The Forbes article below is the first I’ve read in a really long time that truly gets it, explaining the value underlying Bitcoin — utility. Here’s the lightning bolt:

“Bitcoin’s value is not caused by the work performed to create them. Bitcoin’s value comes from its value in actual use. That’s all. That’s why people are willing to expend resources to mine it. Bitcoin made it is possible to bundle up immutable information packets and transfer them peer-to-peer without an intermediary, on a geographically non-contiguous basis, within a censorship-resistant network while preserving an audit trail of ownership rights… Is that valuable? Yes. It’s never before been possible in the history of the world.”

It’s the utility of the network that drives the monetary value of its native asset, and vice versa. This circular reasoning is not a fallacy, but a fact that we, the users of this network control together. We, you and me, individually and together, are the monetary policy makers of the crypto community.

The so what is this: the higher the value of a crypto network’s native asset, the larger the available money supply, and thus the increased utility of the network.

By example, at today’s prices the total functional money supply of BTC is approximately $120 billion. That’s chump change on the global payments stage. But when BTC reaches $1 million USD, then each Satoshi (the smallest divisible unit of a Bitcoin) will be on 1:1 parity with the U.S. penny. Even with 4 million Bitcoins still to be mined, the total money supply would be $17 trillion, which is an autonomous global payment network with the liquidity to disrupt!

It’s not just specific to the Bitcoin network either, which only supports about 30 transactions per second — still useful for large value payments, but not something that’s going to replace your credit card during holiday buying season. Ethereum offers about the same, but there are other stable public blockchain networks online today that support thousands of transactions per second, and still others in development that promise millions.

So to all you crypto traders out there: carry on.. and do your homework for what really matters in a crypto network. Likewise, to all you crypto and blockchain application developers out there: hurry up, please. Because when the apps show up (and they will), and when the crypto prices of meritorious networks rise and stabilize, the worlds of international banking, global payments and foreign exchange are going to look a whole lot different.