Genuinely foolish

 "I absolutely love getting your emails about watchmaking, I am truly impressed by your skill, confidence and experience, keep them coming in. However, your knowledge of Bitcoin is hilariously non existent. You pass judgement on something you clearly know nothing about and what’s worse you don’t even care to learn. It’s mentally lazy and sadly quite arrogant. Bitcoin is a paradigm shift that is clearly currently beyond your grasp. Not because you’re dumb (clearly you are not) but because you truly feel you know all there is to know and your mind is closed. By all means offer comment on Bitcoin but know it would be like me, a know nothing member of the public telling you how to fix your watches and not having a clue or caring about my ignorance. Don’t you dare take me off your mailing list, I enjoy it too much as a watch enthusiast. But please, shooting your mouth off so ignorantly makes you look genuinely foolish and is so cringeworthy. Stick to what you know and keep an open mind and I hope one day you can learn something new.

J.B."

Dear J.B.

I've been called so many things, but this is the first time for me to be accused of paradigm paralysis.

Actually, paradigm shifts are cool. Shifting from mechanical watches to quartz was a huge paradigm shift, and from quartz to atomic timekeeping was an even bigger one. But the new revolutionary knowledge and all the practical benefits granted by it are not necessarily a guarantee that paradigm shifts will supersede previous knowledge and well established practices.

Atomic clocks are large, expensive and impractical. Quartz watches are far less accurate, but cheap and suitable for the masses.

Einstein's theory of relativity was a paradigm shift too, but if a falling brick hits me on the head, I'll blame old fashioned Newtonian physics.

Block chain technology is a paradigm shift indeed, but Bitcoin is not. It lacks transparency; it is not an asset, currency, nor a store of value. It is not a hedge against inflation. However, this is not the main problem. There are two major hurdles which prevent Bitcoin from ever becoming what its inventors intended it to be.

First: it is not backed by the government. Governments fight wars to protect fiat paper money - money which could be easily manipulated. Central banks hate Bitcoin and there will be no shift of that paradigm, ever.

The second problem is branding. Bitcoin is a cheap brand - it could be devalued by one tweet, by one press release, or a single statement by a government official. The US dollar is Louis Vuitton, but gold is Rolex. Elon Musk can wear his fingers off tweeting yet another opinion about the dollar or gold, but it will make no difference to their value, whatsoever. The only opinion that matters is the one of those in power.
As the Golden Rule goes: those with gold make the rules.

As I type this, on the desk is a cup of coffee and a bunch of watches which will soon be exchanged for fiat dollars. Taxes will be paid in dollars, worker's wages too. What is left will be exchanged for real goods - coffee and watches, and the cycle will be repeated. And every now and then, when times are good, a bit of surplus will be stored in gold, for that inevitable rainy day. This is how business has been done and how commerce has worked since the time of Babylon.

Of course, it is not my intention to crush your Bitcoin dreams. But quite frankly, figuring out that Bitcoin is just a fad - a gamble with odds stacked against you, a pyramid scheme and fools gold - requires neither humbleness nor mental acrobatics.

Cheers.