Back in 2008, our mysterious pseudonymous overlord, Satoshi Nakamoto, published a nine-page whitepaper that rocked the financial world. It wasn’t just technical documentation; it was a middle finger to centralized banking. A battle cry for monetary rebellion. A vision of money outside the state’s chokehold.

The dream? Transparent, decentralized, trustless money that runs on code, not central banks.

The core of Bitcoin's design is sound money. Value that doesn't decay because some bureaucrat decided to print a trillion more units. Bitcoin has a hard cap: 21 million coins, ever. No one can change it. Compare that with fiat currencies that inflate like your favorite politician’s promises.

Add to that the halving mechanism, every four years, the mining reward gets slashed in half. Over time, Bitcoin becomes rarer and harder to earn. It’s like digging for gold if the earth decided to hide it deeper every year.

Bitcoin is also trustless by design. No central authority. Transactions are verified by the network, not a third-party intermediary.

So far, so good, right?

Bitcoin’s use case has shifted. Sure, some countries—El Salvador, Brazil, Ukraine, Panama, Cuba—accept it as legal tender. But on-chain metrics tell a different story. A more boring, more HODL-y story.

These charts show how long coins have been sitting untouched. The longer they sleep, the older the wave. The more dominant the older waves, the more Bitcoin looks like a digital savings account instead of spending money.

As of July 2025, over 55.2% of Bitcoin is held by long-term holders (1 year or more). That’s not circulation. That’s cold storage.

A funky metric that multiplies the number of coins moved with how long they were dormant. If someone moves coins they’ve been hoarding for years? Big CDD spike. But lately?

CDD is low. Very low. Meaning: OG holders aren’t selling. They’re just... watching.

Bitcoin held for 155+ days counts as long-term. Why 155? Because if you’re holding for five months, you’re not day-trading. You’re invested.

LTH supply hit all-time highs in 2024, and 2025’s data shows more of the same. Reaccumulation. Dormancy. Diamond hands everywhere.

These metrics paint one clear picture: people aren’t spending Bitcoin. They’re treating it like digital gold. Like a financial “break in case of apocalypse” button.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Bitcoin doesn’t check the boxes for a medium of exchange. At least not yet. Here’s why it morphed into a store of value instead:

Bitcoin handles 7 transactions per second. Visa does thousands. During network congestion, transaction fees spike. Buying coffee with Bitcoin? Only if you hate yourself.

Bitcoin's price is a rollercoaster with no seat belts. In December 2022 it dipped below $17K. By July 2025? It’s over $100K. Great for investors, hell for storeowners trying to price a sandwich.

By the mid-2010s, Bitcoin’s pitch changed. No longer cash, it’s "digital gold." Scarce. Decentralized. Unfuckwithable. ETF approvals in 2024 cemented that image in institutional minds.

Yes, some businesses accept BTC. But look at transaction data, most users aren’t buying; they’re HODLing. Or praying. Or both.

According to Mankiw's Macroeconomics, money needs to be:

• Medium of exchange

• Unit of account

• Store of value

Bitcoin sucks at the first two (thanks to volatility and fees), but nails the last one. It’s rare, decentralized, divisible. Great for preserving value. Terrible for buying tacos.

Central bankers probably see Bitcoin as “too perfect” to function as currency, it can’t be manipulated or inflated. And that’s a problem for the status quo.

Meanwhile, the Austrians are popping champagne. To them, Bitcoin is the Platonic ideal of money: no central control, hard-capped supply, and born from market consensus.

Ludwig von Mises argued that money needs roots in commodity value (regression theorem). Bitcoin doesn’t have that—no shiny physical thing—but early adopters valued it for its digital scarcity. That’s value enough, apparently.

Some Austrian economists (like George Pickering) argue Bitcoin qualifies because it had market demand before mass adoption. So yes, it checks their boxes.

Whether it’d pass Mises’ purity test is still up for debate, but it sure looks more “money-ish” than the Fed’s funny paper.

After all this data and theory, I don’t think Bitcoin failed. It just got rebranded. Society decided it's more useful as digital gold than digital cash.

So, was Satoshi wrong? Not really.

But the world didn’t unfold the way he hoped. Bitcoin lives in a mainstream system. And like gold before it, it's too perfect to be spent. Deflation? Bad for GDP optics. And who gets to define “bad for the economy” anyway?

Bitcoin might also just be too early. In 2009, Satoshi wrote:

I would be surprised if 10 years from now we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the trusted third party gets cold feet.

Well, here we are. Some use it. Most don’t. Unless their fiat is trash, people aren’t rushing to spend Bitcoin at the corner store.

Also: the tech has issues. Bitcoin isn’t built for rapid, small payments. It’s built like a vault. You don’t Venmo someone with a vault.

Bitcoin didn’t fail, it evolved. It’s not digital cash, but it’s undeniably money. Not the kind you spend, but the kind you trust when everything else breaks. Satoshi might’ve wanted electronic cash, but what he built was a store of value for the 21st century. The masses crowned it digital gold, and that’s what it became. Money isn’t defined by whitepapers. It’s defined by how people use it. And right now, people are HODLing like their future depends on it.

So maybe Bitcoin’s not what Satoshi intended—but maybe it’s exactly what we needed.

Hats off to you if you made it this far. This all started because I got stuck on a title. Seriously.

Will Bitcoin eventually become everyday cash? Or has that ship sailed?

Let’s talk. Drop a comment below or hit me up on X: x.com/landdiore.

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