Real Vision co-founder and macroeconomic expert Raoul Pal says that Bitcoin’s network creates a stronger grip on its users than Facebook.
In an interview with Layah Heilpern, the macro guru notes that companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook have long deployed behavioral economics by rewarding users with dopamine hits after they get a “like” or a “follow.”
But Bitcoin, according to Pal, is the ultimate version of this system because it rewards users who join the network with capital instead of vanity.
“Bitcoin is the perfect behavioral network because it rewards you in money. The more people you bring into the network, the more your money goes up. That by definition will create tribalism because everybody’s now incentivized for their network to go up more than the other network and for all other networks to fail.
It is an incredibly powerful tool for building a network where you have money attached to it. So imagine if every Facebook like was a dollar, imagine what that would do. Or everybody you brought onto Facebook paid you in Facebook shares. That’s what Bitcoin is. It’s incredibly powerful and that’s why it creates narratives because like a religion, it’s all about getting more and more people into it.”
The former Goldman Sachs executive says this accounts for much of the tribalism among crypto investors.
“Once you’ve unleashed the genie out of the bottle of behavioral economics and big data, everybody figures out how to use it for different means, and it splinters everybody into different groups and it’s almost impossible to deal with because it’s a network. It’s not centrally pushed. Facebook is not centrally pushed, yes there’s an algorithm and stuff like that but its a network that everybody’s incentivized to get more people into their network because it makes them feel good by getting the dopamine hit with the likes, its crazy and that’s where we are, and Bitcoin is like the most perfect echelon of this of anything I’ve ever seen. And most people don’t really understand that.”
Pal believes the crypto market is in the early stages of a long-term bull run. He has allocated 98% of his portfolio to Bitcoin and Ethereum and predicts BTC could rise as high as $1 million over the next five years.
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