The Bitcoin You Don’t Know

Hsham
2 min readMar 14, 2021

Bitcoin is making headlines again. Yet again, it’s drawing attention for the wrong reasons: It’s price appreciation. If your source of information about Bitcoin is mainstream media, you probably view bitcoin as just another financial instrument. The reality is that’s far from the truth.

“The business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth” — Nassim Taleb

The real focus should be on the underlying technology of Bitcoin. In simple terms, it solves one of mankind’s oldest problems: achieving consensus/ agreement between multiple parties without a central controlling authority.

Currently, we rely on banks to achieve consensus with transferring money. A system that proved sufficient, until the central authority amassed too much power. Corruption happens in systems of power, and absolute power produces absolute corruption. There is no more absolute power than the power over money. Bitcoin strips banks of that power.

The best explanation is given by Andreas Antonopoulos in The Internet of Money. A 4 hour read that covers the evolution of money from barter to fiat, and what the future of money could be with decentralization.

At the end of the day it all comes down to adoption, there will be resistance but the pleasant truth is that the superior system always wins. This time the resistance will be extra strong, because when it comes to money everyone has skin in the game.

The best example of what’s currently happening with the global monetary system is the War of the currents. A superior form of electricity existed (AC/crypto) however, its adoption meant that the current form of electricity will become obsolete (DC/banking). Instead of focusing on how the new form of electricity could propel mankind forward, the people in control of the electrical grid at the time could not fathom losing control. Despite all the efforts by the controlling parties to stop the adoption, all our electrical lines run on AC power. Soon all our financial transactions will run on a decentralized network.

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