Bitcoin May Force Governments To Become A Voluntary Organization If It Grows Much Larger – Dan Held

Key takeaways

• Dan Held, head of growth at Kraken, reiterated the importance of “hodling.”
• The staunch Bitcoiner calls hodlers the true revolutionaries.
• For Held, Bitcoin remains the purest form of sound money and hodlers get their reward from knowing this.

The role that ardent early believers and long-term holders of Bitcoin play can not be overemphasized. “Hodlers” as they are called in the community adopt the strategy of buying cryptocurrencies and refusing to sell while expecting gains in the long term. The importance of this may have prompted Dan Held, head of growth at cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, to reiterate that “hodlers” are the true revolutionaries as far as the development of the Bitcoin network was concerned.

In fact, Held asserted in an article he penned in 2018 that holding Bitcoin had the potential of bringing freedom from oppressive governments as the growth of the Bitcoin network could force the government to become a voluntary organization with no power over money circulation.

“If Bitcoin grows much larger, it may force governments to become a voluntary organization. Through hodling, we may finally be free.”

In the article, the staunch Bitcoin supporter goes through the situations and problems that necessitated the creation of the Bitcoin network. The pioneer cryptocurrency was created as a solution to a broken financial system that needed a replacement that did not require trust and adhered to principles of sound money. This can be most buttressed by the fact that Satoshi Nakamoto first published the now-famous Bitcoin white paper in 2008 shortly after the Lehman Brothers collapsed, sending shockwaves across the economy.

Held also points out that before this dispensation, the monetary system has historically left room for people to fall back on hard currency such as gold or other assets. But currently, there is room for countries to create unlimited credit and debt and this has resulted in the distortion of the market through too much intervention by central banks and countries are beginning to go for long periods without having sustainable surpluses.

The Kraken official then goes on to argue the strong points of Bitcoin as sound money. He points out that Satoshi took cognizance of the monetary problem even in the Bitcoin white paper and aimed to make a sound monetary network with rules enforced by its participants. Satoshi expected that as the number of Bitcoin users grew, the value per coin would also increase, creating a positive feedback loop. This was also programmed into the invention structure of the network as seen in the 21 million supply cap of Bitcoin and the block reward for successfully mining new Bitcoin’s.

According to Held, early hodlers put themselves and their reputation on the line by believing in Bitcoin despite overwhelming negativity and false information. Their reward has been that by owning Bitcoin, they have in a way become their own central bank and the backbone of the financial system.

“Hodling isn’t about finding another buyer at a higher price someday in the future, if hyperbitcoinization occurs you’ll never have to sell” he surmised, adding “Those who opt-in to Bitcoin (the red pill), are trading something abundant for something scarce, trading the past for the future, trading financial dependence for financial sovereignty.”