Welcome to Why Bitcoin. Each article in this series is:
- Short — only 2–4 minutes at most to read
- Entirely accessible to newcomers to Bitcoin
- Offers some new perspective to even the most experienced Bitcoiners
Bitcoin is a vast subject, with countless facets, angles and perspectives. It can be looked at, thought about and appreciated in many ways. By writing very short pieces I hope to take a single snapshot of Bitcoin from a different perspective with each one, so that the reader may upon finishing, better understand the whole.
I hope you find these articles helpful, informative, enjoyable and…
The Battle Bitcoiners Face
Bitcoiners today are caught in a battle.
On one side we see hope for a beautiful future. On the other we see collapse and misery.
We see potential heroes and we see betrayals by these hoped for heroes. We see outright villains in the most powerful positions in the world, yet are shocked that others do not see them as such.
We ask ourselves “Why?”
We often arrive at the conclusion that the money is broken and if we fix the money we will fix the world. …
A Love Story
To all my Medium subscribers, I have written a piece that has been published exclusively in Volume 11 of Citadel21.
It’s a Bitcoin love story.
It’s not safe for work, especially the opening paragraph. If you can’t handle the ‘F’ word, it’s not for you.
It’s different. I hope it’s startlingly original. Early readers told me it made them laugh out loud and moved them emotionally as well.
Here then, without any further excuses or delays, is Satoshi and Me
The difference between seeing “toxicity” and “integrity” is in the eye of the beholder, and the choice of label says a lot more about the beholder than it does about the people they are labeling.
Bitcoiners Often Get Accused of Being “Toxic”
Over the course of several days, between May 14th to May 16, 2021, an interesting thing happened that can teach people a lot about the bitcoin community. Bitcoiners en masse turned against folk hero Elon Musk — encouraging him to leave Bitcoin and to sell his billions of dollars worth of bitcoins (including those owned by Tesla).
News coverage was quick to label this as yet another example of bitcoiners as toxic and, as usual, the headlines got it all wrong about us again. So I’m writing this to set the record straight.
Here’s a tweet from an honest bitcoin…
Why Create Bitcoin?
Why did anyone bother to create Bitcoin? What problems were they trying to solve?
If you’re new to this idea of a digital asset that has something to do with the mysterious field of cryptography, these are some of the questions that are probably on your mind.
That is if you’re even asking questions rather than getting caught up in the excitement of something new you don’t understand, but heard you could get rich from.
Bitcoin was created to serve a very specific purpose. Bitcoin was engineered to serve that purpose precisely.
The purpose of creating Bitcoin was to provide…
Let’s Use Our Imaginations
Imagine a company that had great engineers and developers all volunteering to work for free out of their passion for its product. Imagine also that they each had purchased an ownership stake in it.
Suppose the volunteers also included mathematicians, philosophers, teachers, entrepreneurs, risk-taking adventurers and even all the users of the company’s product. And nobody took any salary.
No Bosses, No Job Descriptions, No Discrimination
Why stop there? Let’s also imagine that there was no structure to this company. Nobody hired or fired anybody. Volunteers would simply show up, contribute what they could, whenever they could. Full time or part time. Permanently or temporarily.
There would…
You’re Magnificent
You are magnificent! You’re a once in the history of the universe event. Nothing quite like you has ever existed before. And when you’re gone, nothing exactly like you will ever exist again.
When you’re truly being yourself, nobody can do what it is that you do in the special way that only you can. Nobody can appreciate the joy of it quite as much as you can, because only you fully experience you being yourself. You’re unique, and special and extraordinary.
You’re here to do what you do and to enjoy getting to do it, and also to be…
How Sending Money Using Banks Works
Your bank holds your money. They also hold the money of lots of other people. When you send money to one of those people the bank takes it out of your account and gives it to the other person’s.
However, your bank doesn’t hold everyone’s money. To send money to someone who has an account at another bank, you need your bank to have an account with that bank. …
We Fear What We Believe is Dangerous.
The purpose of fear is to keep us away from that which will harm us. However, we have no way of automatically knowing what can harm us. That which is unknown to us may be dangerous or beneficial. We need to somehow learn which it is, and under which circumstances. A knife is a good example. It can be quite dangerous, but when we learn to wield it safely it is a tool we can use to prepare food, which is beneficial. We often start life fearing knives, but come to view them merely as useful tools.
Learning is a Gradual Process
The first time…
“I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, … we can’t take it violently … all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.” — F.A. Hayek 1984
Don’t Fault Bitcoin for Being Complicated
Bitcoin came into existence in 2009 in a very complicated world. That world was already built on a shaky foundation made up of extremely complicated entities and processes. It was a world of central banks, organizations that aren’t private but also aren’t public. It was a world containing over a quadrillion…
