Bitcoin is One-of-a-kind and Has No competition.

There are no competitors in it’s quest for digital gold.

Bitcoin is a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency that has no competition in the digital currency space. Despite the emergence of other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin remains the most popular and widely adopted digital currency in the world. This can be attributed to a number of factors, including Bitcoin’s network effect, superior monetary policy, and decentralized architecture, which make it an unbeatable force in the cryptocurrency market.

One of the biggest debates in the cryptocurrency space is between Eth killers and btc killers. Eth killers, such as Cardano and Solana, seek to replace Ethereum as the go-to platform for decentralized applications, while btc killers, such as Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, aim to dethrone Bitcoin as the top cryptocurrency. However, despite the emergence of these projects, Bitcoin’s dominance remains unchallenged. This is because Bitcoin has been the number one cryptocurrency since its inception, and since the ICO failures of 2017, no one has been able to compete with its network effect.

Since the initial coin offering (ICO) failures of 2017, no cryptocurrency has emerged that can compete with Bitcoin’s network effect. The network effect is a phenomenon where a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it. Bitcoin’s network effect is strong, and it has become a “if you can’t beat them, join them” situation for many cryptocurrencies. Instead of trying to compete with Bitcoin, many new cryptocurrencies are built on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain, using it as a foundation.

Bitcoin is less like Myspace or AOL, and more like the internet itself, but for money. A base layer value transfer protocol, like TCP/IP. While other cryptocurrencies come and go, Bitcoin remains the most stable and secure digital currency in the market. This is because Bitcoin has a decentralized architecture that makes it impossible to manipulate or control. Additionally, Bitcoin’s network effect is too strong for any other cryptocurrency to challenge.

Anyone who is in crypto knows that Bitcoin is one of a kind. Sure, there are stablecoins for less volatility, and faster transaction coins for a better medium of exchange, but these aren’t trying to compete. They have different value propositions. Other cryptocurrencies are PoS or straight up scams, and they aren’t even trying to compete with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the money.

Bitcoin’s competition is actual gold, fiat currencies, and CBDC’s, all of which are flawed. While gold has been used as a store of value for centuries, it is not easily transferable or divisible. Fiat currencies are subject to inflation and government manipulation, and CBDC’s are centralized and subject to government control. The world would prefer neutral Bitcoin to Chinese CBDC Yuan.

One of the biggest reasons why Bitcoin has no competition is that any improvement in one characteristic of Bitcoin, such as improving its speed or scalability, leads to a reduction in another characteristic, such as Bitcoin’s level of decentralization or security. This tradeoff is known as the blockchain trilemma, and it is something that has yet to be overcome by any other cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin has the highest liquidity of all cryptocurrencies, meaning that it is the easiest cryptocurrency to buy and sell. Additionally, Bitcoin has the greatest number of users amongst all cryptocurrencies, giving it the largest network effects. This means that as more people adopt Bitcoin, its value will continue to increase.

Unlike every other cryptocurrency, there is no central point of failure with Bitcoin. Bitcoin has no Vitalik Buterin, no Ethereum Foundation, no Deltec bank like Tether, no fancy offices in San Francisco, no team of lawyers, no governance token, no VC-backing, no pre-mine, no small council, and no whales able to manipulate the system. This decentralized architecture has already insulated Bitcoin from attacks at the highest levels. No matter how much Bitcoin you own, you can’t change the rules, print more, censor, steal or prevent others from using the network.

Because of Bitcoin’s network effect, programmability, and superior monetary policy, direct alternatives have slowly faded away in importance. Bitcoin’s shortcomings have been accounted for within the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as scalability lightning/liquid, privacy lighting/taproot, interoperability wallets/exchanges, and energy usage mining council/education. It’s now commonly understood that Bitcoin is built for one thing, incorruptible value storage, and other crypto projects have moved on to other use cases.

Bitcoin is often hailed as the king of cryptocurrencies, and there are several reasons why it is considered one-of-a-kind and without any competition. From its inception to its current status, Bitcoin has weathered many challenges, including the emergence of new cryptocurrencies and their potential to surpass Bitcoin’s dominance. However, Bitcoin has remained the undisputed champion of the cryptocurrency world. In this article, we will discuss why Bitcoin is one of a kind and doesn’t have any competition.

Different Value Propositions

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency and is built for one thing: incorruptible value storage. Other cryptocurrencies have different value propositions, such as faster transactions or more stable prices. However, these cryptocurrencies are not trying to compete with Bitcoin; they are offering different solutions to different problems. For example, stablecoins offer less volatility, and faster transaction coins offer a better medium of exchange.

Other Cryptocurrencies are PoS or Straight Up Scams

Many new cryptocurrencies claim to have improved on Bitcoin’s design by using a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism instead of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism. However, PoS is untested at scale, and it is unclear whether it can provide the same level of security as PoW. Additionally, many new cryptocurrencies are straight up scams, preying on people’s FOMO (fear of missing out) and taking their money without delivering any real value.

Bitcoin’s Competition is Actual Gold, Fiat Currencies, and CBDCs

Bitcoin’s competition is not other cryptocurrencies but actual gold, fiat currencies, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Gold has been a store of value for thousands of years, but it has several limitations, such as storage and transport costs. Fiat currencies are subject to inflation and government manipulation. CBDCs are a new form of digital currency that is controlled by central banks, and their effectiveness is still untested.

The World Would Prefer Neutral Bitcoin to Chinese CBDC Yuan

CBDCs are a new form of digital currency that is controlled by central banks. China’s digital yuan is the most advanced CBDC, and it has raised concerns about the government’s ability to monitor transactions and control the economy. Bitcoin, on

n. Bitcoin is the most secure and immutable blockchain in existence. Its proof-of-work consensus mechanism has been battle-tested for over a decade and has proven to be incredibly resilient against attacks. In contrast, many other blockchain projects use untested or experimental consensus mechanisms that are prone to vulnerabilities and exploits.

o. Bitcoin has the largest developer ecosystem of any cryptocurrency, with thousands of developers working on its core protocol and a vast array of third-party applications and services being built on top of it. This ensures that the Bitcoin network will continue to evolve and improve over time.

p. Bitcoin has the potential to become a global reserve currency, much like gold was in the past. It’s decentralized nature and limited supply make it an attractive alternative to fiat currencies that are subject to inflation and political interference.

q. Bitcoin is the most widely recognized and accepted cryptocurrency, with a growing number of merchants and businesses accepting it as a form of payment. This trend is likely to continue as more people become familiar with Bitcoin and its benefits.

r. Bitcoin’s open and transparent ledger provides unprecedented levels of accountability and auditability, making it an ideal platform for businesses and governments to conduct transactions and manage their finances.

s. Bitcoin is a truly global currency, with no barriers to entry or restrictions on who can use it. This makes it an ideal platform for cross-border transactions and international trade.

t. Bitcoin has a passionate and dedicated community of users and supporters who are committed to its long-term success. This community provides a valuable source of support, development, and innovation for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

o. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins, which makes it a deflationary asset. This is in contrast to fiat currencies, which can be printed at will by central banks, leading to inflation and a loss of purchasing power over time. Bitcoin’s fixed supply, combined with its increasing demand, has led to a significant increase in its price over time.

p. Bitcoin is increasingly being recognized as a legitimate asset by institutional investors. In recent years, large financial institutions such as Fidelity, BlackRock, and JP Morgan have entered the Bitcoin market, providing institutional-grade custody and trading services to their clients. This has led to a significant increase in demand for Bitcoin, and has helped to solidify its status as a legitimate asset class.

q. Bitcoin has a global reach, with users and nodes distributed all over the world. This means that Bitcoin is not subject to the whims of any single government or jurisdiction, and is truly a global currency. This makes it particularly attractive to people in countries with unstable or oppressive governments, who may not have access to traditional banking services.

r. Bitcoin is becoming more user-friendly over time. While it was once difficult for the average person to buy and use Bitcoin, this is no longer the case. There are now numerous exchanges and wallets that make it easy to buy, sell, and store Bitcoin, and there are even Bitcoin debit cards that allow users to spend their Bitcoin at merchants that don’t yet accept it directly.

Bitcoin is Digital Gold

Gold was independently chosen by every society as money for thousands of years due to it’s inherent monetary properties. Bitcoin is digital gold, it improves on all of gold’s qualities, making it the best money in human history.

It will be chosen voluntarily by the market because of it’s monetary superiority.

That’s why I don’t care about convincing you to buy any. If I’m right, you’ll demand to be paid in bitcoin someday.

Bitcoin is Obvious

Bitcoin is so good you don’t believe it at first. But it is literally so obvious if you take the time to learn about it.

Bitcoin is shorting government currency, and going long on technology and free markets. Basically the easiest trade ever.

If you don’t understand the problem with our current monetary system, and you don’t understand what bitcoin is, of course you wouldn’t understand why bitcoin is the solution. But for those who have ventured down the rabbit hole and come out believers there’s no going back.

Bitcoin is the greatest monetary asset ever developed and has no competition.

I can’t believe so many people have their heads in the sand.

I had been told by many people over many years about bitcoin and yet I ignored them. When I finally realized what Bitcoin was I felt so stupid, like I was the last to know about this revolutionary game changing technology and the greatest asset the world has ever known.

After years and years and hundreds and hundreds of hours of rigorous study, I have not changed this position, and I honestly feel bad for people who don’t understand yet.

This is why I’m dedicating my life to educating others and helping them with the difficult technical challenges of bitcoin onboarding.

We’re Still so Early

We’re monetizing the future global reserve asset in real time and hardly anyone understands what it is.

Right now the tools and scaling solutions are too primitive and not liquid enough. Most people don’t understand bitcoin, don’t care about it, or worse, are steadfastly against it.

But as the ecosystem gets built out and people start building unique solutions, the simultaneous breakdown in the fiat system will propel bitcoin holders and institutions to adopt magic internet money. The 20th century financial instruments denominated in fiat currency and lubricated by government debt won’t last.

There will be a tipping point in bitcoin acceptability by merchants. Right now it’s a struggle to get businesses to use and accept bitcoin, rooted in the lack of regulatory clarity, low adoption, and volatility.

Eventually when the S curve starts to mature, and the bitcoin rush commences, everyone will voluntarily accept bitcoin as payment because it’s the best money ever invented.

By that time, the UX of bitcoin adoption will be basically flawless and it’ll be extremely easy to integrate for any online business.

The management of bitcoin too will improve. Personal private Ai assistants that we can run on a home server will become ubiquitous and will be able to manage our bitcoin for us. Maximize privacy in transactions, work to manage liquidity and sidechain staking, and overall work with the myriad of decentralized protocols, defi, bifi, nostr, for full financial sovereignty, even for people who don’t have the time to learn themselves.

Bitcoin is Immortal

A future dystopia is scary, but highly unlikely. The genie is out of the bottle and bitcoin is here to stay.

Because of the networks extremely secure proof of work consensus model, game theory incentive structure, decentralized node infrastructure, immutable consensus rules, lack of central governance, and global adoption – Bitcoin is effectively the most secure and reliable protocol outside of the internet itself.

It is extremely durable and resilient, even being considered anti-fragile as it grows stronger when facing resistance.

My favorite description of bitcoin’s over-the-top security is that it’s comparable to the entire US military being tasked to defend a small playground deep in the mountains.

Bitcoin is Inevitable

Bitcoin is the true, free market asset. If you understand free markets than you’ll see why its inevitable. A monetary policy and trustless infrastructure which can’t be coopted by factions, and instead is run automatically by a distributed network of computers.

It is extremely unique and non-replicable due to it’s network effects and unparalleled decentralization.

Bitcoin is already much larger than other crypto projects, and dwarfs all direct competitors. It’s currently worth 50% of the entire crypto market, and almost 3X more than ALL OTHER cryptocurrencies (other than ETH and Stables), COMBINED. The entire DeFi market is orders of magnitude smaller than just bitcoin.

Meaning, that all of the game theoretic shelling points onto a singular monetary good combined with the unique strengths of bitcoin, make it an uncontested champion for digital gold and the primary money of the internet.

It’s supply is capped at 21 Million coins, with only 7% to be mined over the next hundred years and with 75% of it’s current supply held by religious zealots of the technology. With a total addressable market in the hundreds of trillions, and the seamless accessibility of the technology, the supply shock and deflationary spiral will be a feedback loop for mass adoption.

Bitcoin is a Revolutionary Invention That Has Changed the Course of Human History

It’s the best money ever designed and best savings technology ever invented.

It’s extremely liquid, has a completely open global market, open 24/7 to anyone and anything anywhere, no exceptions.

All attempts at stopping bitcoin are impossible and will only slow it down. Trying to stop superior technology never works. Especially a bottom up merit based market chosen money. I wish everyone luck in trying to stop digital gold.

Even if bitcoin’s only value amounts to being a ‘store of value’ that still is an addressable market of hundreds of trillions of dollars.

If we’re talking about international settlement then we’re talking quadrillions of dollars, and if we’re talking the base layer money and monetary infrastructure for the planet then bitcoin is worth the entire economy of the future!

You see, we’re aiming for everything. Worst case scenario is still revolutionary, and there’s no going back now. 

Bitcoin’s History

Let’s pull back the timechain for a moment here…

Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, was a cypherpunk. The cypherpunks were a group of rouge anti authoritarian computer programmers, digital liberty advocates and anarchists.

Basically a bunch of computer nerds, back in the 90s, who saw the writing on the wall, and were terrified of a future Orwellian surveillance state.

So they decided to take freedom into their own hands, creating technology that no government or corporation could stop.

And digital money was their holy grail.

The cypherpunks understood that without privacy and financial freedom all other rights are at stake.

And their breakthrough in inventing bitcoin was aimed at securing human liberty far into our digital future.

Bitcoin is Designed Money

It’s a tale as old as civilization itself.

Humans can’t be trusted to maintain a currency. Throughout history we have succumb to the temptation of making money without working for it.

Go figure.

So we used technology to invent a solution. It’s literally that simple.

Bitcoin is just an invention, like email or smartphones. Except it’s a new kind of native internet money, one which has a programmatic supply cap and can’t be manipulated.

Completely designed from the ground up to be the best money ever made, and is so powerful and unique that it has no competition.

The truth is, bitcoin doesn’t give a fuck about you.

Bitcoin is software, not sentient. It operates automatically and asks no human for praise. It already has over a hundred million adopters, is one of the largest assets in the world and settles trillions of dollars in value annually.

Bitcoin doesn’t need you, and bitcoin doesn’t ask for your approval.

So why should you care at all?

Let me start off by saying my objective here is not to get you to buy bitcoin. I leave investment advice to the finance bros.

To be honest, unless you learn how to manage your keys, self custody your funds in a hardware wallet, and truly believe in the philosophy of bitcoin, you really shouldn’t be buying any.

Bitcoin is also a voluntary system, you don’t have to use it, or like it, or buy into it. Unlike government money which is imposed without consent, you are free to avoid bitcoin.

Why bitcoin? is not about why it makes a unique uncorrelated diversification hedge blah blah blah

This is a common misconception, bitcoin’s main purpose isn’t to be a speculative investment. What you have to understand is that it’s not about making money, it’s about fixing money.

Why bitcoin? More so helps explain the basics in a way that I wish someone had laid out for me.

Why bitcoin? is more like –

• “Why is bitcoin important?”
• “Why was bitcoin invented?”
• “Why will bitcoin win?”

WARNING: The passages that follow are only for the intellectually curious.

Bitcoin is a greatly misunderstood technological revolution, often getting lumped in with monkey NFT’s, dog joke coins, and scams like FTX. You often hear pundits comment that it has no intrinsic value, or that it’s only use is to be traded. I don’t blame them, bitcoin is really difficult to understand.

And yet bitcoin is the best performing asset class this year and for the last decade. It refuses to die, continuously hitting all time highs. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was worth $30 in 2011. 12 years later it’s worth $30,000. Major international corporations, sovereign nations, and billionaires have bitcoin in their portfolio, and global regulation has only gotten increasingly favorable.

If you’re still ignoring bitcoin or calling it a bubble, maybe it’s finally time to to ask why you’ve been proven wrong again and again. Our egos are a major barrier preventing us from taking that initial step to study bitcoin.

I personally don’t think you shouldn’t be allowed an opinion on bitcoin if you can’t explain what it is, who made it, and why.

But once you study it, once it clicks, once you fall down the rabbit hole, you’ll realize that bitcoin is extremely powerful, extremely unique, and extremely important.

Bitcoin is the best money in history while also being a reinvention of money itself.

Its digital, decentralized, global, free market, and open-source programmable economic infrastructure will obsolete our antiquated fiat based system.

And it’s platform of inalienable human rights will safeguard liberty and the principles of the enlightenment for all of humanity for generations to come.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Bitcoin is one of the most amazing technological revolutions of our generation. Far to few understand its significance.

Like you, I ignored bitcoin for a very long time. I thought it was an investment or some kind of money…but bitcoin isn’t what it appears at first glance.

In fact, Bitcoin is, by far, the most interesting thing I’ve ever learned about in my entire life.

And trust me — I’ve spent over a decade on the internet learning random things on the daily. Scouring obscure subreddits and diving deep into YouTube holes…and yet…nothing comes anywhere close to the beautiful complexity of bitcoin.

My entire purpose in this world is to be a bitcoin educator and consultant. I’ve firmly decided that I’m dedicating the rest of my life to this internet money project, and to help others achieve financial sovereignty.

My decision to focus my life on this project took years of research and internal debate, and I don’t take this lightly.

My ultimate goal is to inspire others to be curious about this extremely disruptive and revolutionary technology. Only if my inspiration causes you to learn more about bitcoin, will you understand why I’m doing this.

But…if you don’t believe me, or don’t get it yet, that’s ok! Trust me, I didn’t believe bitcoiners for a very long time either.

It might take 5-10 years of ignoring it and and multiple exposures before you realize.

All I want is for you to remember me as the bitcoin guy and to come to me with questions when you need bitcoin for yourself and your family.

Ok so, the thing you should know about bitcoin is that it’s not about making money.

It’s not about getting rich, and it’s not about the price.

It’s about freedom. It’s about monetary revolution. It’s about global economic disruption.

Will fiat debasement and bitcoin adoption lead to increased purchasing power? Maybe.

What I want to get across is that bitcoin is a tool of self sovereignty and a check on tyrannical power.

If you’re only here for the gains you should probably leave and invest in something you understand.

Bitcoin is the number one cryptocurrency for a reason.

It’s the largest and most secure supercomputer on earth. It’s the most secure and the most decentralized protocol in existence.

Bitcoin is the result of a fundamental breakthrough in computer science and cryptographic systems, eliminating the need for trusting in third parties like banks, corporations, and governments.

This is trust in math, trust in code, not in humans.

I knew about bitcoin for a very long time, but in hindsight…I didn’t know anything.

Knowing about bitcoin, and realizing what bitcoin is, are two completely different things!

In bitcoin circles we call this phenomena falling down the rabbit hole. It’s the process of slowly realizing what bitcoin is and then spending months and months and hundreds of hours obsessively learning as much as you can. My job is to make your fall down the rabbit hole as easy as possible.

If you’re curious.

CEO’s, politicians, millionaires, billionaires, presidents, academics, economists, computer scientists, engineers, athletes, media personal, and money nerds alike have all fallen down the bitcoin rabbit hole, and their stories are much like mine.

Once you learn what bitcoin is, I guarantee you that you’ll be completely obsessed. There’s no going back.

It took me 9 years of knowing about bitcoin, studying it, and dismissing it, before I realized.

Once I learned what bitcoin ACTUALLY was – once I fell down the rabbit hole – I too became obsessed, and would spend 4-8 hours a day every day, for over a year learning as much as I could.

I realized that bitcoin is unique, that there is nothing else like it in the history of the world.

And I’ll say that after all of my research, after hundreds of hours trying to find the catch, I’ve realized that bitcoin is completely inevitable and one of the most important projects going on right now in the world.

I’ve never been so sure about something in my entire life.

I’ve since decided I am going to dedicate the rest of my life to the digital money project. The most ethical, transparent, unbiased, and peaceful money in history.

Bitcoin solves some of the most important problems plaguing humanity.

I like to call it the Manhattan project for human freedom in the digital age.

It’s an enormous, globally coordinated, research and development initiative. An open source software project aimed at building an unstoppable internet-native monetary system.

Bitcoin is more than just the best money ever made – it’s a programmable, permissionless and indestructible software network. A tech stack which implements fair, neutral money and protects human rights for 8 billion people.

Fighting back against authoritarianism and the encroachment of a digital Orwellian surveillance state.

Bitcoin is independent 21st century economic infrastructure existing outside of the global financial system. A monetary nuclear weapon if you will, bent on destroying fiat capitalism.

There’s a lot more to bitcoin then you might realize.

Bitcoin is the most important invention in economics and technology since the internet itself, it is the internet of money and it will do to money what the internet did to information.

Bitcoin is a trust machine and is obsoleting trusted human institutions, fundamentally altering existing power structures, it’s a revolutionary invention that has changed the course of human history.

Bitcoin is a global grassroots effort to build an escape catch from government fiat currencies.

The whole point of Bitcoin is to remove humans from the issuance and control of money. And the corruption that comes with it.

Bitcoin is the separation of money and state.

Imagine the most powerful tool of civilization, pried from the clutches of the elite.

I’m mostly spreading the word because I think bitcoin is fucking crazy, I’m not saying you should buy any.

I’m here to warn you.

Bitcoin can’t be stopped, it’s a money that’s out of control.

It is by far the most secure computational network in the world, and (due to its game theoretic financially incentivized feedback loops) it will only imbed itself further and further into society.

If you don’t learn anything else about bitcoin for the rest of your life, just remember this:

No one controls bitcoin, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

And if it can’t be stopped, shit’s gonna get wild….

-Giovanni Ceva

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A product of 2112 Capital Solutions LLC

So, why is Bitcoin Important?

Bitcoin is a Radical Techno-Economic Experiment

Most bitcoiners would disagree that I start off the bitcoin story here, I’m kind of skipping to the best part. But this is something that needs to be said, and in my opinion, said right at the beginning.

I bet you didn’t know this, but Bitcoin is by far the most important project in the world for securing our freedoms in an increasingly terrifying digital world.

For you see, digital money is a whole new evolution for how money can be exploited for political ends. The potential for corruption has far reaching consequences.

I’m passionate about bitcoin because it’s literally our only hope.

Either bitcoin succeeds or the human race irrevocably falls into a technocratic dystopia.

Digital money is a uniquely novel tool where those who wield it can completely manipulate every aspect of a person’s life. Never before in history could you turn off someone’s money at will.

The ability to control people’s money, and therefore controlling all of their actions in society, is an ultimate power unique to digital money.

The power to freeze someone’s life savings, to stop a donation to a protest movement, or prevent someone from buying food, is the power to control all of society, forever.

We’re entering a new technological age, one where a few economic elites can have extraordinary power never before dreamed of by dictators of the past.

The great digital transformation brings with it great risks.

A system of this kind would be the most powerful system of centralized control the world has ever known.

That power should never be trusted with the human race.

Money is a system of control, those who control money have great power over the people who use it. As a result kings and governments have historically kept a tight control over money, just as they used to keep tight control over religion, and for the same reasons

Andreas Antonopoulos

Without monetary freedom and securing of property rights, there can be no freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, of self-defense, of privacy. Democracy itself is in risk of collapse.

This was actually my personal lightbulb moment which led me to devote my life to bitcoin.

You may think these things would be highly unconstitutional, and that they could never happen to us.

Except for the fact that history is full of these scenarios, and billions of people not in western democracies are at risk.

How many people actually stop to consider this attack vector? That we’re coming up against a great digital filter where an eternity of tyranny is at stake.

The ever growing bureaucratic state, combined with unlimited debt financing, trillions of data points from surveillance monitoring technologies and AI to process it all?

It’s a science fiction nightmare coming to life before our eyes.

Bitcoin Fixes This

It’s a defensive technology to fight back against the greatest tyrannical power the world has ever known.

I bet no one has ever told you this, but this is what bitcoin is really all about.

Bitcoin is the encoding of human rights into software. Rights which are enforced and protected for the first time ever, not by humans, but by machine.

Bitcoin is a techno-economic experiment to provide an escape hatch from the monopoly of corruptible centralized money.

The separation of money and state.

By creating apolitical, transparent, and open-source digital monetary infrastructure, bitcoin protects human freedom in our new digital age. It’s an all powerful freedom technology that seeds the destruction of digital authoritarianism.

Sound Money is a Human Right

Everyone deserves the right to be able to save their money, in a way that’s protected from seizure and debasement.

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political Constitutions and Bills of Rights.

Ludwig von Mises

With it’s 21 million coin supply cap, hard coded issuance schedule, and immutable protocol design, Bitcoin was created to be the soundest money in history.

Bitcoin is the result of a fundamental breakthrough in fintech, information theory, economics and cryptographic systems, discovering immutable scarcity. The result of which, enables the freedom of humanity from the oppressive monetary exploitation of the state.

Bitcoin is money for our 21st century digital economy, it’s fully programmable and integrated with the internet. It can be transported around the world at the speed of light completely permissionlessly and is available to all of humanity.

It’s monetary policy can’t be captured by elites in any way shape or form. It’s a completely neutral third-party technology that was built by an anonymous programmer who left the project as a gift to humanity.

Bitcoin offers immutable private property rights, a savings account, and peer to peer money to every person on earth. Money which no one can censor, confiscate, debase, or otherwise steal, ending monetary oppression worldwide.

Bitcoin is unstoppable decentralized freedom technology for humans all over the world to escape authoritarian capital controls and financial repression.

Money is the Bedrock of Society

Everyone intuitively understands this, money runs the world. It’s all about the money. Always has been. If money were to stop functioning, the fabric of society would break down.

Money coordinates practically all economic activity, and economic activity coordinates practically all aspects of life. Food, water, shelter, energy, and all of our supply chains, literally everything that requires human coordination.

Many civilizations throughout history have crumbled under monetary collapse, like hyperinflation, where the value of the currency is quickly destroyed.

Bitcoin is important because it is insurance for the global economy.

It’s money that can’t be debased, and won’t hyperinflate. It isn’t the subject to political whim and it can’t ever be destroyed.

In finance terms, you could say bitcoin is a credit default swap on fiat currencies.

The truth is, we are in the largest economic experiment in human history. Never ending deficits, artificially low interest rates, and debt to GDP levels soaring.

Ever since I was 13 year’s old, I’ve been obsessed with economics and our federal debt. The aftermath of the global financial crisis and the unsustainable debt expansion has always fascinated me.

This is the most important problem facing humanity, and no one seems to understand or give a shit.

Bitcoin offers a way out of this nonsense. An escape hatch to a better future.

Bitcoin is like Noah’s ark, it’s a parallel economic system that could absorb all of the wealth on the planet and still function as money in case of a global systematic monetary collapse.

Literally saving the fucking world.

Which in my opinion, makes it one of the most important projects in history.

Bitcoin Solves Several Immense Problems for Civilization:

Bitcoin protects property rights for 8 billion people and banks the underprivileged classes of the planet.

It solves financial crises, inflation, and debt slavery, and it defends civil rights in a future surveillance state.

It solves the shortcomings of gold, returning financial sovereignty to the individual, and it puts the spending power of state actors and large corporations in check.

It de-financializes our Ponzi scheme fiat-capitalist economy and gives everyone in the world access to the best savings technology ever invented.

Bitcoin (decentralized money) will be as important and transformative as: the printing press (decentralized production of information) the separation of church and state (decentralized religion) three branch republics and federalism (decentralized government) and the internet itself (decentralized information).

Bitcoin is the Manhattan Project for Human Freedom

Just like the Manhattan project to build the atom bomb, some of the brightest minds all around the world have come together to work on this extremely powerful technology. However, instead of an ultimate project for destruction, bitcoin is an ultimate project for freedom.

Thousands of core developers, tens of thousands of node operators, merchants, corporations, investors, software engineers, human rights activists, keyboard warriors, and money nerds have all come together to work on The Bitcoin Project.

Bitcoin isn’t just money. It’s is an enormous, globally coordinated, research and development initiative. An open source software project aimed at building an unstoppable internet native monetary system. A collection of technologies and digital infrastructure that form the basis of a global monetary foundation.

A tech stack which implements fair, neutral, digital money, available for all of humanity. Fighting back against authoritarianism and the encroachment of a digital Orwellian surveillance state.

There’s a lot more to bitcoin then you might realize.

The things that are being built are truly mind blowing, and combine to form an unstoppable network of financial services. Multi-layer scaling, privacy solutions, multi party custody, atomic swaps, batch transactions, time locks, micropayments, money streaming, insurance and options smart contracts, decentralized exchanges, decentralized market places, sovereign identity, liquidity services…

Not to bore you any more but here is a non exhaustive list of world changing bitcoin infrastructure projects that you can look up at your leisure:

Lightning, Liquid, ARK, Federated Chaumian mints, eCash, Ordinals, L402, Web 5, Stablesats, Taproot assets, Whirlpool, CTV/APO/Covenants, BitVM, Stratum V2, MPC, DLCs, Eltoo, Ark, Coinpools, Statechains/Mercury layer, Spacechains, Splicing, Channel Factories, Hierarchical channels, Spiderchains, The Enigma Network, Chainway/ZK Rollups, RGB, Radient, Prime, Miniscript, Tapscript, Spirit of Satoshi, BOLT12, LSP, Carbonado, Prisms, BTC Pay server, Munstr, Rootstock, Sovereign defi, CivKit and Nostr marketplaces etc.

Even though I’ve spent years amassing tons of bitcoin knowledge, and pondered over the nature of this invention for hundreds of hours, I still find it valuable to read and digest how other people define bitcoin.

Below you’ll find some of my favorite and most popular definitions, which combined with my own writings, paint a holistic picture of this enigma.

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First up, according to Google:

Bitcoin is a protocol which implements a highly available, public, permanent, and decentralized ledger.

In order to add to the ledger, a user must prove they control an entry in the ledger.

Google

We’ve already established that a ledger is just a list of transactions, like a spreadsheet. And we’ve already discussed that decentralized just means it’s hosted on tens of thousands of computers who all are in agreement with what’s on the ledger. Google also mentions that the ledger is ‘public’ hinting at bitcoin’s transparency, open source, and permissionless nature. And permanent to establish it’s realistically impossible to change the ledger entries.

What might still be confusing is the term protocol – an internet protocol is just a standardization of rules that allow computers to communicate with each other. Think of it like a language, a standard way of communicating. The rules by which data is encoded, transmitted, and understood by other computers. In Bitcoin terms the protocol keeps track of transactions and bitcoins, governs how that ledger is updated, and enforces the limit of 21 million coins (among other things).

Adding to the ledger just means creating another transaction that will be recorded on the blockchain. The ‘proof’ that a user controls an entry in the ledger, just means that you are in control of the keys to unlock the bitcoin vault and move the money.

Said another way, when you send a bitcoin to someone, what you’re actually doing is updating the bitcoin spreadsheet, telling all the nodes in the world that the money is moved from Alice to Bob.

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According to the subreddit r/bitcoin:

Bitcoin is the currency of the Internet: a distributed, worldwide, decentralized digital money.

Unlike traditional currencies such as dollars, bitcoins are issued and managed without any central authority whatsoever: there is no government, company, or bank in charge of Bitcoin.

As such, it is more resistant to wild inflation and corrupt banks.

With Bitcoin, you can be your own bank.

r/bitcoin

This definition leans a bit more into the token/money side of bitcoin vs describing how the ledger works.

The difference between distributed and decentralized is just that distributed only means hosted on thousands of computers, whereas decentralized means no one is in charge. A distributed computer network can still be technically centralized if there are hierarchies. In bitcoin all nodes are equal.

The fact that bitcoins are issued and managed via computer software vs a central authority makes bitcoin apolitical and neutral. Similar to if we all transacted in gold nuggets that didn’t have a face of a king on them. The advantage of a non-state peer-to-peer money is of course the absence of inflation, counterparty risk, and fractional reserve bank runs, but also full monetary autonomy, increased digital privacy, and censorship resistance.

Being your own bank with bitcoin just means running your own software to verify for yourself that the money is yours, and having full autonomy over your money without counterparty risks.

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While a bit complicated, in their Bitcoin 101 paper, NYDIG describes many bitcoin elements extremely succinctly:

Bitcoin is an open source monetary system – that is, a system for storing and transmitting an asset of value whose underlying code is fully open to the public.

This system allows bitcoin (lowercase “b”), the native digital asset of the Bitcoin network, to be sent securely between users over the internet without the need of an intermediary.

Transactions are verified and recorded in a public ledger called a blockchain through a process called mining.

NYDIG

Bitcoin is an open source system

All of bitcoin’s code is available to inspect and it’s in the public domain meaning you can freely copy and modify it. There’s no copyright protections, and you can use the code for commercial purposes. The code that bitcoin runs is visible to everyone, and so are the updates. And it’s voluntary meaning you don’t even have to accept any changes or updates if you don’t want to. Bitcoin is fully transparent for ethical reasons, but also so that it can replicate itself like a virus.

Bitcoin is a monetary system

You can send, hold, and receive bitcoin within the software stack. Just like PayPal or Venmo, or a bank account. In the same way that we have a global fiat monetary system, where money can be transferred around via payment processers and banks, bitcoin the currency can be transfered around via the bitcoin network

bitcoin lowercase b is a native digital asset

It’s a token. Bitcoin spelled with a lower case b is usually referring to the money itself, like the dollar, and bitcoin with an uppercase B is referring to the network, like Paypal. It would be fucking weird if your credit card, banking system and cash were were all just called the Dollar. But in bitcoin the network and token have the same name which can be confusing.

bitcoin is sent between people over the internet without an intermediary

Think of bitcoin on the Bitcoin network like handing someone a physical gold coin or a dollar bill. When you pay in person for something there’s no one in the middle of that transaction. All digital money before bitcoin had to go through some company or bank or government, someone you had to trust to pay you back. Someone who took fees, or took 7-10 business days, or who declined your transaction or froze your withdrawal. Someone who needs to get the money from someone else first, in a never ending chain of IOUs.

Bitcoin removes all of that garbage from banking. There’s no one in between you and the person you’re paying. The transmission is instead handled by autonomous computer code and a global competition.

Transactions are verified and recorded in a public ledger called a blockchain through a process called mining.

So mining bitcoin is a bit complicated and not something I’ll cover here. But the funny way to think about mining is that it’s like running your Xbox 24 hours a day resulted in solved Sudoku’s you could trade for heroine. Basically what you have to know is that it is the process that settles bitcoin transactions and keeps them recorded forever.

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The bitcoin network is a global decentralized consensus network which operates on a cryptographic p2p protocol – on top of the Internet – established by individuals [computers / nodes] all around the world who run the Bitcoin Core Software [free open-source software] program which enforce Consensus Rules through an process called Bitcoin Mining which relay and validate UTXO transactions and record state to an immutable append-only Distributed Ledger; Bitcoin Blockchain.

BitcoinNetwork.com

Ok this is another loaded one, but by far the most accurate and comprehensive bitcoin explanation I’ve ever found. In fact I recommend just straight up visiting bitcoinnetwork.com and reading as much as you can there.

I’ll do my best to break this out though:

Decentralized Consensus Network is a group of computers all talking to each other forming a network, the computers are all distributed around the world instead of in one place which makes them decentralized. And they reach consensus, aka agreement, on the order of transactions through math, physics and probabilities, instead of one master computer deciding on the truth.

Cryptographic just means using big numbers and math proofs to secure data. In bitcoin many parts of the network rely on cryptography, from keeping your private keys safe, to saving data, and to keeping the monetary policy stable.

P2P Protocol stands for peer-to-peer, there are no hierarchies and everyone can communicate with each other directly.

Bitcoin Core Software [free open-source] is the computer program that the nodes run to talk with each other and participate in the network. If a node is running an incompatible software, they won’t be able to participate in transactions. And open source just means it’s publically available information and anyone can inspect or redistribute it for free.

The Consensus rules are like bitcoin’s ‘constitution’ and they are rules that guide the monetary policy and system. These can’t be changed since doing so would make your node incompatible with everyone else. These rules keep the system free from corruption and inflation, and keep the system decentralized.

UTXO transactions are just a fancy way of saying transactions. UTXO’s took me weeks to understand so don’t worry if you’re confused just trust me. When you hear UTXO’s just think gold nuggets, some are little pebbles and some are big chunks of bitcoin. The way bitcoin is structured is less like a bank account and more like cash, where you have $10 bills and $1 bills and dimes and quarters etc. In your wallet you take out pieces of money. This is a lesson for another day.

An ‘immutable append only distributed ledger’ means a list of transactions that can’t be changed, only added to. This ledger exists everywhere, it’s distributed amongst many computers so there’s lots of redundancy and everyone transparently knows what the list says.

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And last but certainly not least:

Bitcoin is a collection of concepts and technologies that form the basis of a digital money ecosystem.

Units of currency called bitcoin are used to store and transmit value among participants in the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin users communicate with each other using the bitcoin protocol primarily via the internet, although other transport networks can also be used.

The bitcoin protocol stack, available as open source software, can be run on a wide range of computing devices, including laptops and smartphones, making the technology easily accessible.

Mastering Bitcoin

WOW a collection of concepts and technologies how can you get any more confusing than that!

How do you describe something which is really a collection of many things? And not just a collection of many things…

…bitcoin is a collection of many ideas.

Neutrality, Transparency, Privacy, Security, Equality, Freedom, Autonomy, Trust, Cosmopolitanism, Justice, Peace, Human rights, etc.

Bitcoin is more than just a money, it’s a cryptographic digital money ecosystem and a belief system.

On a Halloween night, 15 years ago

An anonymous and mysterious programmer, posted the solution to a computer science problem.

A problem once thought impossible to solve.

It was the invention of an all-powerful, uncontrollable, malware network.

October 31st 2008 will go down in history as the day Pandora’s box was opened

…when an irreversible curse was cast on humanity…

As it turns out, this digital invention was actually an unstoppable computer cancer

Set loose into cyberspace!

…and now…

…14 years later…

…it has spread to the point of no return.

What’s even more scary is –

This shadowy mastermind…this mad computer scientist…

Vanished.

Like a ghost.

And remains unknown to this very day.

No one even knows if he is dead or alive, and yet, this invention has made her worth of over $30 billion.

In fact, she is projected to be the richest human on earth in less than 5 years.

And their invention has changed the course of human civilization forever.

This is a Halloween story scarier than any other.

Because this story,

Is real.

The invention I was talking about ^

Well you probably know it best as “digital gold”

but isn’t gold at all…

In fact Bitcoin is actually orange

Like the color palate from the holiday in which it spawned…this Halloween nightmare has quite the interesting story ….

For you see, the unknown inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was a Cypherpunk

The Cypherpunks were a group of rogue anti-authoritarian computer programmers.

Digital liberty advocates and anarchists.

More like a A bunch of nerds! (back in the 90s) who were terrified of a future Orwellian surveillance state.

They decided to take freedom into their own hands.

Creating technology that no government or corporation could stop!

Bitcoin is the result of decades of research and development by the cypherpunks.

It is a fundamental breakthrough in computer science, information theory, fintech, economics, and cryptographic systems.

And it obsoletes our man made monetary institutions, like banks, corporations, and governments.

This is trust in math, trust in code, not in humans.

Bitcoin is the number one cryptocurrency for a reason, it’s the largest and most secure supercomputer on earth.

Bitcoin is immortal. It can’t be shut down, it can’t be banned, it can’t be hacked, it can’t be changed, and it can’t be controlled.

Bitcoin runs on its own without anyone in charge.

It’s a money that’s out of control.

It’s a virus that hijacks human greed,

A contagion that make its hosts filthy rich

Using game theory to infect the world with money beyond our control.

You might be wondering, what’s the point, why was bitcoin created? what’s the end game?

The cypherpunks designed bitcoin to end humanity’s monopoly on money.

And the corruption that comes with it.

Bitcoin is the separation of money and state.

Everyone intuitively understands that it’s all about the money. Always has been.

Imagine the most powerful tool of civilization, pried from the clutches of the elite.

Infected, outwitted, and unseated.

Bitcoin is just getting started.

If you don’t remember anything else about bitcoin, just remember this: No one controls bitcoin, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

On that fateful Halloween night, human civilization was changed forever.

Grab your popcorn, cus the next 20 years are going to be fucking wild!

Money is just the base layer of an economic system, just like BTC is the base layer of the bitcoin economy. The difference is bitcoin is also a network, a tech stack, and a protocol. Digital and programmable monetary infrastructure.

BTC is the native money of the internet, but bitcoin is much more than that. Bitcoin is the internet of money.

In order for you to understand what bitcoin is, you unfortunately have to understand what the internet is.

The Internet (or internet)^[a] is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)^[b] to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks…

Wikipedia

The internet is programmable information. It is unrestricted, global, instantly transferable information. Bitcoin is programmable money – unrestricted, global, and instantly transferable money.

The internet is decentralized informational infrastructure, bitcoin is decentralized monetary infrastructure. The internet is an information protocol that can be built upon. Bitcoin is a money protocol that can be built upon.

Bitcoin is digital public infrastructure for money, much like the internet is digital public infrastructure for information…it is owned by no one, and accessible to everyone. It is a public good that acts as infrastructure for civilization to utilize if they so please. 

Jack Mallers

Bitcoin democratizes value in the same way that the internet democratizes information.

The internet has allowed the coordination of humanity on a scale never before seen in human history, allowing for knowledge and revolutionary ideas to spread like wildfire. Bitcoin allows for unrestricted financing, pairing global coordination with unrestricted payments, fundraising, contracts, monetary autonomy and value exchange.

There’s no one in charge of the internet, there’s no central governing body dictating policy. And unlike all other cryptocurrencies, there’s no one in charge of bitcoin. This makes bitcoin the only true neutral money transfer protocol and the most similar to the internet protocol.

Bitcoin is less like an app, like AOL or Myspace, and more like TCP/IP, or UDP or SMTP. It’s part of the internet infrastructure responsible for transferring value. With bitcoin the information is the money, making it fully integrable into the internet stack.

Of course a monetary system not only needs money. It needs transfer services, it needs storage, accounting systems, exchanges, options contracts, trading platforms, insurance, crowdfunding, payment infrastructure, liquidity services, interoperable financial infrastructure etc. Bitcoin is the money but it’s also the platform where all other monetary system functionalities can be built.

Bitcoin is the Internet of money. Currency is only the first application. And it’s core, Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology that will change the world forever

 Andreas Antonopoulos -The internet of Money vol. 1

Bitcoin’s design allows for apps to be built on it’s periphery completely without permission. It’s open source and anyone can build a program that uses bitcoin and adds functionality to the network.

Complex custody solutions and transaction types unlocked by outputs like pay to script hash increase the types of possible transactions and improve user privacy and security. Upgrades to the software like Segwit have allowed for greater base chain scaling and for layer 2 solutions like the Lightning network to be built on top of bitcoin. And more recently the Taproot upgrade has unlocked additional smart contract functionality and privacy improvements to the bitcoin stack allowing for all kinds of options contracts and insurance capabilities.

Bitcoin is the Foundation of a Global Monetary and Financial system

Those examples are just scratching the surface though, the bitcoin tech stack rabbit hole goes way further than this simple introduction. From the BTC Pay server, to statechains and sidechains, to RGB, ARK, Web5, Rootstock, Sovereign defi, Miniscript, Stratum V2, Federated Chaumian mints, Ordinals, L402, Stablesats, Taproot assets, Nostr marketplaces and many more. Of course this is not even counting other projects yet to be imagined or built with additional soft fork upgrades like CTV or Cross Input Signature Aggregation.

The industries that will integrate into the internet of money are truly boundless. Social media’s creator economies, AR and the VR Metaverses, eSports, and eCommerce will all be connected this global and frictionless monetary system.

What’s truly revolutionary though is that because bitcoin is open and permissionless monetary infrastructure, the internet of money isn’t limited to just humans. AI, robots, self driving cars, smart homes, drones, and the unimagined future of the internet of things can all leverage bitcoin’s programmability and use this public internet-based money infrastructure in a digital economy completely separate from our own.

Bitcoin is the internet of money, a network for propagating value and securing the ownership of digital assets via distributed computation.

Mastering Bitcoin

The internet is a network of informational networks, bitcoin is a network of monetary networks. Different layers and protocols are being built on top, using the base layer as a settlement network and arbiter of ownership for more advanced use cases. The bitcoin stack is much more than just a money protocol, money is just scratching the surface.

If this is all still not making perfect sense to you, this is the key insight that flipped the switch for me personally and made me realize what bitcoin actually is:

Bitcoin will not necessarily be the “money” used for every transaction. It’s aiming for something much greater. Bitcoin will become the foundational protocol that the future digital economy and all global monies will be built upon.

We’re talking a new global financial and monetary system, remade on top of bitcoin. Transferring ownership of real world assets like stocks and bonds and fiat currencies themselves.

The reason this is so revolutionary is because it’s a system that’s based on the money and network being decentralized, independent, and uncontrollable.

A revolutionary economic system, built with technology. Based on rules not rulers.

The separation of money and state.

Why is bitcoin the internet of money and not the larger crypto ecosystem?

The obvious reaction to this of course is, bitcoin is just one blockchain network among an entire crypto ecosystem, why BTC and not ETH, SOL, ADA, ALGO, TRX, MATIC, ATOM, AVAX…..

Isn’t bitcoin + (insert favorite Turing complete smart contract platform) + Layer 2 rollups + defi + metaverse + corporate FinTech platforms = the real internet of money?

While yes we will have a multi-coin world, and multiple smart contract platforms and decentralized nodes and relay infrastructure facilitating communications and payments, bitcoin is by far the strongest base layer internet of money. Bitcoin is unparalleled in it’s decentralization and immutable monetary policy, it’s a Turing incomplete blockchain which prioritizes simplicity, security, and durability.

And due to bitcoin’s strong monetary characteristics, even if other blockchains carry the weight of the IoM infrastructure in the future, bitcoin will always be the gold standard, the digital gold and the golden network that’s completely uncontrollable and immutable to mankind. Combining its neutrality, durability and programmability with an immutable bedrock foundation, bitcoin takes the slow and steady approach to outlast all other monetary infrastructure. Over time the bitcoin network will adopt the successful innovations in the larger crypto space to it’s superior network, leaving other platforms obsolete.

Looking into the Future

To achieve the title of the sole money and monetary system of the future, bitcoin has many challenges ahead of itself. The entrenched fiat capitalist system and competitor crypto networks probably wont go away anytime soon. It took hundreds of years for the separation of church and state, and to think a system as complex as the global economy will be quick to transition is naïve at best.

As a pragmatist I would concede that the likelihood of full market share of the global economy within my lifetime is slim and might not happen for a hundred years. Instead, what I believe is that there will most likely be a multi-chain world and parallel fiat economy for the foreseeable future.

The reason why this is good is because bitcoin will always exist as a voluntary life raft for others to join (Instead of rapidly destroying the global economy, with bitcoin endogenously reborn from fiat ashes).

The fact that an internet based, neutral, and unchangeable economic system exists as an alternative will put a check on the expansionist policies of the other systems. They can exist in harmony as the cost of capital is rediscovered on the open market and the overleveraged fiat system course corrects.

Instead of a seismic shift and quick destruction of the old system, the bitcoin onboarding process (should) and will take time. That’s honestly what’s so exciting. We’re building revolutionary systems that will last generations.

Refrences:

From <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN4klUUx8fM>

In order to understand what bitcoin is, you have to understand what money is.

Money is a technology to move value across space, time and scales. Money stores your time and energy to be used in the future.

For example you can build cabinets and trade that for a day at a spa.

Money allows for complex exchange, trade specialization, and is fundamental for civilizations with advanced economies.

Money is in fact one of the oldest inventions of civilization itself, it even predates writing. In fact the first forms of writing were credit spreadsheets, of who owed what to whom. Money was so important in society we had to invent writing to keep track of it! It’s such a primal tool that we have even taught animals how to use it.

And it’s so ubiquitous that many of us take it for granted. 

Money is by far the most important good in an economy. It’s half of every single transaction. Not only is it extremely important on an individual level, but it’s one of the fundamental technologies in the development and sustainability of society itself.

Everyone intuitively understands that it’s always about the money. Always has been.

Money isn’t Real

Because the value of money derives not from it’s consumption, but for the use to trade it for something later, money really is completely made up. It’s an abstraction, it’s a shared hallucination, it’s not real.

Money is a shared cultural hallucination. It’s a shared delusion. We walk around and associate with other people on the basis of germ-ridden pieces of cotton printed with green ink…just by exchanging these pieces of cotton, you could create social relationships, transactions and trade– you could feed yourself, shelter yourself, etc. It’s based on the assumption that if you give me a dollar today, someone else will accept that dollar in exchange for something of value tomorrow. Value comes from the assumption that I can use it again.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Without the shared belief that something is money, it no longer becomes money. Money is the belief itself.

The real question is, why do people believe in certain monies over other ones? What makes a good, trustworthy money?

Bitcoin prioritizes trust and security for this reason. As you’ll soon understand, bitcoin was designed to be superior to all other forms of money so that it will be chosen voluntarily by the market in the long run.

The Textbook Definition of Money

The textbook definition of money is that it serves three functions: as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. i.e. you save dollars in your wallet to buy something for dollars which has it’s price listed in dollars.

This definition is good for telling us which things are used as money currently, but it doesn’t tell us anything about how to judge new monies. What’s often overlooked in this definition is the spectrum of moneyness.

For one, money is location dependent. Just because you can’t buy a soda in Pittsburg with Mexican pesos doesn’t mean pesos aren’t money.

Additionally, money sometimes specializes in one of the three functions (think of gold as a store of value and Pesos as a medium of exchange). This is because even though gold has served as money and a store of value for thousands of years, it’s heavy and not easily accepted by merchants.

All money throughout history has taken one of two forms – either physical, like a coin, seashell, salt, cigarette, necklace bead, or paper bill. Or as information in the form of a list of transactions and debts owed. A spreadsheet if you will, like a bank account, clay tablet, or credit card. 

On the internet, money HAS to be information, since it’s the informational realm, and therefore money has to be a spreadsheet/ledger. This was the great challenge in creating commodity money within cyberspace, and why it took so long for bitcoin to be created.

Bitcoin is Digital Commodity Money

The very nature of information is that it can be copied indefinitely, and before bitcoin there was no way to limit someone from just counterfeiting digital money without repercussion.

Sure you could just use fiat currency or trust a 3rd party like a bank or a corporation to keep track of your digital money, but debasement/counterfeiting of money has always been commonplace…and it’s the reason bitcoin was invented in the first place.

The true innovation of bitcoin was inventing a way to prevent digital money from being spent twice in an automated system without human control. Replicating the scarce nature of physical matter within cyberspace. Creating a new commodity that has limits on its supply, and can’t just be infinitely printed at the push of a keystroke.

This makes Bitcoin the invention of digital property. A scarce resource which is also digital.

The cool thing about digital property though is that you can build applications with it because it’s programmable. Property where you don’t need permission to launch a new tool or application, where there are no gatekeepers or barriers to entry, and where an open market of ideas can flourish.

Bitcoin is programmable money with so many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet. Due to its open source, permissionless nature, it will inspire innovation at the edges and the free marketplace of ideas can foster innovation.

Bitcoin is Designed Money

Not only is bitcoin digital, decentralized, programmable, commodity money, but it is also designed money.

Designed from the ground up with Austrian Economic sound money principles. Designed to have all of the best monetary properties, and designed to fix all of the shortcomings of gold.

Bitcoin isn’t just any money, it’s the best money ever made.

It’s sound money, it’s unstoppable money, it’s portable, verifiable, divisible, durable, fungible, and easily verifiable money.

You see, these qualities of money are extremely rare in nature. Gold was the best money for 5,000 years and yet it doesn’t even fulfill all of the traditional properties of good money.

(Which by the way, is why there was often a bi-metallic standard where silver fulfilled some of the divisibility and portability shortcomings with gold.)

Also unlike digital fiat money, bitcoin is borderless, permission-less, peer-to-peer, resistant to censorship, pseudonymous, extremely secure, and settles with cash finality.

Not only does bitcoin perfectly fit all of the traditional properties of good money, AND vastly improve on digital fiat, but bitcoin also has additional properties that were never before possible.

Bitcoin has perfect supply inelasticity, it’s programmable, it’s fully transparent, it’s unforgeable, unconfiscateable, trustless, and immutable.

Bitcoin isn’t just money, it’s the reinvention of money itself.

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