Our CEO, Rahul Pagidipati, believes in “radical transparency”, so we’ve decided to tell the world what he’s been telling the leadership team in private:
Bitcoin will reach Rs 1,00,00,000 by 2030. And we should help every Indian own some.
One crore by 2030. Bitcoin just crossed 9 lakhs. 90 lakhs in 9 years is certainly possible.
No one can predict where the price of Bitcoin will go, but at ZebPay we’re betting on this mission: to help every Indian—not just the wealthy—to own some of this new form of wealth and opportunity.
If Bitcoin does reach a crore, there will be many new crorepathis. But if the rest of us can buy even Rs 100 a month of BTC for the next decade, our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren could be transformed.
Did you know you can buy just 100 rupees’ worth of Bitcoin at a time?
There should be no haves and have-nots in the economy of the future.
Why is Bitcoin so special?
The other day Rahul shared a quote on our company WhatsApp group from 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout:
Find a niche, get there first, otherwise, you will face an uphill battle. Everyone remembers the first man on the moon, no one remembers the second.
There are many examples in history of brands who were able to maintain their market position because they were there first.
Bitcoin was there first. There was nothing Bitcoin-ish before it. Electronic payments existed, but none of them had the decentralized structure, none of them eliminated the need for a trusted third party, none of them had blockchain. All other cryptocurrencies are variations of Bitcoin.
ZebPay was the first exchange to make it easy for Indians to buy Bitcoin. After 6 years, we remain focused on our first mission.
Two-thirds of Indian crypto owners bought their first Bitcoin on ZebPay. Rahul and the Z Team see that as a sacred trust.
It’s like the Indian invention zero
Chaturbhuj Temple, Gwalior carved around 875 CE.
Photo: ccarlstead
It’s easy to forget that in the process of inventing Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto also invented blockchain. And arguably he invented decentralized triple-entry accounting. That’s quite a hat trick for one white paper.
Bitcoin filled a basic human need. As Robert Breedlove wrote in a Medium post:
Many believe that Bitcoin is “just one of thousands of cryptoassets”—this is true in the same way that the number zero is just one of an infinite series of numbers. In reality, Bitcoin is special, and so is zero: each is an invention which led to a discovery that fundamentally reshaped its overarching system—for Bitcoin, that system is money, and for zero, it is mathematics. Since money and math are mankind’s two universal languages, both Bitcoin and zero are critical constructs for civilization.
Bitcoin is like zero, India’s gift to the world. It allows human beings to do things we couldn’t do before. It allows us to evolve.
Every ZebPay employee is encouraged to personally invest in Bitcoin. Why? As Rahul says, “You shouldn’t work at a restaurant if you don’t like the food”. Besides, investing in Bitcoin is not just buying an asset that may have value in the future. It’s more like investing in the future—in all the inventions and freedoms which Bitcoin can make possible. The Bitcoin future, if you will.
Why shouldn’t every Indian have a bit of Bitcoin for the future?
World-changing new ideas are an old Indian tradition. Nothing could be more Indian than a new and better form of wealth like Bitcoin.
Indians invented zero.
Indians invented steel in the 6th century BCE, known as wookku in Tamil.
India won its independence by inventing a new weapon for defeating empires: satyagraha.
Mahatma Gandhi coined the word. It means “holding firmly to the truth”: the truth that democracy is our birthright, that no one has the right to control and exploit another, that nonviolence can defeat violence (if you use it properly).
While the world chased the atomic bomb, India invented a way to end war and proved that it works. The old order had Hiroshima. India had the Salt March.
When the world most needed it, Indians invented a nonviolent way to overthrow bad governments and start stable new democracies. And do it with style.
Why shouldn’t India welcome a financial satyagraha?
Bitcoin is a pretty desi concept, if you think about it. No one group can control it. Everyone has to agree (mostly). The process is a little confusing and can even seem jugaad until you understand it. And its origins are almost mystical. We’re not saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Indian and her real name is Santhoshi Nagamuthu. But it wouldn’t be that crazy, would it?
1 crore & 1.3 billion
When Rahul talks about ZebPay’s mission to prepare for the rise of Bitcoin’s value to 1 crore, he always ties it to the other half of our mission:
We must make Bitcoin easily available to all 1.3 billion Indians.
One of Bitcoin’s great innovations is that it is inflation-proof. Inflation takes wealth from the poor and middle class, silently, secretly, and shifts it to the wealthy few. Much the way the British Empire drained India’s wealth for centuries. Inflation is a machine for creating poverty.
Gandhiji often said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence”. Bitcoin offers a nonviolent way of storing, exchanging, and creating wealth.
Bitcoin is satyagraha. With it we can hold firm to the truth that the wealth you produce by your sweat and creativity must not be stolen from you by inflation and financial engineering. That each of us has equal value no matter what a bank or government might say. That we are, without needing anyone’s permission to be, free.
