For Michael Saylor, “if it’s not Bitcoin, it will go to zero,” but it makes sense

Former MicroStrategy CEO, and Bitcoin maximalist, Michael Saylor wrote on Twitter that he believes that if something is not Bitcoin in the long run, it will reach zero.

Over a long enough timeline, if it isn’t #bitcoinit is going to zero.

– Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) August 16, 2022

This excessively maximalist position seems far-fetched, even for someone like… Saylor, but it makes sense.

In fact, Bitcoin has been around for 13 years now, and right now very few people think it will lose all its value in the short or medium term. The situation changes over the long term, but if it were to retain value throughout this cycle and the next, i.e., until 2030, it would become very unlikely that it could fall to zero in the very long term, barring major technical problems.

So it’s not a question of what the value of BTC will be in the coming months or years, but in the coming decades. Or rather, to be more precise, it’s a question of whether, starting in the next decade, the price of Bitcoin could at some point fall to zero, in case it doesn’t do so sooner.

According to Saylor, this will not happen, not in the short term, not in the medium term, not in the long term, and not in the very long term. In the short term, almost everyone agrees that BTC will not go to zero, while in the medium term there are some skeptics. In the long and very long term, the skeptics are increasing, but if it doesn’t go to zero at the end of the next cycle… (2028 or so) it would become very unlikely to happen in the very long term.

However, this reasoning does not apply to stocks or even bonds. Indeed, the latter always have a maturity that almost never extends over the very long term.

Stocks over the very long term, often end up exiting the markets or even disappearing due to bankruptcies, closures, buyouts or other events that cause the issuing companies to cease operations.

As far as fiat currencies are concerned, there are very few that have survived the centuries. Currently, among the oldest are the British pound and the U.S. dollar, but although these currencies date back several centuries, they have been in fiat form for less than a century.

By some estimates, the average length of existence in the markets for fiat currencies is only 27 years. As the decades pass, these currencies also seem destined to disappear.

Therefore, Michael Saylor’s reasoning makes sense, as very long-term financial assets tend to lose value or disappear. On the other hand, Bitcoin, if it can make it to 2030, may also be destined never to disappear, provided that it avoids major technical problems in the future that compromise its operation.