10 Reasons I Believe in Bitcoin
I discovered bitcoin a few years ago on accident while listening to Robert Breedlove answer the question, "What is money?" The question seemed almost offensive to me because I took the answer for granted. Money is the currency we use on an everyday basis. But what makes money 'money'? Who first looked at a piece of gold and though, "you know what, we should make this into a medium of exchange rather than have a complicated bartering system!" Some people believe that money is whatever the government tells them is money, regardless of it's perceived value. Somehow, our government has sold us the idea that a piece of paper backed by absolutely nothing is an appropriate medium of exchange today. It got me asking questions like, "What exactly is inflation?", and "Why can they print money for the greater good but if I do it, I'll go to jail?", and "If they can just print more money, then why am I paying taxes?"
Eventually, Bitcoin's unique properties began to set off the lightbulb moments. That list, I humbly provide you today:
1. Bitcoin is decentralized. With Bitcoin, you are your own bank. Nobody tells you what you can do with your money, or how much you can withdraw at any given moment. You need not ask permission to send it to someone on the other end of the world.
2. Bitcoin is unhackable. Your keys act as a sort of password, which in the early days got me thinking about how easy it would be to brute force a password and steal someones bitcoin. But hold on there, this isn't like other passwords. Considering that a standard private key is 256 bits long, and that the total number of possible keys would be approximately 1.16 x 10 to the power of 78...*Excited nerd noises*...that means there are around 116 followed by 78 zeros after the decimal point possibilities for a 256 bit key. The theorized quantum computers would take thousands of years to hack into a single wallet that would actually contain any kind of amount in it.
3. Bitcoin is inflation-proof. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. When necessary, it can split into smaller fractional coins, but nobody will ever be able to create more bitcoin. How do I know? It's hard coded into the program, and a change to the program would create whats called a hard fork and would no longer be bitcoin.
4. Bitcoin is a fair/moral money system. If you ask your bank for a loan today, they don't pull that money out of their reserves to fund your project. They create that money out of thin air, making you coplicit in their inflation scheme which ultimately devalues the dollar of everyone around you. The system makes you steal your neighbors money. It's designed that way. Bitcoin solves this problem.
5. Bitcoin is the hardest money ever created. As valuable as gold is, it's not super convenient in its ability to be moved or to be fractionalized. There is also the possibility of someone striking a mine that floods the market with never before discovered gold which will drop the price. With Bitcoin, moving money is easy and getting even easier as technologies build upon its foundation. In fact, as of today, Bitcoin can now work offline through an organized radio mesh network, so even if the internet went down, I'd still be able to send my bitcoin anywhere in the world.
6. Bitcoin is corruption-proof. Every single transaction ever sent to the blockchain is viewable as a public ledger to any human with an internet connection. In addition to this, anyone can host their own node ledger so as to not be dependant on someone else's ledger. Those who are guarding the ledger and what is placed on it are incentivized to keep it clean. We can talk about miners and node runners in another article.
7. Bitcoin can't be regulated by governments. When government overreach comes full force and blocks you from accessing your bank account because of your convictions and opinions, having an asset that is easily and psuedononymously (and usually completely anonymously) traded can be the difference between life and death. Ask a Canadian trucker. When the government decided to instruct Canadian banks to freeze the assets of its own citizens, the banks complied. Then humanitarian efforts kicked in with GoFundMe to make sure these truckers were able to eat and stay warm...but the government confiscated those assets as well. Finally, some bitcoiners got together and started funding the truckers in the area, setting them up with bitcoin wallets, and as much as the government tried, there was nothing they could do about it.
8. Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. It is ground level protocol that is as foundational as the internet herself. It's the only digital currency out there that has no upper management pulling strings and changing rules at a whim.
9. Bitcoin is helping millions around the world. Most people in the world have no bank account or way to identify themselves sufficiently enough to get one. Bitcoin helps the helpless. In times of hyper inflation, it has been the one asset people could reliably access even if the powers that be tried to stop them. Bitcoin is banking the unbankable and funding those most in need.
10. Bitcoin is unconfiscatable. As much as our overlords would love to have backdoor access into your wallet, they can't do that with Bitcoin. We've seen massive ignorance come out of capital hill by means of people like Elizabeth Warren trying to pass legislation banning private custody. Your wallet key, which is comprised of 12-24 words is UNIQUELY yours, completely memorizable, and not dependent on a single piece of hardware or software to access your funds whenever you need them.
**Bonus** Bitcoin is inevitable. We are witnessing the complete destruction of the fiat financial world, and people are flocking to the only money that was engineered specifically to be perfect money. It has a fixed amount making it a scarce asset, it is durable, portable, infinitely divisible without compromising it's fixed amount, storable, impossible to counterfeit, and is rising in global adoption each and everyday.
It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. -Satoshi Nakamoto
Feel free to contact me with any questions.