Bitcoin is a free, neutral, global, scarce, censorship-resistant, programmable, peer-to-peer money.
Humans have used stones, seashells, salt, pearls, animals, precious metals, paper, cigarettes and plastic as money, but only Bitcoin combines all characteristics of good money: scarcity, divisibility, mobility, verifiability, fungibility, longevity, censorship resistance. It‘s the best money that people have ever used.
1 – Bitcoin is energy and time.
Everything of value (except fiat money) consumes energy and time: your sleep last night; reading my post; building your house. How can you plan for your future and for the future of your children, if money can be created out of thin air? Bitcoin is different. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work. You need energy and time to increase the supply. You know how many coins will exist in 10, 50, 100 years. Bitcoin’s inflation will never be higher than the current 1.7% and will halve every 4 years.
2 – Bitcoin is scarce.
Bitcoin solved the double-spending problem. You can copy an MP3 or PDF a million times, but you can’t copy a Bitcoin. In order to spend the same Bitcoin twice, you need to control more energy than the rest of the (Bitcoin) world together.
Your coins will always be a share of max. 21 million. No gold and no fiat currency can promise that.
Bitcoin is the only commodity where an increase in price (due to higher demand) does not lead to an increase in supply (and thereby dilution). This is due to the mining difficulty adjustment. And after the 2024 Bitcoin halving, the annual supply increase for Bitcoin will be lower than for gold. Bitcoin is better at being gold than gold is.
While the Turkish Lira lost 85% of its value against the Euro (09/18/2013 – 09/18/2022), the Euro lost 99.5% of its value against Bitcoin during the same period.
3 – Bitcoin is peer-to-peer.
Bitcoin transactions are working peer-to-peer without intermediaries like VISA or Mastercard who take 2% of your money.
Bitcoin is a solution for the 2 billion people without bank accounts. Bitcoin is hope.
4 – Bitcoin is borderless.
Bitcoin doesn‘t know frontiers. With Lightning (an open source, second layer solution using the Bitcoin network as settlement layer) you can transfer money from one country to another in seconds that costs you a fraction of 1 cent.
The alternative – Western Union – takes fees of 10-30%, which was one of the main reasons for El Salvador to introduce Bitcoin as a legal tender (official currency).
Bitcoin is the only money you can use for cheap and fast transfer over space and over time. I hope our children will grow up in a world without knowing what „three to five business days“ means.
5 – Bitcoin is privacy and self-responsibility.
Bitcoin guarantees privacy. It‘s the realized mission of the cypherpunks from their 1993 manifesto: „Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. We cannot expect governments, corporations or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and we’re going to write it.“
With a Bitcoin hardware wallet (and in best case a Bitcoin full node) you‘re not a bank customer. You are a banker.
You are the only one who has access to your assets and can verify rules, transactions and number of all existing coins in the network at any time.
If you have your private keys, you own your coins – unlike the money in your bank account which you do not legally own. The money in your bank account is nothing more than a claim to your bank. People in many countries have experienced this painfully.
Bitcoin is a way to escape the global banking cartel, and a means to initiate the long overdue separation of government and money creation. Bitcoin is a peaceful revolution.
6 – Bitcoin is a lifeboat.
The financial crisis of 2008 has shown us that our financial system is broken and cannot be fixed. With near-zero interest rates and additional trillion-dollar money creation, we try to keep the junkie happy for a few more years.
Fix the money, fix the world. Bitcoin is a lifeboat.
7 – Bitcoin is free, neutral, and global.
90% of world trade is conducted in USD. Difficult access to USD keeps countries like Iran or Venezuela poor as long as a handful of people control the world reserve currency.
8 – Bitcoin is censorship-resistant.
Canadian truckers protested against Covid laws. Private donators tried to support the truckers. The government made sure that these donations never arrived. Accounts of the supporters were blocked. The solution was Bitcoin. The same can be observed all over the world, e.g. with journalists critical of the government in Nigeria. Or at Wikileaks, where the research and publication of war crimes / human rights violations has been financed with the help of Bitcoin since 2011.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has donated over $1.5 million over the past two years to further Bitcoin development. Human rights organizations love Bitcoin, and people like Anita Posch bring Bitcoin to Africa by educating the educators.
When a Canadian court ordered Nunchuk – a Bitcoin wallet software provider – to freeze the coins of wallet owners who supported the protests by Canadian truckers, Nunchuk published the following response: „We cannot freeze our users assets. We cannot prevent them from being moved. We do not have knowledge of the existence, nature, value and location of our users assets. This is by design. Please look up how self custody and private keys work.“
With Bitcoin, I can own something the government cannot steal.
9 – Bitcoin is fair.
In Bitcoin I can store the reward of my work performance without having a part of it stolen from me every year by money supply expansion.
Even if you are lucky enough to live in one of the currency areas with the lowest money supply expansions, we are talking about an annual (!) 6.7% in Switzerland, 7.4% in the US, 7.8% in the eurozone, 9.8% in Japan, 10.9% in the UK (sources: World Bank, OECD. Period: 1965-2020). Those who sit close to the pig trough will always benefit most from the expansion of the money supply: the state, the financial sector, large corporations („too big to fail“) and the rich, who have sufficient collateral to invest in real estate and stocks with great credit leverage. This is called the Cantillon effect.
The gigantic devaluation of money, the trillion-dollar quantitative easing and the interest rate manipulations are not subject to any democratic control.
Bitcoin is a hedge against central banks‘ insanity.
The consequences of leaving the gold standard in 1971 are illustrated in https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
10 – Bitcoin is interdisciplinary.
Bitcoin lets you dive deep into physics, math, monetary policy, cryptography, economics, game theory, time preference, and energy supply. After one year of learning, the world will never be the same to you, and you’ll have a multidisciplinary general knowledge that most people won’t gain for the rest of their lives. It’s not without reason that people in the Bitcoin space talk about falling down the rabbit hole, as well as getting „orange-pilled“ in reference to the movie Matrix.
11 – Bitcoin is verifiable.
Bitcoin solves the oracle problem. The Euro money supply or the amount of gold can be 10x or 0.1x as much as governments and banks tell us. Only with Bitcoin can we verify the amount ourselves. Don’t trust, verify!
12 – Bitcoin cannot be corrupted.
Bitcoin is not corruptible. Not even the founder is known. Satoshi Nakamoto (who wrote the white paper, released the code and initiated the mining) can be a woman, a man, or a group of people. There is no one to prosecute, arrest or convict for inventing Bitcoin or having power. Back in 2011, the network was already strong enough to survive Silk Road, or the Wikileaks funding. The 2015-2017 Blocksize War proved that power on the network does not lie with corporations or influential individuals.
For the past 13 years, a new block has been added to the Bitcoin blockchain every ~10 minutes – like a heartbeat – without ever experiencing a downtime or rolling back a transaction.
13 – Bitcoin is a settlement layer.
Bitcoin is money for the internet, but it is also the internet of money – a settlement layer on which thousands of applications will be built: Layer 3 applications that are not possible with today‘s fiat currency solutions, because the Lightning network (on layer 2) is faster. We will pay fractions of 1 cent every 3 seconds to content producers while listening to their podcasts. Value for value.
Machines can own Bitcoin. Autonomous cars can own Bitcoin.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said: „Bitcoin changes absolutely everything. I don’t think there is anything more enabling for people around the world. I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on.“
14 – Bitcoin is decentralized.
Among today‘s 21000 or so „cryptocurrencies“ only Bitcoin is actually decentralized, which is why Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC (arguably the world’s most powerful regulator) said he could regulate all other cryptocurrencies (because they are fintechs) but not Bitcoin (because this is a commodity). Bitcoin is a decentralized system free from politics, lobbying interests and human error.
15 – Bitcoin is revolutionary.
The technical parts already existed before:
- Public-key cryptography
- Peer-to-peer networks
- Digital signatures
- Cryptographic hash functions
- Cryptographic time stamps
- Hash chains
- Proof-of-work
The genius of Bitcoin comes from putting all those things together, and from solving what wasn’t possible before:
- Preventing double-spending without a trusted third party
- Limiting supply without a trusted third party
16 – Bitcoin is voluntary.
Since Bitcoin is digital and tradable 24/7, the recipient of the payment does not have to accept any coins. The payer’s coins can be exchanged for fiat money in a fully automated manner within a very short time. The past few months have shown that this even works in corner stores in El Salvador.
17 – Bitcoin incentivizes the shift towards renewable energy.
Bitcoin mining is one of the cleanest industrial sectors with 59.5% renewable energy. This value has been increasing for years, without political coercion, but based on the incentives of the free market.
Bitcoin mining incentivizes the energy transition in that overproduced energy from renewable energy sources can be directly converted into money.
What do miners want? Make money.
What are the costs for miners? Hardware and energy.
Which energy is cheapest? Overproduced energy from renewable sources, because it is (almost) free. While you sleep, your lights are off, your TV and computer are off, as are your stove, washer, and dryer. But the wind blows and the water flows.
Producers of renewable energy must either release their overproduced energy (which cannot be absorbed by the grid) to the environment in the form of thermal energy, or sell it abroad (and often still pay 1 c/kWh for the purchase).
Therefore, Bitcoin miners prefer to locate where energy is often overproduced.
And even companies like Exxon Mobil are getting into Bitcoin mining because then they don’t have to burn their excess gas.
By using methane, Bitcoin mining can even be carbon-negative.
Another positive effect of Bitcoin on the environment is that without permanent consumer price inflation caused by money supply inflation, people have a lower time preference. They consume more consciously. Inflation prevents us from reaping the fruits of our labor when we want, because it causes those fruits to rot.
Stefans Börsenblog 
Die genannten Argumente gelten ebenso für viele (?alle) anderen coins.
Warum also ausgerechnet Bitcoin nutzen?
LikeLike
Nur Bitcoin ist völlig dezentral.
Hinter Bitcoin steckt keinen Unternehmen wie die Ethereum Foundation.
Keine Entität kann dauerhaft die aktuell 241 EH/s kontrollieren.
Der Blocksize War 2015-2017 hat eindeutig gezeigt, dass der Code nicht einfach geändert werden kann, selbst wenn so ziemlich alle Unternehmen und Influencer im Bitcoin-Space das wollen. Bzw es gibt dann halt einfach einen Hard Fork, dem nur diejenigen folgen, die die neuen Regeln besser finden.
Meine Node, meine Regeln.
Gary Gensler von der SEC hat das verstanden: Bitcoin ist ein Rohstoff, den er nicht regulieren kann. Die anderen 21000 so genannten Kryptowährungen sind Fintechs und damit Securities.
Hier perfekt in 2 Minuten:
LikeLike
Hm, ich verstehe nicht sonderlich viel von Bitcoin und anderen coins. Bin aber halbwegs gut in Logik.
Zwei Stichworte deiner Antwort springen mich sozusagen an:
Fork
Soll ja wohl bedeuten, dass beliebig viele Varianten von Bitcoin schaffbar sind. Damit ist das „dezentral“ Argument wiederum gültig für zumindest einen sehr großen Anteil aller Forks. Damit gilt die Ausgangsfrage auf Bitcoin-Fork-Ebene: Warum sollte man einen bestimmten Bitcoin-Fork verwenden? Und welchen? Und warum morgen nicht einen anderen? Jedem der seine?
Ethereum -> Foundation
Ethereum ist lt. wikipedia ebenfalls dezentral.
Inwiefern ist es negativ für die Dezentralität von Ethereum, dass es eine Foundation gibt?
LikeLike
Nehmen wir an, du möchtest ein Netzwerk erstellen, das genauso ist wie Bitcoin, nur dass es max. 42 statt 21 Millionen Coins gibt.
Das kannst du tun.
Was bringt dir das persönlich?
Wer möchte UweCoins minen?
Wer wird dir deine geminten UweCoins abkaufen und warum sollte der Preis mehr als 1 Cent betragen?
Wer möchte mit seiner Full Node diesem Netzwerk beitreten?
Welche Exchange wird den Handel mit UweCoins anbieten?
Welcher Wallet-Anbieter wird UweCoins integrieren?
Welche Second Layer solutions werden auf UweCoin aufbauen?
Warum sollte ein Shop UweCoins akzeptieren?
Wer erfährt überhaupt von seiner Existenz?
Selbst wenn es ein gigantischer Erfolg wird (weil nicht du das Netzwerk erstellst, sondern Justin Bieber): Es wird einen Zeitpunkt X geben, zu dem eine Entität die Kontrolle über 51% der Hashrate erlangen kann/wird. Dieser Zeitpunkt X ist bei Bitcoin lange abgelaufen. Und selbst wenn… siehe mein 2min Video vom vorherigen Kommentar.
Und Ethereum ist eben nicht dezentral. Nicht vor dem Proof-of-stake Merge und schon gar nicht danach.
LikeLike
Hab etwas Schwierigkeiten mit dem Einhängen von Kommentaren an der passenden Stelle nach deiner Antwort. Daher hier.
>Das kannst du tun.
Ok, also gibt es bzw. kann es geben beliebig viele „dezentrale“ Coins. Richtig?
>Wer möchte UweCoins minen?
D.h. du ersetzt das „dezentral“ Argument für Bitcoin durch „wer will schon was anderes haben“.
>Ethereum ist nicht dezentral
Sagst Du, sagt wikipedia was anderes. Wem soll ich glauben? Ist aber letztlich egal, es ging ja darum, dass es viele weitere dezentrale Coins gibt / geben kann und das „dezentral“ als Wertargument daher nicht stichhaltig ist zugunsten eines speziellen Coins.
LikeLike
Ich habe das Gefühl,
1.) Du verstehst Dezentralität nicht.
2.) Du hast meinem Beitrag nicht gelesen.
3.) Du hast keinerlei Interesse, dich über einen einzelnen Satz bei Wikipedia (!) hinaus in das Thema einzuarbeiten.
„Ok, also gibt es bzw. kann es geben beliebig viele dezentrale Coins. Richtig?“
Wie kann UweCoin dezentral sein, wenn du der einzige Miner, der einzige Node-Betreiber und der einzige Entwickler bist?
Wie kann JustinBieberCoin dezentral sein, wenn eine Entität 51% der Hashrate dauerhaft kontrollieren kann?
Der UweCoin Hard Fork ändert NICHTS für die Bitcoin-Miner, die Bitcoin-Nodebetreiber, die Bitcoin-Entwickler, die Bitcoin-Besitzer.
„Ist aber letztlich egal, es ging ja darum, dass es viele weitere dezentrale Coins gibt / geben kann“
Hier wird perfekt erklärt, aus welchen Gründen Ethereum eben nicht dezentral ist: https://www.blocktrainer.de/michael-saylor-aeussert-scharfe-kritik-an-ethereum/
Und hier noch speziell auf Proof-of-stake bezogen: https://www.blocktrainer.de/ethereum-merge-kritische-analyse/
LikeLike
Hmm, ich habe den Eindruck, du solltest in deinem Artikel erst mal definieren, was DU unter dezentral verstehst, wenn das doch dein Hauptargument bzw. bislang einziges für die Überlegenheit von Bitcoin ist.
Bei mir (und wikipedia) herrscht nämlich der Eindruck, dass das nichts anderes bedeutet, als Berechnung verteilt auf von einander unabhängige Stellen (was auf gegenseitige Kontrolle herausläuft). Also das, was nachstehend unter 1a kommt. Du machst aber offenkundig weitere Anforderungen, die ich in deinem Text nicht sehe (vielleicht ja auch nicht verstehe, nobody is perfect).
Mal eines nach dem anderen
1.) Du verstehst Dezentralität nicht.
2.) Du hast meinem Beitrag nicht gelesen.
3.) Du hast keinerlei Interesse, dich über einen einzelnen Satz
ad 1)
a) Ich verstehe bislang, dass der Algorithmus es erlauben muss (Voraussetzung), ohne eine zentrale Einheit die Funktionen verteilt zu erfüllen. Das geht – wie du bestätigt hast – grundsätzlich bei beliebig vielen coins, seien sie bereits existent oder noch zu erschaffen.
b) Mittlerweile bringst du als Bestandteil von „dezentral“ noch ins Spiel, dass das so bereits laufen muss (Umsetzung hier und heute). Sehe ich jetzt nicht so. Warum sollte nicht ab morgen irgend ein anderer existierender oder neuer coin, der a) erfüllt, den kompetenhaften Aufstieg erleben (übertrieben formuliert).
ad 2)
doch, eigentlich schon. Möglicherweise ja nicht alles verstanden.
ad 3)
Dein Artikel hat bei mir Interesse geweckt. Und auf eine einfach Frage kam eine einfache Antwort – nur Bitcoin sei dezentral. Ein einfacher Check via Suchmaschine sagt aber was anderes (Stichworte „dezentral“ und „Coin“ oder ähnlich, weiss nicht mehr genau, was ich verwendet habe). Da werden einige Coins genannt, die als dezentral gelten, u.a. Ethereum u.a. von Wikipedia, die mir als einigermaßen glaubwürdige Quelle bekannt sind. Dort stehen in aller Regel mehrere Leute dahinter, die von der jeweiligen Sache etwas verstehen. Da glaube ich doch erst mal der Mehrzahl der Experten.
Falls du mit dortigen Inhalten nicht übereinstimmst, dann wäre es sinnvoll, dass du dich um Änderung des Eintrags bemühst. Tolle Multiplikatorwirkung.
LikeLike
For those who want to learn more about Bitcoin in their free time, I recommend the following sources.
in English:
• White Paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
• Mempool: https://mempool.space/
• WTF happened in 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
• Bitcoin energy usage: https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022.07.19-BMC-Presentation-Q2-22-Presentation.pdf
• Places in Berlin and around the world that accept Bitcoin payments: https://coinmap.org/view/#/map/52.51355700/13.39044571/13
• Bitcoin First – Why investors need to consider bitcoin separately from other digital assets: https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/sites/default/files/documents/bitcoin-first.pdf
• Why Bitcoin is better at being gold than gold is: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-is-demonetizing-gold
• Andreas Antonopoulos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1si5ZWLgy0
• What Bitcoin Did: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatBitcoinDidPodcast/videos
in German:
• Arte: Mysterium Satoshi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2JUvnAeRnU
• Blocktrainer Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/c/Blocktrainer/videos
• Blocktrainer Blog: https://www.blocktrainer.de/blog/
• Was Bitcoin bringt: https://www.youtube.com/c/WasBitcoinbringt/videos
Books available in both languages (I read all of them):
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking: https://www.amazon.de/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Alternative-Central/dp/1119473861
• 21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole: https://www.amazon.de/21-Lessons-Learned-Falling-Bitcoin/dp/1697526349
• The Internet of Money: https://www.amazon.de/Internet-Money-Two-collection-Antonopoulos/dp/194791006X/
• Bitcoin: Sovereignty through mathematics: https://www.amazon.de/Bitcoin-Sovereignty-mathematics-Knut-Svanholm/dp/1090109911/
• The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future: https://www.amazon.de/Price-Tomorrow-Deflation-Abundant-Future/dp/1999257405/
• Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption: https://www.amazon.de/Bitcoin-Billionaires-Genius-Betrayal-Redemption/dp/1408711915/
LikeLike
https://www.michael.com/en/resources/bitcoin-mining-and-the-environment
LikeLike
https://dergigi.com/2021/06/13/bitcoin-is-an-idea/
LikeLike
https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/
LikeLike
LikeLike
https://endthefud.org/
LikeLike
Today I wrote a short summary for somebody:
You said this week that „Bitcoin is maybe not the best thing for humanity“ and I would like to react on that.
Bitcoin is a free, neutral, global, scarce, censorship-resistant, programmable, peer-to-peer money.
Humans have used stones, seashells, salt, pearls, animals, precious metals, paper, cigarettes and plastic as money, but only Bitcoin combines all characteristics of good money: scarcity, divisibility, mobility, verifiability, fungibility, longevity, censorship resistance.
Female Afghan tech CEO Roya Mahboob pays her employees in Bitcoin since 2013, so that they have a money that their husbands cannot steal, and because 90% of Afghans have no bank accounts. That‘s how Laleh Farzan could start building a better life in Germany after fleeing from the Taliban in 2017 over the Mediterranean, with all her wealth being stolen, except for a small piece of paper with her 12-word-seedphrase – the access to her 2.5 bitcoin.
A member of the Iranian parlament recently threatened to freeze women‘s bank account in case they don‘t wear hijabs.
25% of El Salvador‘s GDP comes from money that people from abroad send home to their families. Western Union takes up to 20% of fees for that. That‘s why the country decided to make Bitcoin a legal tender (the 2nd official currency next to USD). Meanwhile it‘s a legal tender in Central African Republic as well.
Venezuela is trading with Iran and Turkey in Bitcoin, because they have no other choice. They don‘t trust each other‘s currencies (Venezuela had 1 million percent inflation some years ago) and the USA has cut Iran and Venezuela from the financial markets. Also Russia recently paved the way for import & export payments in Bitcoin.
Inflation in Zimbabwe reached 89700000000000000000000 percent in 2008. People like Anita Posch bring Bitcoin to Africa with „Bitcoin for fairness“: https://bffbtc.org/
or with Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa: https://bitcoinekasi.com/
Journalists need Bitcoin. Wikileaks would not even exist without Bitcoin. They used it for its financing since 2011. US authorities blocked their access to bank accounts, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal.
Human rights foundations love Bitcoin. The Human Rights Foundation has donated 1.5 million Euro to Bitcoin development. Their CSO wrote a book called „Check your financial privilege – Inside the global Bitcoin revolution“.
Governments robbed people‘s money in Cyprus 2013 and in India 2016.
Canadians got their bank accounts frozen in 2020 after supporting the trucker‘s protests.
Even in the US, 16 million people live without bank accounts, because banks refuse to give accounts to „illegal immigrants“.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said: „Bitcoin changes absolutely everything. I don’t think there is anything more enabling for people around the world. I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on.“
What‘s bad for humanity are our fiat currencies like Euro and US Dollar. The gold standard was paused in 1914 to finance World War I, then again to finance World War II, then finally in 1971 to finance the Vietnam War. The terrible consequences of leaving the gold standard are visualized here: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
There are more reasons why every single fiat currency (incl. Euro and US Dollar) lost >99% of their value against Bitcoin in the last couple of years.
LikeLike
https://dncomply.com/bitcoin-basics/
„Government gains power whenever you use its official currency. You gain power when you save and purchase using bitcoin. Bitcoin is the people’s money, and whenever it’s used, liberty is enhanced.“
„Bitcoiners fundamentally believe that nobody should have the ability to create money for free that somebody else has to work for.“
„Thinking in fiat means you are trusting the powers that be to keep your best interests at heart. And that, in turn, means you’re a sheep, and you know what happens to sheep.“
LikeLike
https://storeoftime.com/
LikeLike