{"id":152182,"date":"2025-09-29T10:39:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=152182"},"modified":"2025-09-29T10:39:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:39:29","slug":"dana-criswell-could-bitcoin-go-to-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/dana-criswell-could-bitcoin-go-to-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"Dana Criswell: \u201cCould Bitcoin go to zero?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the strict, academic sense\u2014sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any asset that trades in a free market can be bid down to nothing if everyone walks away at the same time. But in the real world, with real people who use it, build on it, mine it, and hold it, the odds of Bitcoin hitting literal zero are vanishingly small. You\u2019d have to unwind one of the strongest, most distributed, most antifragile networks on earth. That\u2019s a tall order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about what \u201czero\u201d actually requires. It\u2019s not a bear market or an ugly headline. It\u2019s not a 70% drawdown or some exchange blowing up. We\u2019ve seen all of that many times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zero would mean a total collapse in global demand\u2014no miners anywhere, no buyers anywhere, no developers anywhere, and no one left who values a censorship-resistant, non-sovereign form of money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would mean the people who use Bitcoin to move value across borders under hostile regimes suddenly stop needing that freedom, and the millions who store savings outside of politician-controlled currencies decide\u2014overnight\u2014that political promises are good enough. That\u2019s fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut what about a fatal bug or a hacker?\u201d\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bitcoin is open-source and battle-tested. If a serious flaw shows up, the fix process is public and fast. Consensus software has been improved for over a decade by engineers who don\u2019t need permission to ship patches. Bitcoin\u2019s incentives also protect the network: miners want block rewards to be worth something, holders want sound money to keep working, and businesses want their customers to keep transacting. When incentives align, problems get solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat about governments banning it?\u201d\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some already tried. The network routed around them. For zero to happen through policy, you\u2019d need coordinated, airtight, long-term enforcement in nearly every country, across every ISP, cloud, home miner, and hardware wallet\u2014forever. Meanwhile, a single pair of people anywhere on earth with internet and electricity can still trade sats. That\u2019s the power of permissionless money: it doesn\u2019t beg for approval, it just works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cminer death spiral\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cminer death spiral\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>is another scary story that falls apart on contact with reality. If miners drop off, difficulty adjusts down, making it easier and cheaper to mine the next block. The system breathes. It doesn\u2019t require perfect conditions; it requires time and a couple of honest participants. Bitcoin has both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are real risks: savage volatility, long winters where price bleeds and headlines gloat, regulatory whiplash, custody failures, and the small but nonzero chance of a serious consensus bug. If you buy Bitcoin with leverage, park it on a sketchy exchange, or size your position so big you can\u2019t sleep, you can create your own personal zero. That\u2019s not Bitcoin\u2019s fault; that\u2019s operator error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So no, I don\u2019t lose sleep over \u201czero.\u201d I worry about something else: people selling their future for comfort today, trusting the same institutions that watered down their savings and then called the dilution a policy success. Bitcoin is the exit ramp\u2014a monetary standard that doesn\u2019t care who\u2019s in office or what promises get made. If you believe freedom is worth defending, you don\u2019t ask whether sound money can go to zero; you ask whether you\u2019re ready to hold through the noise and act like a responsible steward of your own wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the strict, academic sense\u2014sure. Any asset that trades in a free market can be bid down to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124494,"featured_media":152183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32635],"tags":[32637,32685,5],"class_list":["post-152182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dana-criswell","tag-bitcoin","tag-dana-criswell","tag-mississippi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Bitcoin-NoCashValue.jpg?fit=1080%2C723&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152184,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152182\/revisions\/152184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}