While there is a lot of information circulating on how businesses can add bitcoin to their corporate treasury, or to integrate Bitcoin payments into their business operations, it’s worth having a conversation on WHY this is even a good idea in the first place.

So, what is the why?

Bitcoin is money. In fact, Bitcoin is the best money we have discovered. This, then raises the question ‘’what's wrong with the current money’’? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Right?

Let’s look at how money works in the business process.

As a business owner, you know that you first have to have a product or service, that somebody else feels will add value to them, before they take out their money and pay you for it.

This is otherwise known as selling.

Once you have been paid, you in return pay off your own production costs and your own living costs and whatever is left is your retained earnings. Retained earnings can be either reinvested or saved.
Savings is what you put away as a safety net against unforeseen problems in the future or new opportunities that may arise, and you need money ready in both scenarios.

Money is not the end goal itself.

It is stored time & energy to be used at some point in the future for something that you need.
To put this process in the simplest possible terms; Build + Sell = Money

In the current world of highly financialized services this unfortunately is not how money works.
When you go to the bank to lend money for a new project the bank is not lending out depositor’s savings that they are holding. They used to do it this way when banks were required to have full reserve banking. Full reserve banking meant that for every R100 a bank lent out they had to first have R100 of a depositor’s money. A one-to-one loan. Over the years this has changed to fractional reserve, and in some cases even zero reserve banking. This means the bank does not actually have the money before the loan is granted, it is created when the loan is issued.
You take this money, you invest it, you create value, and you sell that value for money. One of the production expenses you pay back is the loan. When the loan is paid off that debt is cancelled and the money ceases to exist. Deleted.
Back to simple possible terms; Money + Build = Sell

Contrasting these two processes brings us to the crux of the matter.
In the first process, the work has to be done first (excuse the pun) and money is the result of the value created when the sale takes place and they buyer choses to part with his own savings in return for that value.
In the second process the money is created BEFORE there is value added. Now you have some products to sell, and sell them you better. The perverse outcome of this system is twofold;

1. You have made products that you may not have a market for, because you got the money first.
   This is why stupid things get made and we are bombarded by an ever increasing amount of advertising and selling techniques to buy stuff we don’t need or want.
2. Money has now entered the market before any value has been created.
   This is otherwise known as inflation.

Of the two, Inflation is the real killer.

When banks (both retail banks and central banks) create money through loans which is injected into the economy, but no value has yet been added, the money in the system the money no longer represents the value in the system through the amount of goods and services produced. The extra money in the system chasing the same number of goods and services over time starts to drive those prices up.
This is the fundamental problem with the money printer when people can access money before they add value, they start to make strange investments decisions.

Zombie companies that would otherwise fail are propped up on cheap loans. Dumb investments are made because money can be obtained at unrealistically low interest rates (low risk on money created at the click of the ‘’loan approved’’ button) and something must be done with it. This money has not been earned through real production.

Bitcoin is money that cannot be created from nothing. It is expensive to produce through its mining process. There are energy costs, site location costs, staffing costs, and other real-world inputs that go into Bitcoin mining, which ties Bitcoin into real world physics.

The Bitcoin fundamentals of scarcity, verifiable, secure, transparent and censorship resistant have not changed since inception, and offers certainty in an ever-uncertain world.
Compare this to the money sitting in your bank account. These are not even the same thing and for them both to be called money is laughable.

The only ways to get bitcoin is to mine it, buy it or get paid in it.
Buying bitcoin is to buy some at the current market price. This price is set by thousands of participants in free market dynamics all over the world. It is true price discovery. This makes Bitcoin as different as could possibly be to the current money system.

The best way to get bitcoin is to get your customers to pay you in bitcoin for your goods and services. Setting this up is as simple as downloading an app on your phone and can easily be expanded into existing Point of Sale systems in more complex configurations.

In closing, think about the money you use for daily transactional purposes, and separate that from the money you use for long term savings to secure your future. Saving in money that inflates away is like holding a melting ice cube in your hand.

Choose where to store your savings, its your future.