For those who've spent years building wealth the traditional way, here's what you might be missing about the world's first truly scarce digital asset.
You've done everything right.
You opened a retirement account. You started your SIPs. You diversified between equity and debt. Maybe you bought some gold. You read the financial papers, watched your portfolio grow (and sometimes shrink), and trusted that the system, however imperfect, would reward discipline and patience.
And for the most part, it has.
But somewhere in the back of your mind, you've probably noticed something strange. The same apartment that cost ₹50 lakhs 8 years ago now costs ₹1.5 crores. Your parents bought groceries for ₹4,000 a month; you spend ₹12,000. Your salary has gone up, sure; but it never quite keeps pace. Every year, it feels like you need to earn a little more just to stay in the same place.
You've heard about Bitcoin. Maybe a colleague mentioned it. Maybe you saw it in the news during one of its dramatic price swings. Maybe someone tried to convince you it's the future, and you walked away more confused than before.
This isn't an attempt to convince you of anything. It's an attempt to explain something that most people, including many who hold Bitcoin, don't fully understand: why it exists, what problem it's trying to solve, and why it might matter to you, even if you never buy a single satoshi.
I. Ethos: Why Bitcoin Deserves Your Attention (Even If You're Skeptical)
Let's start with what you already know.
You understand risk. You understand that markets move in cycles. You've seen bubbles before the dot com crash, the 2008 housing crisis & the COVID market panic. You know that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
So when you hear about Bitcoin, a digital currency that exists only on computers, has no central authority, and has gone from pennies to thousands of dollars, your scepticism isn't ignorance. It's wisdom.
Here's what I'd ask you to consider: what if Bitcoin isn't a get-rich-quick scheme but a response to a problem you've been living with your entire life without naming it?
The problem is this: our money is broken, and it's been breaking slowly for so long that we've mistaken the decline for normalcy.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, one of the well-known educators, often says that Bitcoin is "the internet of money." Not because it's fast or digital, but because it does to money what the internet did to information ‘it removes the gatekeepers’ . Before the internet, publishing a book required a publisher. Broadcasting required a TV station. Now anyone with a phone can reach millions.
Before Bitcoin, moving money required a bank. Storing wealth required trusting institutions. Protecting your savings from inflation required sophisticated investment strategies and even then, you were swimming against the current.
Bitcoin offers the alternative. Not one without trade-offs. But one built on a set of rules that are transparent, predictable, and unchangeable by any government, corporation, or individual.
You don't have to believe in Bitcoin. But you might find it useful to understand the problem it's solving. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
II. Logos: The Logic of Money, Scarcity, and Time
Let's talk about what money actually is.
Most people think money is currency—the notes in your wallet, the balance in your bank account. But that's not quite right. Money is a tool. Specifically, it's a tool for storing your time and energy so you can use it later.
When you work, you exchange your time, your labor, your expertise, and your focus for money. That money represents hours of your life. You save it because you trust that when you need it next month, next year, or thirty years from now, it will still hold value. You're deferring consumption. You're trusting the system.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: the system doesn't respect that trust.
Every time a central bank prints more money, every time a government runs a deficit and expands the money supply to cover it, the money you've saved becomes worth a little less. Not because you did anything wrong. Not because the economy produced less value. But because there's simply more money chasing the same amount of goods.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's policy. And it's been the norm for decades.
Tap to watch the video- What is the Problem?
Jeff Booth , author of The Price of Tomorrow, argues that we live in a world where technology should be making everything cheaper. Computing power that cost millions in the 1980s is now free on your phone. Solar energy is becoming cheaper than coal. Communication is essentially free. In a world of abundance driven by technology, prices should be falling.
But they're not. Why? Because the money supply is growing faster than productivity. We're running on a treadmill, working harder just to keep up with the inflation we're told is "necessary for growth."
Gold tried to solve this problem. For thousands of years, it worked. Gold is scarce. It's durable. It doesn't rot. It can't be printed. But gold has a problem: it's heavy, hard to divide, and difficult to move across borders. In the digital age, gold is a beautiful relic—but not a practical solution.
Bitcoin takes the best properties of gold and makes them digital.
It's scarce. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Not 21 million plus "a little more if we need it." Not 21 million "adjusted for inflation." Exactly 21 million. This cap is written into the code and enforced by a global network of computers. No CEO can change it. No government can override it.
It's divisible. Each Bitcoin can be broken into 100 million pieces, called satoshis. You don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin any more than you need to buy a whole gold bar.
It's portable. You can move a billion dollars' worth of Bitcoin across the world in minutes for a few dollars in fees. Try doing that with gold.
It's decentralized. No single entity controls it. It runs on a network of thousands of independent computers around the world. If one fails, the others keep going. It's resilient by design.
Dr. Saifedean Ammous , author of The Bitcoin Standard, describes Bitcoin as the hardest money ever created. "Hardness" in this context means resistance to inflation. Gold was hard money because it was difficult to produce more of it. But even gold's supply increases by about 1.5% per year as miners pull more from the ground.
Bitcoin's supply increases on a fixed schedule that halves every four years. Right now, it's about 1.7% per year. By 2032, it will be under 0.5%. By 2140, it will be zero.
This isn't speculation. It's math. And the math doesn't care about elections, wars, or economic policy.
III. Pathos: The Human Cost of Silent Theft
Here's the part that hurts.
You worked hard. You saved diligently. You did what your parents told you—live below your means, invest for the future, trust the process.
And still, you feel like you're falling behind.
Maybe you're in your 40s now, and the retirement corpus you've built doesn't feel like enough. Maybe you're watching your children grow up and wondering how they'll ever afford a home in the same city where they were raised. Maybe you've watched your savings grow in nominal terms, more zeros in the account, while your purchasing power quietly erodes.
This isn't your failure. This is theft by inflation. And it's invisible, which makes it insidious.
When someone picks your pocket, you know it. When inflation picks your pocket, it does so slowly, over years, hiding behind terms like "monetary policy" and "quantitative easing." You're told it's necessary. You're told it's for the greater good. You're told that 2% inflation is "healthy."
But healthy for whom?
Not for the saver. Not for the retiree living on a fixed income. Not for the working professional who's trying to build generational wealth.
Inflation benefits debtors and punishes savers. It rewards those closest to the money printer; governments, banks, large corporations and penalizes everyone else. It's a regressive tax that hits hardest those who can least afford it.
And here's the emotional weight of it: you can't opt out. You can't refuse to participate. Your salary is paid in rupees. Your rent is denominated in rupees. Your children's school fees are in rupees. You're locked into a system that quietly erodes your wealth whether you consent or not.
Bitcoin offers something radical: an exit.
Not an escape from responsibility. Not a shortcut to wealth. But a choice. A way to store your time and energy in an asset that no government can dilute, no central bank can manipulate, no institution can freeze or confiscate without your consent.
It's not about greed. It's about fairness. It's about having a seat at the table in a financial system that's been playing by rules you didn't agree to.
IV. Synthesis: Where Do We Go From Here?
So what does this all mean for you?
Bitcoin isn't a replacement for your entire investment strategy. It's not a magic solution that solves every problem. It's volatile. It's misunderstood. It's still early, and it's not without risk.
But it's also not what most people think it is.
It's not a stock. It's not a company. It's not a gamble on some speculative technology that may or may not work out.
Bitcoin is a monetary network. It's a new form of money built for the internet age, designed to be scarce in a world of abundance, decentralized in a world of concentrated power, and transparent in a world of opaque institutions.
It's an insurance policy against the erosion of your purchasing power. It's a hedge against the possibility that the rules might change in ways you don't control. It's an opt-in system that asks nothing of you except that you take the time to understand it.
You don't have to believe Bitcoin will replace the dollar or the rupee. You don't have to think it's going to make you rich. You just have to ask yourself one question:
Does it make sense to store at least some of your life's work in an asset that can't be inflated away?
If the answer is yes or even "maybe" then it's worth understanding. Not because someone on the internet told you to. But because you owe it to yourself to explore every tool that might protect what you've built.
Bitcoin won't fix everything. But it might fix one thing that's been quietly broken for far too long: the money.
And that might be enough.
A Final Thought
You don't need to buy Bitcoin today. You don't need to buy it tomorrow, although I'd suggest you do; But you owe it to yourself to understand it. Read. Ask questions. Think critically. Approach it the way you'd approach any serious financial decision with scepticism, curiosity, and care.
Bitcoin isn’t going to fail anyway because of the problem it's trying to solve. And the sooner you understand that problem, the better equipped you'll be to protect yourself and your family in the decades to come.
The choice, as always, IS YOURS.
To learn more about Bitcoin, check-out this material from the Plan B Network
