Bitcoin. Not crypto

Good morning everyone,

I want to take a couple of minutes to dive into the why in relation to why Bitcoin, not crypto. Having been following bitcoins development since price was around $300USD, i understand the temptation of shitcoins.. excuse me.. highly esteemed pieces of technology often referred to as alt coins, or crypto currencies.

They seem so much more dynamic and exciting. People use flashy terms like Web 3 and often have a great story to tell as to how this new thing is going to change the world. Whether it be supply chains, collectibles, identification or doggie meme coins that are going to go to a million bazillion, in dollar terms.

When they move in price, they are best thought of as an emotional younger sibling to bitcoin. So when they go up they go up in a more emotional (volatile) way, and likewise when they go down - it’s normally a fairly nasty face melting affair.

People often want to assign a reason why something is going up or down, it’s in our basic nature to do this so as we crave certainty. X is going up today because fill in the blank about some news that is circulating. But the truth is that markets are made of millions and millions of different participants. All we can be sure of is that price is moving because of an imbalance between buyers and sellers. More sellers than buyers, price goes down. More buyers than sellers the inverse is true.

This demonstrates the roll psychology has on driving markets. As it is by influencing your beliefs about the world, that drives you to want to buy or sell something.

In my opinion, many, infact the vast majority of “Crypto” projects prey on this vulnerability of unsophisticated market participants by telling great stories and doing heaps of marketing to hype up xyz crypto shitcoin. This is not to say you cannot make money buying and selling these things, but the reality is that most will not. Compared to this Bitcoin can look a little less exciting to some.

This works when you don’t properly understand Bitcoin and how powerful it actually is, but once you do, your mind just like an operating system is much less vulnerable to these speculative attacks compelling you to purchase the latest dog coin.

Simply put, bitcoin is the most sophisticated monetary network that has ever existed throughout human civilization. From a technical point of view most notably Bitcoin solves the double spend problem, but is really an accumulation of 40+ years of innovation and solving computer science problems. It is the very first ever realization of true digital scarcity. The decentralized architecture of the bitcoin network fundamentally seperates it from all other crypto projects.

Bitcoin has no CEO. Bitcoin pays no marketing team. No one “owns” the network. No single party controls the network. There is no Bitcoin founder to call up when there is a problem. Bitcoin is not raising Venture capital from individuals that may wish to influence how the network operates or the properties it can exhibit, like creating more bitcoin for example beyond the 21m supply cap. Bitcoin can not be subpoenaed to appear in any court or to explain itself to any minister or member of parliament or Congress. There has been no preferential treatment as to who can or cannot mine bitcoin and giving unfair advantages to anyone over any other network participant. It is a truly decentralized and distributed network that anyone can opt-in to at anytime, or exit at any time, and is completely neutral to any such interactions.

Despite this, bitcoin has run basically flawlessly for 13 years. Block after block continues to be mined. Transactions sent and received. The rules of the network continue to be adhered to. The protocol continues to be developed and built upon in a completely free, open and public way. And as more people start to realise the significance of this innovation, the price in USD terms continues to appreciate. As this happens not only is the level of decentralization maintained, it actually increases as more and more participants join the network.

https://bitnodes.io/ is a great site to see the distribution of nodes visually.

It is this true decentralization that fundamentally separates bitcoin from all other “crypto” currencies, and the lack of a centralised point of failure that gives it such wide reaching implications and is a big part of the reason it can serve as the most sophisticated form of money we have ever had. It is a system maintained by tens of thousands of nodes all around the world, that is growing faster than the internet in the 90’s, and there is no off switch.

For the first time you do not need to trust a 3rd party to secure your wealth, and the purchasing power of your wealth can not be scraped away from you as an invisible tax in the form of inflation. We have a vehicle that can truly preserve purchasing power without leaking value, across time.

This change can fundamentally reorganise how we prioritise issues individually and within society from focussing on the short term and being incentivised to take on risk in a search to preserve purchasing power as our money is not able to serve as a store of value across time as governments continue to issue more currency and inflate it away to infinity thus eroding purchasing power over time, to lowering our time preference and prioritising the future, and operating in alignment to the laws of nature whereby resources are not infinite and adopting a more sustainable way of life that does not depend on never ending growth.

The implications of this technology and the change it can usher in are so large, it’s difficult to truly grasp. Most people could not imagine a world where money is not linked to, and controlled by a nation state. But just like the separation of church and state, bitcoin will help us to seperate money and state over time. This in essence means a fundamental redistribution of power and the power dynamics of the world as we know it. From the few to the many.

In my opinion, this is a better future, and one we are moving toward whether the legacy institutions like it or not. Wishing you all the best, and hope you have a great day.

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