By @AnilSaidSo
As the markets go through a 'correction' and many crypto novices are experiencing their first serious 'dip'....we thought it would be worthwhile re-running this piece by @AnilSaidSo explaining what BitCoin is and why we need it!
Bitcoin is the sponge with unlimited absorption. Soaking up the world’s capital, protecting purchasing power.
Bitcoin is a monetary hurricane. Increasing in intensity offshore, striking jurisdictions suffering from droughts of political trust. Shocking stale & over-burdensome institutions, dislodging underutilized capital.
Bitcoin Knowledge Stack:
6. Mechanics of Bitcoin
5. Evolution of money as a technology
4. How demographics, institutions & technology interact
3. Lenses for viewing problems + opportunities
2. Advancements in energy conversion drives change
1. How humans cooperate
Software is 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 eating the world. Bitcoin is dematerializing store of value assets the same way that smartphones dematerialized consumer goods.
Throughout history, individuals and empires have benefited by stealing value from the rest of society through distorting the money. It should therefore come as no surprise as to why someone in power might oppose a money that cannot be debased, inflated or manipulated.
"When a central bank compromises the scarcity of money they’re corrupting the denominator of prices- the system through which we communicate. The price signal is best conveyed in a money that has ideally zero unexpected supply change, that'd be the perfect money."
"There's never been an example of a $100b dollar monster digital network that was vanquished once it got to that dominant position. Find a digital dominant network that dematerialized some fundamental thing. Bitcoin is the monetary network."
"Bitcoin is a radical break from the past, so understanding the way traditional money works doesn’t help you understand bitcoin. If anything, it hinders [it] The people who understand bitcoin the least are monetary economists. They cannot wrap their heads around it."
"When you have a million people in the US who have seen tremendous gains in their bitcoin in your constituency saying ‘don't attack this, you’re hurting my pocketbook’.. it’s going to have a big impact on the message to the people who get elected to congress."
Bitcoin is like the board game Monopoly but instead of unlimited money & limited assets, there's limited money & unlimited assets. The value accrues to the money.
Computing unleashed the power of 𝘻𝘦𝘳𝘰 marginal cost of replication at scale. Bitcoin unleashed the power of 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦 marginal cost of replication through the invention of absolute scarcity.
“The genius of Bitcoin,.., is not in creating any new abstruse mathematics or cryptographic breakthrough, but in putting together decades-old pieces in a semi-novel but extremely unpopular way." -@gwern (Bitcoin Is Worse Is Better)
"The road to serfdom consists of working exponentially 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 in order to earn a currency growing exponentially 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘳."
"In computer science, a protocol is a ruleset that governs the transmission of data. The internet...is an integration of four successive layers of open-source protocols. In this context, Bitcoin can be considered the fifth layer of the internet protocol suite."
"Digitization is advantageous across all five traits of money. Bitcoin: 1. "can be infinitely subdivided and recombined at near-zero cost" 2. "can move at the speed of light" 3. "is absolutely scarce" 4. "is objectively discernible" 5. "does not decompose".
About the author
Anil is an independent bitcoin educator based in Canada. He holds an MBA, CBP and was part of MIT's inaugural FinTech certificate cohort. He's guest-lectured at Business schools and launched the first Bitcoin-specific university scholarship in Canada. His focus is on simplifying concepts through visuals and storytelling to make bitcoin easier to comprehend.
You can follow him on Twitter @anilsaidso
You can pre-order his book representing approximately 3,000 hours of research, teaching, writing and design in an effort to best communicate Bitcoin as a concept.
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