Hard Guarantees #10: Bitcoin's First Mover Advantage

Bitcoin isn't the best designed digital currency. It has primitive scripting, low throughput, leaky privacy, a user experience with a tough learning curve, and its energy model has drawn controversy. But nothing else comes close to overtaking it right now.

Hard Guarantees #10: Bitcoin's First Mover Advantage

It's not because Bitcoin is perfect. It's dominant because it has cemented its infrastructure, ideology, and collective trust. What is counter intuitive is that Bitcoin's success does not come from superior technology. It comes from consolidated credibility over time.

The most valuable network isn't always the most efficient one. We've seen this pattern emerge many times. The imperial system isn’t the most logical system the US could use. TCP/IP isn’t the most elegant protocol. HTML and JavaScript were never meant to run apps. Yet there they are dominant, entrenched, and impossible to replace without tearing up the rails underneath everything. Bitcoin may be walking that same path.



Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage isn’t just historical. It’s structural. Its network effects show up in layers:

  1. Hashrate Anchoring

More hashrate → more security → more institutional trust → more miners → repeat. Every new ASIC shipped strengthens the moat.

  1. Branding

Bitcoin has survived more than a decade of:

  • Nation-state bans
  • Internal civil wars
  • Protocol-level stagnation
  • Media cycles and moral panics

That history is itself a product that makes Bitcoin look inevitable to the next generation of allocators.

  1. Ideological Cohesion

You may not agree with Bitcoiners. But you can’t say they don’t know what they believe. That clarity draws builders with conviction, developers who want consistency, and users who want long-term, hard guarantees. That’s a network effect that money can’t buy (many have tried).



If you’re building in crypto or finance, you can either compete with Bitcoin directly or build adjacent to it. Pretending it doesn't matter is a strategic mistaking considering that it's a protocol with established economic gravity. Bitcoin’s flaws are real. Its limitations are frustrating. But its influence at the global scale is only growing over time. Every year that passes without collapse adds a layer of trust no whitepaper can replicate.

It doesn't have to be perfect or efficient. It just has to be the most dependable. So far, it's the most battle tested cryptocurrency out there.