I'm building Buoy — a free, independent Bitcoin-only tool to compare wallets, exchanges, merchant tools, and more by country.

Inspired by Jeff Booth’s call to spend more of our time on Bitcoin, I put that advice into action.

Why Buoy?
• See what Bitcoin-only services are available in your country and compare them
• Save time with details at a glance: KYC, fees, custody
• Free, open source, no ads, no paid rankings and V4V

Try it for yourself: buoybitcoin.com/bitcointalk

Do a comparison, run a questionnaire and let me know what you think.

Help improve it: What felt missing, confusing, or wrong. Any service we should add/remove (and why)? And if you think it sucks, tell me why too. Your feedback will help shape what comes next.

Video (90s): Demo

Bitcoin is both—but at different stages in its monetization.

Right now, it's primarily seen as a store of value, like digital gold. Why? Because the world is still anchored to fiat pricing. People instinctively want more dollars—not sats—so they hold, not spend.
But that’s not the endgame.

Over time, as more people understand that fiat is melting and Bitcoin’s purchasing power is rising, it naturally transitions into a medium of exchange. This is already happening in places like El Salvador, parts of Africa, and among people who earn in Bitcoin.

So here’s the progression:

Stage 1: Collectible (speculation)
Stage 2: Store of value (HODLing)
Stage 3: Medium of exchange (spending)
Stage 4: Unit of account (pricing)

We're mostly in Stage 2, heading toward Stage 3. But make no mistake—Bitcoin becomes money over time. Not because it forces its use, but because everything else breaks.

Bitcoin isn't designed to generate passive income. It's designed to protect you from a system where you need passive income just to keep up. That’s a key difference.

Yes, you can "earn yield" by handing your Bitcoin to someone else—but as we’ve seen (Celsius, BlockFi, FTX), yield in this space often means you become the yield. You take all the risk while others get the upside—until it all collapses.

Expecting Bitcoin to act like a bond or dividend stock is trying to force it into an old mental model. Bitcoin isn't here to give you yield—it’s here to give you sovereignty.

Over time, as the system around it continues to erode, Bitcoin’s purchasing power is the yield. No rent. No counterparty. Just patience.

You keep seeing it from the current debt-based system. Prices will keep falling against Bitcoin so even if you're late to adopt, you will get richer every year. You don’t need to out-trade the rich. You just need to opt out of a broken system and hold something that can’t be manipulated.

Asking “how long should I hold Bitcoin for passive income?” comes from the fiat mindset. In today’s system, your money bleeds value, so you’re forced to chase yield and “passive income” just to stay afloat.
Bitcoin flips that. It isn’t meant to generate yield — it’s money that can’t be diluted. The longer you hold, the more purchasing power you preserve as fiat is debased.

So the real answer: you hold Bitcoin not for income, but to step off the treadmill.

Instead of OP's two properties of Bitcoin which are exactly the same as gold, try these 5:

Open: Anyone, anywhere in the world, can use Bitcoin without asking for approval.
Decentralized: No single authority controls Bitcoin
Secure: For over 16 years, despite enormous incentives to break it, Bitcoin has remained unhackable at the protocol level.
Protocol: Like the internet’s TCP/IP, it’s a protocol — winner-take-all, layered, and foundational. These are very rare and very different from technologies, let alone companies.
Bounded by energy: Mining ties Bitcoin’s issuance and security to real-world energy, creating a hard link between money and physical reality.

Saying Bitcoin is "running away from the problem" is misunderstanding the core issue. The current problem is the money.

Inflation, endless debt ceilings, and currency devaluation are features of a broken fiat system designed to fail slowly over time. The U.S. dollar, like every fiat currency before it, is being debased to keep an unsustainable system on life support — and that hurts savers and the poor the most.

Bitcoin isn't a quick fix or a government policy. It's a parallel system — one that removes the need to trust central bankers or politicians (left or right) to do the right thing. It has a fixed supply. It's decentralized. It can't be printed into oblivion.

Sure, Bitcoin is volatile in the short term — just like any early, disruptive technology. But volatility doesn't mean failure. It means it's not yet fully adopted.

The idea that Bitcoin has to "save entire countries" or "stop inflation overnight" is a straw man. It doesn't need to do that. It just needs to offer people a way to opt out — to store value in something that isn’t tied to political cycles, bailouts, or debt monetization.

Bitcoin isn't a silver bullet. It's insurance against the failure of trust in money. And historically, that trust always fails. If you're holding only fiat in that moment, you're the one running toward the fire, not away from it.

Bitcoin isn’t just for the rich. It’s actually one of the most inclusive monetary networks ever created. You can buy a fraction and no bank or government can block your access. It protects savers — especially the poor — from inflation, which is a hidden tax that hits hardest on those without assets. In a system rigged for the few, Bitcoin offers a fair alternative for anyone willing to opt out.