My Bull Case for Bitcoin, From India
I've been trading crypto for a while now. I run an algorithmic BTC trading bot, I track macro data daily, and I've spent more time staring at monetary policy charts than I'd like to admit. This post is me laying out the structural case for Bitcoin as clearly as I can, specifically for Indians. No hype, no "number go up," just the mechanics of why fiat currencies lose purchasing power by design and why Bitcoin's fixed supply makes it a rational hedge.
The Double Tax on Indian Savers
If you earn, save, and think in INR, you get hit twice. In 2000, 1 USD cost around 44 INR; today it's around 86. That's roughly half your international purchasing power gone in one generation. On top of that, the dollar itself lost about 50% of its buying power over the same period through inflation.
Your parents' FD returns of 7% sound decent until you account for both forces working against them at once. Run this forward 25 years and you're plausibly looking at 1 USD around 160-170 INR, with the dollar itself worth less too.
Why Fiat Must Inflate
Money is a claim on goods and services. If the supply of money grows faster than real output, each unit buys less. Governments cannot stop printing because welfare, subsidies, infrastructure, bailouts, debt servicing, and political survival all depend on it. Stopping money creation brings recession and unrest, so inflation is the system working as intended, not a policy mistake.
The US has seen explosive money supply growth since 2008 and again through COVID, persistent fiscal deficits, and purchasing power erosion every year. The "strong dollar" is simply the least weak fiat currency.
INR has it worse: chronic trade deficit, energy imports priced in USD, capital flowing toward stronger currencies, and an RBI constantly forced to balance growth against currency stability.
So there's a hierarchy. Holding INR cash is worse than holding USD cash, which is worse than holding scarce assets. Moving up that ladder isn't speculation; staying at the bottom is a slow bleed.
The Cantillon Effect: Why You Feel Poorer
Newly printed money doesn't enter the economy evenly. It hits banks and institutions first, pushes up asset prices before wages adjust, and penalizes savers while rewarding asset holders. Economists call this the Cantillon Effect. If you feel poorer despite working harder, that's the structure at work: the people closest to the money printer benefit first, and everyone else catches up later, if at all.
Why Bitcoin Is Structurally Different
21 million coins, hard-capped. No policy meetings, no emergency stimulus, no political overrides. Scarcity enforced by code rather than promises.
Every 210,000 blocks (roughly four years), the mining reward gets cut in half. It went from 50 BTC per block in 2009 to 25 in 2012, 12.5 in 2016, 6.25 in 2020, and 3.125 in 2024. Each halving cuts new supply while demand holds or grows, and historically each one has been followed by a major bull cycle within 12-18 months. The 2024 halving puts us early in the current cycle. By 2140, all 21 million will be mined and new supply goes to zero.
Meanwhile the demand drivers keep growing: fiat debasement, capital controls, institutional participation, generational distrust of legacy finance. More buyers chasing a shrinking flow of new coins, with an increasing share locked up by long-term holders.
The ETF approval matters here. The US approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, and BlackRock, Fidelity, and others now offer BTC exposure to traditional investors. BlackRock's IBIT became one of the fastest-growing ETFs in history. For Indians, the signal is irreversibility. When BlackRock (over $10 trillion in assets) puts its name behind Bitcoin, the "it's a scam" narrative gets much harder to sustain. The ETFs also create a stickier demand base, since pension funds making multi-year allocations behave differently from traders flipping positions.
Note what Bitcoin doesn't have to do. It doesn't need to be a daily currency, a payments rail, or a banking system. It only needs to work as a superior store of value. Gold did that job for 5,000 years with worse properties: harder to verify, transport, and divide, and impossible to send over the internet.
Every policy failure helps the case. Each time a government prints too much, a currency collapses, or capital controls trap people's savings, Bitcoin's pitch gets stronger without anyone doing anything.
How to Size BTC in Your Portfolio
This is where most Bitcoin content fails. People either tell you to go all-in or dismiss it entirely, and both are wrong.
If you're skeptical but open-minded, 1-5% works. At a 3% allocation, BTC going to zero costs you 3%, while a 10x gains you 30%. The asymmetry works even at small size. If you understand the macro case and can stomach 50-80% drawdowns, 5-10% is where most informed investors should probably sit. 10-20% takes strong conviction, a long horizon, and income that can replace losses, which usually means younger investors comfortable with extreme volatility. Above 20% is concentrated conviction; at that point make sure your job, emergency fund, and basic needs don't depend on that money.
Addressing Indian Objections
"RBI will ban it." They tried in 2018. The Supreme Court overturned the ban in 2020, calling it unconstitutional, and the government then chose taxation over prohibition, which implicitly legitimized crypto. A full ban looks unlikely at this point.
"It's just gambling." Compare the two bets. With Bitcoin, a scarce, globally traded asset with 15+ years of track record, you're betting on scarcity. With INR, you're betting on a government's ability to not overprint, while your FD returns fail to beat inflation. One of those bets has a much better record.
"I don't understand the technology." You don't understand SWIFT either, and you wire money anyway. Same with TCP/IP and the internet. What you need to understand is the economics, not the code: fixed supply in a world of infinite printing.
"It's too volatile." Zoom out. On 4-year timeframes, BTC has never lost money for anyone who held. Volatility is the price of admission for asymmetric returns.
How to Buy and Hold BTC Safely in India
- Buy on a reputable Indian exchange (CoinDCX or similar) for the INR on-ramp.
- Then move it to self-custody. The WazirX hack made the lesson expensive: exchanges are for buying, not storage.
- Above 50,000 rupees, get a hardware wallet, Ledger or Trezor.
- The seed phrase lives offline, on paper or metal. No photos, no cloud.
- DCA like a SIP, weekly or monthly, instead of trying to time entries.
- Track your taxes. The 30% rate hurts, but penalties for non-compliance hurt worse.
How This Plays Out
The cycle is straightforward: governments increase money supply, fiat purchasing power declines, citizens look for protection, capital moves into scarce assets, and Bitcoin absorbs the marginal demand. The price doesn't respond smoothly. It moves in violent repricing cycles, long stretches of nothing followed by sharp moves that reset the consensus price level.
Bitcoin is not guaranteed to win. Fiat, though, is built to lose purchasing power over time, and that asymmetry alone makes a BTC allocation rational rather than speculative. For most people that means 3-10% of the portfolio, sized up only if you have the conviction and the stomach for the drawdowns.