Spend or Stack?
The struggle is real. Why spend Zcash if you believe it will be worth more in the future?
Here’s the thing. I don’t think spending and stacking are oppositional.
Here’s why.
Everyone’s finances are different. But at the end of the day, we can distill personal finances down to income, expenses, and stores-of-value.
There are endless ways to make a living in this world. As Andreas Antonopoulos said in a speech about money as a system of control, “All I have is my creative potential, my spirit, my productivity.” You can get paid by an employer, the government, a pension, stock dividends, or selling a service or product.
There are equally endless ways to spend that money, on housing, food, entertainment, clothing, transportation, debt, charitable causes.
And at the end of the day, what is left over after expenses is kept as a store-of-value, in dollars, crypto, real estate, stocks, metals.
Income — > Expenses — > Store of Value
Where does Zcash fit in?
If a person acquires Zcash after paying expenses, at the end of the process, it is a store of value. Then it makes perfect sense to ask “Why spend Zcash?” Because that’s your investment to retain and let grow for the future.
If a person acquires Zcash before paying expenses, and uses it to #paywithzcash, it is a medium of exchange. If you’re going to buy a website domain, use Zcash at Njalla instead of dollars at GoDaddy. If you’re going to buy hot sauce, order from FYM Hot Sauce instead of using dollars at Whole Foods. When you’re at Chipotle, you can pull out your SPEDN app instead of a credit card. Instead of being a product of big data tracking systems, you can take control of your expenses and make them private and consensual.
But what about a third option? Zcash can be acquired before and after paying expenses! Best of both worlds. If you’re buying things you’d normally buy anyway, then exchanging your capital to Zcash earlier in the process does not materially change how much gets stacked at the end of the process.
Why would you spend Zcash?
Because acquiring and using Zcash earlier in the process does give a person more financial freedom. It does give a person more protection from a broken financial system. It does give a person more autonomy over their creative potential, their spirit, and their productivity.
And because spending Zcash is not oppositional to stacking Zcash.