This is an outrageous post title: of course Bitcoin is better money than the Solana meme coin ‘Bonk’, right?
Well, maybe, but also maybe not.
What is money? What should money be?
Money in the modern era should be digital, almost free to transact (preferably free to send and receive), able to scale to millions of transactions a second, and should be able to be sent and received in minimum time (preferably in microseconds so that A.I. can use it for micropayments etc). It should also, ideally, perhaps, be non-government controlled (although does modern society REALLY want money to be used by the most despicable heinous criminals imaginable?), and (as Bitcoiners will insist) limited in supply so that governments can’t just keep printing more of it indefinitely.
There’s a few other qualities it should have too of course, but let’s consider only the above (for now).
Bitcoin can do seven transactions per second on chain, and it can cost from say $1 to $150 to send (per transaction!) depending on various factors but primarily on how busy the network is and how quickly you want your transaction to go through (paying more generally lowers the transaction time). Without the help of somewhat centralizing layer two protocols like Liquid and Lightning etc (which are incredibly complicated to use, full of issues, and still can’t scale to tens of millions of users trying to get onto and off of these layer 2s — and once again costing about $1 to $150 per transaction to get onto of off of them, which you’d need to do regularly to keep topping up your layer 2 account etc) or Bitcoin banks/exchanges (very very centralising!) etc, Bitcoin simply can’t scale to become a global everyday-currency.
So Bitcoin doesn’t scale AND costs too much to send and receive onchain to be used as currency by billions of people who simply can’t afford the transaction fees.
Bitcoin also takes minutes to send and receive, and sometimes even hours, and every now and again — if you haven’t included enough of a fee — even days!
So Bitcoin fails the transaction fees test, the scaling test, and also the time it takes to settle test.
So far, it is failing as a currency (although arguably doing well as a long-term store of value — so far at least).
Bonk, on the other hand passes all these tests, and without requiring any complicated layer 2s at all.
Both Bitcoin and Bonk are digital, both are limited in supply, and both can be self-custodied.
So what’s the problem with Bonk? Why is Bitcoin ‘better’ money?
The most obvious answer is that Solana is much much more centralized than Bitcoin, which means governments could more easily restrict its use etc — not great if governments abuse this power (which they will might). But it’s also because although Bonk is one of the largest meme coins, Bonk is not particularly unique: there are thousands of similiar meme coins on Solana! Whereas there is only one Bitcoin!
What about the distribution of Bonk? Isn’t it still the case that many people still have significant amounts that they can (and presumably will) dump on the market? What if Bonk continues to grow in adoption though? What if it goes from a couple of billion dollars in marketcap to ten billion? Or one hundred billion? And doesn’t Bitcoin also still have some companies/users with significant supply? Doesn’t the price of Bitcoin seem to go down 75%-90% every four years? After all, another property money has to have is the ability to at least retain its value! Does Bitcoin do this? Will Bonk? Money that grows in value is obviously much more appealing than money that doesn’t! One trillion marketcap Bitcoin vs one billion marketcap Bonk? Hard to say what happens next: nobody knows the future for sure!
What if the issues of transaction costs, scaling to hundreds of millions of users, and time to settle all turn out to be way more important to people (and to A.I.) than decentralisation?
Then COULD Bonk become ‘better’ money than Bitcoin?
And why Bonk specifically? Why not one of the other huge meme coins on Solana, like Wif or Popcat etc?
This last question is incredibly important. But in a digital world, why must money be one single token? Can’t ALL the really massive Solana meme coins, if they continue to grow in marketcap, ALL eventually become money simultaneously?
And why only meme coins on Solana? Why not meme coins on other blockchains that are also just as fast, free and scalable?
An outrageous idea, I know.
But zero chance?
Who knows!
Thoughts?