Sander Andersen takes a deep dive into how Bitcoin is following the historic trajectory of the world's greatest commodities, such as oil, shipping, and gold. By examining the four classic phases—exploration, industrialization, institutionalization, and financialization—he explains how Bitcoin has matured from a bold experiment among cypherpunks into a market-critical, globally accepted collateral layer. Sander argues that Bitcoin is not just a new idea, but the foundation for a digital-native world, and is quickly becoming the independent, energy-secured asset at the center of tomorrow’s global financial system.
Sander Andersen is bridging Bitcoin & equity, traditional & digital, empowering family offices with investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and building a future rooted in self-reliance and longevity. He is also the founder of Finpeers and Executive Chairman and co-founder of H100, driving innovation at the intersection of finance and technology.
This is a guest blog post from Sander Andersen. The content has previously been published as a post on LinkedIn
To understand what is happening today, look at how every major commodity became a global system: oil, shipping, gold. Different assets, different centuries, but the same pattern.
Every commodity moves through four distinct phases.
This is the phase where everyone looks crazy. Oil wildcatters drilled into empty farmland. Sail traders crossed oceans without maps. Cypherpunks designed an alternative, decentralized monetary system with a fixed supply, secured by math, powered by energy and independent from institutions.
This phase proves the resource exists and can function on its own.
This is the product-market-fit phase. Oil required refineries and pipelines. Shipping scaled with vessels and containers. Bitcoin developed mining infrastructure, hardware wallets, custody solutions, Lightning rails and global settlement systems.
This phase makes the resource usable at scale.
This is the phase where the asset becomes unavoidable. Oil became essential for industry. Shipping became the backbone of global trade. Bitcoin is now becoming a balance-sheet asset through ETFs, corporations and government treasuries.
This phase makes the resource system-critical.
This is the phase where the asset becomes a market. Oil gained global pricing through futures, credit structures and long-term contracts. Shipping became standardized through financial frameworks. Bitcoin is entering the same stage with the rise of credit markets, treasury products and collateral systems.
This phase turns the resource into a complete economic system.
For an asset to function as a commodity, it must support multiple independent use cases. Bitcoin already works as a payment rail, a store of value, a lending asset, a treasury reserve and increasingly as neutral global collateral.
Bitcoin is becoming the global, independent base layer of collateral. It is emerging as the foundation for the next generation of credit, corporate treasuries and settlement. It is forming the financial layer for a digital-native world shaped by AI, robotics and global trade — a system operating outside government-controlled money.
Every financial system has a reserve collateral layer. Gold had it. Treasuries had it. Bitcoin is next.
Bitcoin is not early as an idea; it already functions across multiple domains. But it is early as a market. This is how global commodity systems are built, and Bitcoin is following the same blueprint step by step.
Bitcoin is now emerging as the next neutral collateral layer — a fixed-supply, non-sovereign asset secured by energy, independent of politics, with global settlement finality. It is the only asset capable of functioning as collateral in a digital, multipolar world where trust must come from math, not governments.