Identity is Bitcoin; US dollars are an addiction. Totally fictional, the former, though with some cache to acquire some things. Sometimes overvalued, sometimes undervalued, identity swings wildly, partly based on the foibles of the market, sometimes based on the caprices of one strange, cache-hoarding person. The dollar gets you what you need. Consistently. Based on a fiction (that paper & electrons have exchangeable value) but feels like reality, for the realities it enables (croissants, cars, coffee). Identity is much more fixed in place than any given addiction (as Bitcoin is cryptographically very difficult to modify), but both addictions and identities can be stolen by changes in beliefs. It is generally considered useful or positive when addictions are annihilated by beliefs, but not identities. Identities are considered crucial, stable intermediaries between the collected cells and neurons of different human bodies (though addictions certainly make the interactions between humans seem easier, more fungible). The idea that you might be dealing with something too difficult to describe in a couple sentences and too interesting to deal with by just getting drunk it, that is to say a human body that isn’t stuck in an identity prison or on an addiction barstool, is deeply disturbing to most. When an identity interacts with and drives reality more often, it becomes an addiction. There are a lot of people betting that Bitcoin will become just such an addiction. I’ll just be over here studying the fungibility of identities and the breaking of addictions, enjoying my entirely non-fungible human body.
Disclosures: The author does not own or know how to short Bitcoin but does hold US dollars.
Roman Ryan 