If Bitcoin were perfectly distributed it would show that government printing is the effective imposition of perfectly regressive taxation. Instead its value is the product of an ever-changing mathematical function of government-run energy theft. Bitcoin will never be a reliable store of value because it is not backed by any military, and we live in a world where the government with the best weapons—the kind Trump liked to tease on Twitter—constructs the money exchange equation. The biggest beneficiary of demand for safety is America because the best protection available is priced in US dollars.
If everyone started out with the same amount of Bitcoin in a post-war world, it could be the perfect currency. But Bitcoin can't be perfectly distributed since it’s totally decentralized, and it can’t hold value because war is not yet obsolete. If an altruistic alien superpower suddenly took control of all Bitcoins with true quantum computing tech and perfectly distributed it across the world, we might have conditions for a global payment network built on total transparency and fairness. Of course, this would be less advantageous for both developing countries and past superpowers dying to return to their glory days.
Putin exposed the depths of American privilege—not because we never had it good before but because shelter is appreciated when storms rage. Not all of America's citizens enjoy shelter under the Fed-backed TARP, and many lack shelter altogether. But in war, America's soiled concrete in its most broken-down cities will command a premium. Infrastructure will be stress-tested around the globe as tensions fuel the need for protection and currencies reveal their true weight.
If Bitcoin ever took off, only after it’s too late would its sincere adherents realize that maximizing fairness against growth in an imperfect and unpredictable system fosters a race to the bottom, notwithstanding the fact that one often hodles with the hope to exit the system itself. But Bitcoin's success would cause total economic collapse; intelligent leadership would never let it happen. It might be worth remembering that Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the criminalization of holding gold when conditions demanded it just like Nixon announced America's foray into the nominal world of fiat when conditions demanded it. Bitcoin may have the potential to unassailably record the placement of one's energy in its trust, but it does not have any inherent ability to safeguard its value. The immutable ledger will simply record the sudden depletion of hodler energy the moment conditions demand it.
Conditions may not demand it for some time, because while war stays on the table, the most attractive currency will continue to be the one backed by an aggressive twelve-year-old-boy-scout’s wet dream of a military network. As more MAD-modified war rages, where money is needed to purchase protection, people and corporations will get paid in cash or credit, but probably not much in Bitcoin. It doesn't matter that the keys to the safe are in your head if nobody wants what's inside the safe. What's inside the safe is an idea that nobody will pay for unless they think they can sell it. Demand for physical security amid high rates will make explicit the real weight of America's dollars. The world repositions its cannons with great cost paid for once again most dearly by the poor. But as governments lift the heavy boot of low rates and QE, deflationary pain will trickle up much faster and more effectively than inflationary “pleasure” trickles down, and the other shoe (this one is actually a suede chukka) will drop.
Bitcoin will never win in a world where war can exist because power is protection, and power denominates in its own currency.