Overnight, BTC continued to fall at the 61k level. This morning, I briefly reviewed my investment records: Since 2024, the average cost of adding BTC positions has been 67.7k (floating loss 9.9%); if calculated from September last year, the average cost of adding positions is 55.4k (floating profit 10%) - compared to the mindless fixed investment of 52.8k, it is slightly more expensive. The main reason is very clear: insufficient investment in the 30-50k range from the second half of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, and after late April, it began to fall while replenishing, mainly in the 60-70k range, resulting in an overall increase in the average cost. Reflecting on it, my style still prefers to add positions on the left side more, that is, to operate against the trend and get on the car when reversing. In the face of the right-side market that keeps pulling up, I am always left behind and can't get on the car.
In general, over the years, the overall holding cost of BTC has been continuously raised to the current level of 14.5k (320% floating profit). The annual compound growth rate CAGR is about 27%. Although it is less than 30%, it is not inferior to or even slightly better than many other investment methods. The key to Jiaolian's achievement through the imperfect and often self-defeating operations mentioned in the previous paragraph is the adoption of the correct strategic thinking.
First-rate strategies and third-rate tactics, although they often cannot achieve first-rate results, can at least easily make one invincible. However, first-rate tactical capabilities but only third-rate strategic thinking often lead to complete failure in the end. There are many smart and hardworking people in this market who are constantly being cut, constantly being liquidated, and constantly failing. Even if some people hit the jackpot in a certain cycle and suddenly become rich, they often quickly lose all their money and profits, and are simply unable to continue to win and expand their achievements. The lesson is not far away, which makes people sigh.
The essence of BTC, in Jiaolian's view, is a new type of production relationship in the post-capitalist era .
Let us define "value" as a certain proportional relationship between products. Just like the relationship between length and weight, there is also a certain value relationship between any two products, one with a large value and one with a small value. From qualitative comparison to quantitative comparison, we need to introduce measurement and measurement tools. Length is measured in meters, and the measurement tool is a ruler. Weight is measured in grams, and the measurement tool is a scale. Value is measured in monetary units, and the measurement tool is people's hearts.
A single product cannot be said to be long or short, light or heavy, or of great or small value. Only when it is compared with other products can we have such relationships as length, weight, and value. Therefore, relationships are relative, not absolute.
But length, weight and value are all objective facts, and are an objective attribute of the product itself. However, value is different from length and weight. The ruler for measuring length and the scale for measuring weight are standardized, tangible, visible and tangible. But the scale for measuring value is in everyone's heart. The so-called "scale in the hearts of the people" is invisible and intangible.
BTC miners produce the most original product for BTC: BTC ledger, or, strictly speaking, BTC block space. Paying BTC as a chain handling fee, or "miner's fee", in order to record your BTC transfer transaction on the BTC ledger is essentially bidding for the limited block space that is generated on average every 10 minutes.
Of course, this block space is very different from our ordinary disk storage space. Just like a car is very different from the raw materials used to make it, such as steel and rubber. These block spaces are storage spaces that have been proven by the PoW proof of work generated by extremely powerful computing power. All data written into the block space is stamped with the mark of "reliability" or "security" by this proof. Even the most powerful power held by humans on earth today cannot shake it, the most powerful military force cannot defeat it, and the most powerful capital cannot buy it!
Is such a product valuable? Of course it is!
How much is this value? Currently it is about 1 trillion US dollars - that is, the market value of BTC today.
Some people may argue that market capitalization is not a measure of this value, but rather the total revenue of miners (for example, more than 10 billion US dollars in 2023. Even further, a large part of the total revenue of miners today comes from block rewards, that is, newly added BTC, and a small part comes from transaction fees paid by users. Only transaction fees are the real fees paid for block space, reflecting the market value of block space. Calculated in this way, the value is even smaller, probably only about 5%-10%, or 500-100 million US dollars per year.
No.
With such a "secure" block space, BTC transfer transactions can be safely recorded in it, and these transactions, that is, value transfers, have emerged as value units - BTC. BTC as a symbol is artificially defined, and its value unit is the result of system emergence.
The output of BTC is determined by a deterministic, open and transparent mathematical formula that cannot be shaken or tampered with by anyone. High-security block space is the bottom line guarantee that this mathematical formula can be faithfully executed. This makes BTC a good tool for storing value.
In other words, the above characteristics of BTC make it able to attract more and more people to exchange the money they are not spending temporarily into BTC and save it as a kind of savings.
Keynes said that saving is investment .
When you decide to store value in BTC, the value actually becomes capital - value that can automatically generate new value.
For example, if you spend 61,000 USD to buy 1 BTC today and store it in a cold wallet, then the value of 61,000 USD will be transferred to someone who sells 1 BTC after the turnover in the market. After this person gets the value of 61,000 USD, he may consume it or put it into production. Considering the situation of production, he uses this value to buy the capital required for production (such as venues, machines, manpower, etc.), and produces a value far exceeding 61,000 USD. Then he takes out part of the money he earns and converts it back into BTC.
We assume that this boss or individual producer is an extremely efficient producer. He has a huge advantage over other competitors in the market, so he produces a huge surplus value, which allows him to take out (61,000 + x) US dollars to buy BTC again in the near future.
If the winners of such a competition are not only able to buy back all the BTC that they, the consumers who sell coins, and the producers who lose money have lost, but can also buy back more, thereby further increasing their BTC holdings, then their purchases will be enough to drive BTC up.
The BTC positions held by savers who hoard BTC will increase in value due to the rise in BTC. This increased value comes from the value generated by productivity outside the BTC system, which flows back into the BTC system. To BTC hoarders, it is as if the value of BTC has "automatically" increased.
Therefore, from the perspective of BTC hoarders, BTC has the function of preserving value and automatically increasing value, thus becoming an excellent "store of value" (SoV, storage of value).
It is precisely because it has become a general consensus that BTC is an excellent "store of value" that producers will flow the value of investment returns outside the system back to BTC.
It is conceivable that if BTC cannot continue to maintain or even continues to destroy its value, such as the endless decline of most "one-wave"Altcoin, then only a fool would return the value to such a "sickle harvesting land".
Therefore, the market value of BTC does not only reflect the original value of the BTC block space for BTC transfer transactions, but also reflects the total valuation of all the value transferred by BTC, which is converted into capital and invested in production or reproduction to generate greater value, and then flows back into BTC.
This logic can be deduced into the future.
What’s even better is that in such a system where everyone is independent and produces together, the total value is shared by all BTC holders! Creating value together and sharing value together is very close to the ideal vision of a “Great Harmony Society”.
The only thing missing is the great improvement of productivity and the great abundance of materials. However, with today's industrial capacity bursting and AI and other technologies changing with each passing day, perhaps only the so-called "fourth industrial revolution" will allow us to continuously produce a large amount of materials, with everything we need, and every piece costing "9.9 yuan with free shipping"...
The manifestation of a huge increase in productivity must be that commodity prices are getting lower and lower, and the BTC you have stored will become more and more durable and you can never spend it all. You really can never spend it all.
Today's mainstream economists - capitalist economists - are scared to death because this phenomenon is called "deflation" in textbooks, terrible deflation.
Why do economists fear deflation? Because today’s mainstream economists essentially think from the perspective of capitalist ideology. Capital fears deflation, so they also fear deflation.
Why is capital afraid of deflation? Because deflation means lower profits or even losses, corporate bankruptcy, layoffs, unemployment, cuts in income, social class decline, poverty, and social unrest.
For the convenience of discussion, Jiaolian calls the traditional capitalist production relationship - the company system (or the wage employment system) production relationship 1.0 ; the new capitalist production relationship - the platform economy , production relationship 2.0 ; and the "common sharing" production relationship of BTC described above, production relationship 3.0 .
Let us now take a closer look at the three versions of the production relations system and their respective characteristics.
Production relations 1.0 is the company that everyone is most familiar with. Although the company as a production relationship is very common today, it actually has a very short history, only about 400 years. Today, due to time and space limitations, it may not be possible to trace back to the production relations before version 1.0, such as farmers-landlords, slaves-slave owners, and primitive society, and many other earlier versions. I will have the opportunity to write an article to discuss them in the future.
The characteristic of the company system is that there are obvious stratifications: shareholders are those who hold shares; employees are those who do not hold shares and receive wages; and other people who provide income to the company are customers, or consumers. But strictly speaking, what class are employees who hold a small amount of shares? What class are bosses who are still working on the front line? If it is a listed company, then if you bought two lots of the company's circulating shares in the secondary market, which class do you belong to?
Therefore, we cannot regard all stock holders as company owners or capitalists. Stocks are nothing more than the right to claim the company's surplus value. Only the actual control over the company's capital is the key to determining who is the owner.
By the way, the English word for “类” (class) also means “class”. The Chinese say “birds of a feather flock together”. However, capitalist production relations require “people to be divided into groups”, that is, to be divided according to class, which actually has the flavor of “objectifying” people into “tools”. This is a cultural perspective, just an embellishment in our discussion.
For example, suppose Jiaolian started a company from scratch with his savings from working for many years. Everything is difficult at the beginning. At the beginning, you have to do it yourself, that is, you hire yourself and exploit yourself. Suppose the company has an annual income of 300,000 yuan. After deducting the water, electricity, rent and other miscellaneous expenses, there is still 200,000 yuan left to pay itself. Then at this time, Jiaolian is both a salaried employee and the owner of a company, a capitalist, but an unqualified capitalist, a "fake capitalist."
Why is Jiaolian unqualified as a capitalist at this time? Readers may think that the company is profitable, with an annual cost of 100,000 and a profit of 200,000. This is not the case. The economic calculation of capital looks at the "opportunity cost" rather than just the explicit cost.
Assume that if Jiaolian goes to work, that is, sells his labor, he can get a salary of 1 million per year in the market. Then, this means that Jiaolian's productivity can be evaluated by the market to 1 million/year. Of course, it should be noted that the same time and labor, doing different jobs, the output value is different. The continuous re-matching of talents and positions in the free market is to continuously optimize and maximize the value of a person's labor and time.
In any case, when Jiaolian gave up the opportunity to work for a part-time job with an annual salary of 1 million yuan and started his own company to earn 200,000 yuan per year, he had already incurred an opportunity cost of 1 million yuan per year. Adding the explicit cost of 100,000 yuan, the actual cost of the company is 1.1 million yuan per year.
The cost is 1.1 million, the income is 300,000, and the net loss is 900,000/year. You can also change the calculation method. It could have earned 1 million, but now it only earns 200,000, with a loss of 800,000, plus miscellaneous losses of 100,000, a total loss of 900,000/year. This is the real economic calculation. An investment that loses money year after year is definitely an unqualified investment. Therefore, from the perspective of capitalists, Jiaolian is unqualified at this time.
If we regard the current losses as an investment for the future, for example, the company's annual revenue can reach 1.1 million in 5 years, and then it will break even. The total "investment" in 5 years, that is, the total loss, has accumulated to 4.5 million.
In another 5 years, the company will break even. Assume that the company's revenue doubles to 2.1 million per year. At this time, it will start to produce surplus value, 1 million per year. It will take about 5 years to repay the previous loss of 4.5 million with 1 million per year of surplus value.
However, we also need to consider the general social appreciation rate of the investment principal itself. Assuming that the general government bond interest rate is 4%, 4.5 million will grow annually in a compounded manner, and will become 7.5 million after 13 years. Therefore, it actually takes 8 years, 1 million per year, to truly make up for the investment losses in the first 5 years (calculating the opportunity loss).
See how many years have passed? 18 years!
This result can only be achieved under the ideal scenario that the company's revenue will triple or quadruple in the first five years and double in the next five years.
What if the opportunity loss of this 4.5 million investment is not benchmarked with the general national debt interest rate, but with investment in BTC? Assuming that Jiaolian has mastered the method of investing in BTC and making long-term profits, the long-term annualized growth rate can reach 30%. Then you can know that in just 10 years, this principal will grow to an astonishing 62 million. Unless the company's business grows exponentially, it will never be able to catch up with the appreciation rate of this BTC.
There are two obvious conclusions from this calculation:
First, don’t start a business lightly, especially starting a business from scratch. The compound strategy of working and hoarding BTC is far better than starting your own business.
The higher your salary, the more cost-effective the latter strategy will be.
Second, it is extremely difficult to move up the social ladder. If a worker wants to become a capitalist by starting a business, he or she will almost always end up becoming an unqualified fake capitalist.
It is this nearly zero conversion probability that divides people in commodity society into two classes: workers and capitalists. If everyone can easily change their identity, then classes will no longer exist.
If Jiaolian suddenly started to work: At the beginning, it used the company's guaranteed income of 300,000 yuan/year to hire 3 employees with an annual salary of 100,000 yuan (the actual salary is even lower because there are taxes, social security, etc.). The productivity of these 3 employees is explosive, and each person can generate 400,000 yuan in revenue for the company every year. Assuming that the company's explicit miscellaneous costs are reduced to an average of 50,000 yuan/person/year because of multiple people, then the total cost is 200,000 yuan/person/year. In this way, how much profit can the company make from the beginning? (After considering the opportunity cost)
30 (income generated by the teaching chain) + 40 x 3 (income generated by employees) - 10 x 3 (employee salary costs) - 100 (teaching chain salary costs) - 20 (miscellaneous expenses) = 0 [Formula 1]
Surprisingly, right? From day one, the company broke even! But what kind of employees and what kind of business can earn the company $400,000 with a salary of $100,000?
At this point, Jiaolian still cannot be considered a qualified capitalist, because Jiaolian himself has not yet left the labor force. At most, he can only be considered a "quasi-capitalist".
What if we hire one more employee? Then Jiaolian will not be involved in business work, but will still need to undertake management tasks, which is also labor. But the formula becomes:
40 x 4 (employee income) - 10 x 4 (employee wages) - 100 (teaching chain wages) - 20 (miscellaneous expenses, squeezed out, assuming unchanged) = 0 [Formula 2]
This is not enough. We need to hire more. Assuming we hire one more such excellent employee, Jiaolian can then spend 300,000 yuan per year to hire a manager to be responsible for the company's operations and management. In this way, we can become a real boss. The formula at this time is:
40 x 5 (employee income) - 10 x 5 (employee salary) - 30 (manager salary) - 100 (teaching chain salary) - 20 (miscellaneous expenses, continue to squeeze, unchanged) = 0 [Formula 3]
At this scale, with 5 employees and 1 manager, Jiaolian began to completely break away from labor and became a small capitalist. In [Formula 3], the "Jiaolian salary" is actually the company's profit, which is paid by the surplus value created by other employees.
Therefore, if Jiaolian has been working alone, even if the business is booming and the annual income is 10 million, Jiaolian can only be a "fake capitalist". If he hires people but still has to manage it himself or worry about some company operations, he is a "quasi-capitalist". If all company affairs are fully handed over to professionals to take care of, and he does not have to do anything, but still firmly controls the company's control and distribution rights, then only then can he truly complete the class leap and become a real capitalist.
However, since the scale of this company is too small, with annual revenue of only millions, it is just a small capitalist. If the company reaches an annual revenue of tens to hundreds of billions, it can be regarded as a medium-sized capitalist.
Only medium-sized national capitalists can reach the level of the "middle class" defined by the teacher in "Analysis of Various Classes in Chinese Society" on December 1, 1925. The article defines it very clearly: "Middle class. This class represents the production relations of urban and rural capitalism in China. The middle class mainly refers to the national bourgeoisie, who have a contradictory attitude towards the Chinese revolution..."
Before retirement, Mr. Ma was a successful "quasi-capitalist". After retirement, Mr. Ma became a medium-sized national capitalist, or what the teachers called the "middle class".
Why are successful businessmen like Boss Ma and Boss Zhang only considered "medium-sized"? Because capital is globalized, so we should look at the world when ranking and comparing scale. You may not even know the names of real big capitalists. For example, the Rockefeller family and the Morgan family in the United States are capitalist families that have been passed down for hundreds of years. In fact, there are no real big capitalists in China. There are only agents arranged by these big capitalists in China. They form a unique class, which is called the "comprador class" in "Analysis of Various Classes in Chinese Society".
In today's world dominated by capitalism, the real big capitalists can no longer be described as "rich enough to rival a country". The country is nothing more than the actors, thugs and mascots they hired to perform on the stage.
It is as easy for a big capitalist to kill a small capitalist as to step on an ant. Capital has a natural tendency to merge. The strong will always be strong and it is almost impossible to be defeated. This means that if you want to start from scratch, grow bigger and stronger, and finally overthrow the old capitalists and become a big capitalist, the probability of you is infinitely close to zero, if not absolutely zero.
The production relationship 1.0 adopted by capitalism is a great improvement over the previous production relationship 0.5 between landlords and hired farmers. Through the form of companies, people are liberated from the land and can move around the world. They can get rid of the small peasant economy and fight alone. A large number of employees can be divided into specialties and positions, and large-scale division of labor and cooperation can be carried out, which can greatly improve production efficiency and create more surplus value.
At the same time, employees are also liberated in the new production relationship. They are no longer bound to the land, and can get mutual support in the company. This is reflected in the fixed monthly salary, and they do not have to rely on the weather like small farmers. Of course, if there is a particularly bad external impact of the economic cycle, there may be layoffs and unemployment.
Production relations 2.0, which is the birth of "platform economy", is based on the famous Coase theorem.
Why do people have to be organized into companies when they work together? Because the nature of many jobs cannot accurately measure input and output, that is, they cannot be priced by the free market.
When the bargaining cost (also called friction cost) of free market pricing is too high, for example, for programmers who write code, or other highly professional positions, the huge information asymmetry caused by knowledge advantage makes it very difficult to conduct extremely fine-grained task evaluation and market pricing, so it is better to simply buy out the programmer's labor and make him an employee of the company. This is the basic meaning of the Coase Theorem.
From a realistic perspective, although there are program outsourcing platforms and so-called freelancers, they have not yet been able to completely replace hired programmers.
The reason why the teaching chain uses programmers as an example is that programmers are typical representatives of the new generation of productivity. The production relations 1.0 of traditional capitalism claim that capitalists are the bosses because they own the means of production (machines, factories, etc.). However, in the Internet age, the means of production used by programmers for work, including computers, mobile phones, and the Internet, are actually borne or can be afforded by themselves. In other words, except for the fact that some companies still pretend to provide these things that everyone can afford, in fact, every programmer can independently own his or her own means of production. So, at this time, why can a boss who does not own the means of production still occupy the position of the capitalist?
At this stage of productivity development, although capitalists can still prevent individual workers from possessing all the means of production by creating barriers such as intellectual property rights, data ownership, etc., the wheel of time is clearly ready to roll over the heads of traditional capitalists.
Programmers’ work is too specialized and constrained by the Coase theorem. It will take some time to be completely liberated. However, in other more standardized jobs, such individual producers, or free laborers, have already emerged. For example, e-commerce sellers, private car drivers, food deliverymen, short video bloggers, public account authors, and so on.
The capitalists’ companies have transformed themselves into platforms.
The relationship between individual producers, free workers and platforms is a transaction relationship, not an employment relationship. It can also be said to be a capital-capital relationship between small capital and big capital, rather than a labor-capital relationship of production relations 1.0.
However, since small capital has no bargaining power in front of big capital, in the early stages of production relations 2.0, although these individual producers have gained greater freedom, they have also suffered greater oppression and exploitation.
The improved production relations 1.0 will also be strongly required by the state to protect the rights and basic welfare of employees. All of this is almost non-existent for the free workers of production relations 2.0.
What makes them better than the hired farmers in production relations 0.5 is that when there are multiple platforms, they can obtain a certain bargaining power over the platform by having the possibility of changing platforms.
What makes them better than the employees in production relations 1.0 is that if they are engaged in business that requires knowledge, professional thresholds, or simply has a strong temperament attribute (such as live streaming with goods), then they have the opportunity to grow bigger and stronger, thereby obtaining excess returns, and even evolving into real capital that eats surplus value.
Production relations 3.0, which is the "common production and sharing" production relationship described by the teaching chain earlier, where each produces, shares and supports each other, is a new type of production relationship created and inspired by BTC.
It is based on production relations 2.0 and is a more advanced stage of development.
The progress and change of production relations are driven by the progress of productivity.
Why did production relations 1.0 evolve into production relations 2.0? The Coase theorem is the constraint that limits this evolution. And what is the driving force? It is the progress of productivity.
To put it bluntly, and perhaps a little harshly, it is called involution. Those who cannot survive the involution are eliminated by the company and cannot find new jobs, so they can only deliver food, drive a private car, open an online store, or do live broadcasts.
Why does involution occur and eliminate labor? Because of the development of technology, the improvement of efficiency and the increase of productivity.
What has been the most talked about topic in the past two years? Isn’t it that AI (artificial intelligence) is developing at a rapid pace and will inevitably eliminate a large number of various jobs in the future?
A few days ago, I saw a true story. A foreign media had an editorial team with 60 editors last year, but this year only the editor-in-chief was left. The manuscripts were generated by AI, and the editor-in-chief was responsible for revision, polishing, and publication.
This is the general trend of historical development. In the future, more and more people will be eliminated by production relations 1.0 and will have to embrace production relations 2.0.
However, if these free laborers and individual producers trapped in production relations 2.0 just fight alone like the hired farmhands in ancient production relations 0.5, they will never be able to turn things around.
The only way to liberate and save these free laborers is to unite and link them together.
They are not linked by information, but by linking their insignificant small capitals to form a united big capital that crushes the scale of all capitals of production relations 1.0 and 2.0.
This united big capital is BTC.
Today, the market value of BTC is over 1 trillion US dollars, ranking around the top ten in the world in terms of market value.
If the market value of BTC increases tenfold in the future, it will be considered larger than the capital of any publicly listed company.
All free laborers and individual producers who hold BTC may seem to be individuals who are not employed by capital, but they are backed by huge capital that is larger than any listed company and they always share the returns of the ever-increasing value of this huge capital.
He only needs to work for a period of time and accumulate enough BTC, and then he will be surprised to find that the return on capital alone is enough to support his living expenses. At this time, he can stop working and concentrate on enjoying life. Or he can continue to work, but only for interest and hobbies, or a sense of mission in life.
As a joint capital , BTC will absorb the surplus value created by everyone (minus the part absorbed by other platforms) and then share it fairly with everyone.
When you work and hoard BTC, you are using the value you create to meet the needs of others. When you no longer work and live on BTC, it is essentially other people who contribute the value they create to help you.
You support BTC, BTC supports you. You support everyone, everyone supports you. Everyone supports everyone.
Most importantly, BTC is decentralized. There is no arbitrary issuance of new tokens, no PoS capital interest, no class inequality (sickle-leek) created by the initial token distribution, no privilege of a single organization to hijack other participants to control hard forks and arbitrarily change the way tokens are issued, etc. These are critical basic structures.
Without these basic structures, a coin will become an extremely sharp, bloodthirsty and man-eating harvesting weapon.
With these key structures, a coin has the opportunity to develop into a joint capital like BTC.
Such joint capital can only be formed first in the scope of productivity that is sufficient to overcome the Coase theorem.
Only by using truly decentralized encrypted assets to carry joint capital can we achieve truly fair union, ensure that the value created and contributed by everyone can be fairly "shared", and build a new type of production relationship 3.0.
This is what Jiaolian has learned from BTC, the revelation about the revolution of production relations in the post-capitalist era.
