply/flow.
    • This is seen as recreating (or amplifying) existing inequality and insider advantage, not disrupting it.
  • Counterview: diverting capital away from real estate and traditional assets might reduce some inequality pressures.

Store of Value vs. Risk and Energy Cost

  • Supporters emphasize algorithmic scarcity and long-term “store of value” properties, comparing BTC to gold and criticizing fiat inflation.
  • Skeptics highlight:
    • Extreme volatility (multi‑tens‑of‑percent drops)
    • Regulatory risk
    • Zero productive output compared to equities/bonds
  • Proof-of-work’s energy use is condemned as “waste”; some wish speculation moved to non‑PoW systems.

Regulation, Politics, and Macro Context

  • Debate over whether US “crypto week” and Trump-era policy are driving prices; some expect classic “sell the news.”
  • Worry that regulation will be designed to favor large institutions, who will also get advance signals and exit first.
  • Some see BTC as a hedge against local fiat inflation; others argue more conventional assets (foreign currency, real estate, equities, bonds, gold) are safer hedges.

Meta and Behavioral Themes

  • Discussion of cognitive biases, regret, and recency bias in evaluating BTC’s rise.
  • Observation that outsized crypto fortunes demoralize “rule-followers” and may incentivize riskier behavior.
  • Thread also contains obvious “recovery” scam spam, ironically underscoring crypto’s fraud problem.