Why Scarcity and Adoption Win: From Real Estate to Bitcoin in the Age of Money Printing

The World Has Changed

Most people think that if they save carefully, they’ll get ahead. But over the past 15 years, the rules have quietly shifted.

Governments around the world have taken on huge debts. To manage them, central banks have printed enormous amounts of money. That money creation may not feel obvious day to day, but it shows up in the prices of things that are truly scarce.

On average, your money loses about 10% of its value each year. Not because of the price of bread or fuel—this isn’t “main street” inflation—but because of monetary inflation: the endless creation of new money. And that makes everything scarce and more expensive: homes, gold, Bitcoin, art, and prime land.

If your savings aren’t invested in something that grows faster than that, you’re actually getting poorer.

The Proof Is in Everyday Life

Look at what has happened to the things people value most:

• Apartments and houses in Paris, Geneva, or London have doubled or tripled since 2008.
• Gold, once $800 an ounce, is now nearly $4,000.
• Art: A Basquiat painting that sold for $2–3 million in 2008 can now fetch $80–100 million.
• Bitcoin, invented in 2009, went from under $1 to a peak of $124,000 and trades today at around $112,000.

Meanwhile, most salaries have barely moved. Wages follow economic growth, which has been stuck at around 2% per year. That’s why so many people feel like they’re running just to stand still.

The lesson: Not owning scarce assets is a recipe for falling behind.

Why Technology and Crypto Are Different

Gold, real estate, and art thrive because they’re scarce. But technology and crypto combine scarcity with adoption—and that changes everything.

• Scarcity: Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million. Ethereum has a burn mechanism that reduces supply. High-quality tech companies (like Apple or Nvidia) are scarce too: they dominate markets with unique products and deep network effects.
• Adoption: Unlike gold, these assets benefit from user growth. Every year, more people buy iPhones, use AI tools, or open crypto wallets. Crypto adoption is happening faster than the internet in the 1990s—today, ~650 million people use crypto, and by 2030, it could be over 1 billion.

And adoption matters because digital adoption compounds. Once a technology becomes useful, it doesn’t just add users—it becomes part of everyone’s daily life. Email. Smartphones. Now crypto wallets.

This is why their rate of growth far outpaces wages: scarcity protects value, and adoption multiplies it.

Why Markets Swing

If scarcity and adoption explain the long-term winners, what about the rollercoaster ups and downs?

The answer is liquidity—how much money is flowing in the system.

• When central banks add liquidity (printing money, buying bonds), markets rise.
• When they pull liquidity out (raising rates, tightening credit), markets fall.

This is why Bitcoin and tech stocks swing so wildly: they are the most sensitive to liquidity.

For governments, debt refinancing is the main trigger. Every few years, trillions of dollars in bonds mature and must be rolled over. If interest rates are too high, this creates stress. It’s like families facing a mortgage renewal: when your fixed-rate loan ends, suddenly your monthly payment doubles. For governments, failing to refinance smoothly could destabilise the entire financial system.

And that’s why central banks almost always step in. They cannot allow bond markets—the foundation of global finance—to freeze. That means more liquidity injections, even if inflation is still uncomfortably high.

So, when liquidity returns, it flows into the most responsive assets: technology, crypto, gold, and prime real estate. These swings can feel chaotic, but they are part of the cycle, and for long-term investors, they are opportunities.

Engineered Scarcity in an Age of Abundance

We are also entering an era of abundance: AI, robotics, and cheap energy will make most goods and services cheaper and more plentiful. Anything that is scarce today—whether knowledge, labor, or production—will eventually be automated.

But in such a world, scarcity itself becomes priceless.

Bitcoin is not just scarce, it is engineered scarcity. There will only ever be 21 million coins, no matter how much AI, energy, or productivity floods the system. That makes it the perfect store of value in an abundant future.

What This Means for You

The pattern is clear:

• Cash loses value every year through monetary inflation.
• Scarce assets—like gold, real estate, and Bitcoin—hold or grow their value.
• Technology and crypto add rocket fuel through adoption.

This isn’t about being a trader. It’s about making sure the money you earn today is worth something tomorrow.

A Choice for Our Generation

Our parents and grandparents could save in cash or bonds or real estate and stay ahead. We no longer have that luxury.

Today, the choice is simple:

• Stick with money that melts in the bank.
• Or own assets that governments can’t print, and that millions—or billions—of people are adopting.

Every generation faces its own challenge. Ours is living through the era of money printing. But within that challenge lies an opportunity: to own the scarce and digital assets that will define the future.

The world is changing fast. The only real question is: will you own a piece of it that will put you ahead of the rest?