Everyone NEEDS To Understand Bitcoin
3 Sections. 1) Why. 2) Resources 3) First Principles
What is the value your work/labor?
What is the medium of exchange for your labor/toils?
For most, our labor is exchanged for one’s government’s mandated and issued fiat currency (i.e.; US Dollar, Euro, Pound Yaun, ..), which we then hold/save, spend, invest, give, ..
Do we value our individual and collective labor or do we value the brand (think in marketing terms) the brand or ‘value’ of the world’s fiat currencies?
It is by governmental decree of most global governments that we execute economic commerce in a government’s fiat currency.
We work for money/fiat currency.
Is we think in branding marketing terms the goal of governments and central banks is for us to ‘trust’ and have ‘faith’ in this technology we call money. As such, internally we to some extent, have internalized the brand value of fiat currency (i.e.; US Dollar) to our own identity.
Debasing the value of 8 Billion people.
While ~78% of global transactions are executed using US dollars as the global reserve currency, all the world’s central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, are debasing the value of every fiat currency.
With absolute mathematical certainty fiat currencies are heading to default.
What does that mean economically for people around the world that hold cash/fiat currencies?
What does this mean for anyone, who values their labor, and may have also chosen to allow some level of their human identity created in God’s image to be exchanged for an identity that is being intentionally devalued?
For all 8 billion of us, our historical, present, and future labor is being devalued. As we hold a buck, quid, fiat coins, shilling, or whatever, that current monetary ‘value’ our aggregate of labor and investment that we have ‘faith’ in is being eroded.
Whether you get a pay raise or not; global currency debasement it is abhorrent to humanity. It is one of the most wicked and reprehensible acts of treason against our neighbors; orders of magnitude greater heinousness to the poor and middle class.
What is ‘money’?
Most of us will think of paper currency. If we operate in reality, not illusions and false narratives, then we need to understand that this technology tool ‘money’ in the form of fiat currencies is a Ponzi and all of us are in it big. How big? ~$300T global debt. Yet with derivative markets; who really knows.
‘Yes’, absolutely wicked that some people in the world are intentionally harming the rest of humanity by devaluing their labor and the promise of fiat currencies to be a store of value.
If ‘you’ value your work, if you value your savings, if you value your investments, if you value your giving to charities, if you value your neighbor .. ask ‘what is money’?
Ask why do we choose to accept the people in our governments and central banks to manipulate and devalue the world’s citizen’s labor?
Some basics on Bitcoin and bitcoin.
FIRST!
You are NOT first or too early and you are most certainly not too late.
There will ONLY ever be 21 million bitcoin (small ‘b’). The one in the news that is value around $40K (20 ounces of gold) per bitcoin (BTC) with a market value of ~$750B.
Capital ‘B’ Bitcoin is the blockchain. Yes, there are other/many blockchains; there is much to learn and lots of rabbit holes; the learning for the curious never stops.
However, in the immediate term FOCUS on you and your individual store of value for your labor (‘what is money?’). Bitcoin and bitcoin is decentralized. It is NOT controlled by a centralized authority (i.e.; central bank, government, Satoshi Nakamoto, ..).
Absolute scarcity. bitcoin’s supply is 21 million. That is it; the Fed can’t create more, no POTUS Exec Order can create more, no Congress can create more. The bitcoin supply is fixed in the Bitcoin blockchain. An absolutely wonderful feature, not a software bug, for humans, who value themselves and other humans, labor. Again, most certainly not a bug.
Why 21 million? Because Satoshi picked 21 million; move on. What you care about is the 21 million supply is fixed.
Further, a single bitcoin has 8 decimal points or think of this as 100,000,000 satoshi’s.
What this means is someone could buy a whole bitcoin or someone can buy a tiny increment of 1 bitcoin in the smallest of increments (less than a $1).
How is this fair to the world’s poor, roughly 1-billion people who are unbanked, and countries that are already experiencing hyperinflation due to currency debasement?
Tools for all are coming quickly. Read this article! https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b908f611
Absolutely huge what Jack Mallers and the Zap team are delivering with Strike. You may have heard last week about the NFL player Russell Okung getting paid 1/2 of his contract in bitcoin.
Notice, bitcoin is now at ~$750B in market value a good sized global reserve currency; much bigger than many sovereign nations global reserve currencies.
In Summer 2020 to today, bitcoin increased from $190B to roughly $750B market evaluation. This ‘risky’, ‘crypto nerd’, ‘ponzi’, ‘bubble’, ‘rat poison’ and hundreds of other dismissing commentaries are missing what?
Software eating the world.
And Bitcoin/bitcoin is software eating ‘store of value’ and global reserve currencies.
In trying to comprehend bitcoin, most often try to compartmentalize new things into a bucket on a topic/thing they already understand. Many have used the analogy of contrasting to gold. While this is a facet, it is not a good 1 for 1 analogy. To quote Anthony Pompliano; ‘gold is analog and bitcoin is digital’.
With bitcoin’s market value greater than JP Morgan Chase, Visa, governments, Facebook, and soon Telsa .. bitcoin is also in practice is becoming a global reserve currency.
Do a quick read on ‘network effects’ if you’re not familiar. Once a software network gets to $100B in market value, it is very hard to defeat. In the world of software we have lots of examples of companies getting to $100B and dominating from there. Bitcoin’s network effect is ~$750B.
Need real life illustrations we’ve experienced in the last decade? Think about bitcoin like Netflix disrupting Blockbuster, streaming TV disrupting cable, Uber disrupting taxis, .. and on and on. Bitcoin is software eating ‘store of value’; just as the world’s global fiat currencies that have been ‘stores of value’ are rapidly increasing their eventual demise.
All of the information to ‘learn’ and understand Bitcoin and bitcoin is FREE and open source. A huge global community of people sharing their knowledge.
You have worked, working, and will work hard. As you ask ‘what is money’ and you think about the ‘faith’ placed in trusting devalued global currencies; do you value your labor?
Price discovery and capitalism.
The United States, as the alleged bastion of capitalism, has never truly attempted capitalism. A nation or economy can’t execute capitalism when price discover is distorted by the continuous manipulation and debasement of currency (i.e.; US Dollar). has always been manipulated by the government; even when on/off the gold standard.
Buy the real thing!
You can buy bitcoin (BTC) in large and tiny increments. Don’t wait for price; get exposure in some increment you are comfortable with; get off zero. Being a ‘no coiner’; even if only 0.0000001 satochi’s, forces the question of how you value your labor.
As you learn you can dollar cost average. Nobody knows when or which direction bitcoin price will go!
If you’re going to buy BTC, then buy actual BTC. The world of finance is just entering. Did you watch the movie ‘Big Short’? Derivative products and all kinds of other things are coming. FOCUS on the real thing. There is only 21M bitcoin supply. Those that try to artificially inflate via ‘investments’ that are not actual BTC but multiples of BTC; we’ve seen this before. Remember, retail investors lead this market for 10-years; the world of Finance is just starting.
If you buy, buy the real thing, bitcoin (BTC) on a reputable exchange (exchange names in resources section). Yes, a little effort to link with your bank account.
Do you ‘value’, against the store of value of your labor, the words of global central bankers and politicians?
If you do, then I challenge you to look hard their own work/labor.
In this assessment, ask why their labor is intentionally devaluing our labor and the rest of humanities labor, by intentionally devaluing (i.e; stimulus, QE, helicopter money, MMT, ..) the government’s (our) currencies?
See the ‘First Principles’ section at the end for summary thoughts.
Some learning resources.
How to buy bitcoin?
Exchanges to go from fiat currencies to bitcoin: Gemini, Coinbase, Swan Bitcoin, Binance, Kraken, Bittrex, ..
To help jump start ‘what is money’ consume/devour this series intentionally created to educate the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rvTppy1qLIMichael Saylor
The Bitcoin and bitcoin community is unique, special, tenacious, and resilient. They are people. Some humble, some not so much, they are people. As Matt Odell reminds the bitcoin community often; stack sats and stay humble and learn about self custody of your own sats/bitcoin; exchanges have been hacked.
Michael Saylor is the CEO of Microstrategy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-saylor-6a3b0a1b9/
@michael_saylor
Robert Breedlove .. brilliant and from what I observe pretty humble in his knowledge sharing.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/breedlove22/
@Breedlove22
Caitlin Long .. humble, share her knowledge, 2 decades of Wall Street experience, now CEO of Avanti Bank and Trust, instrumental efforts in WY crypto banking legislation.
https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_
Lyn Alden .. brilliant, humble, tremendous communicator on macro and micro
https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact
Vijay Boyapati .. Bitcoin core developer. Great communicator and humble
https://twitter.com/real_vijay
Winklevoss twins .. Tyler & Cameron. History will tell us soon enough, but possibly the greatest financial trade in human history.
Nic Carter .. simply brilliant; an intellectual powerhouse, an emerging treasure for his generation.
https://twitter.com/nic__carter
Anthony Pompliano (Pomp) .. hard working, street smart, connected, shares his knowledge to the masses
https://twitter.com/APompliano
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCevXpeL8cNyAnww-NqJ4m2w
Nik Bhatia … humble, well spoken professor
https://twitter.com/timevalueofbtc
Saifedean Ammous … author of the ‘Bitcoin Standard’
Real Vision (Raoul Paul)
… many others and to all THANK YOU for your sharing of your knowledge! I’ve learned, unlearned, and continue to learn so much.
First principles.
It is never too late for humans to think hard about the value their own labor and continually reassess based on present information the best mediums to store the value of our labor.
Bitcoin/bitcoin is unique, inspiring, elegant in its simplicity and for my British friends ‘lovely’. But bitcoin it is just a tool in a very broken world. Satoshi Nakamoto blessed the world and invented bitcoin and then walked away; possibly he/she may have died. The 8 billion of the rest of us are simply discovering bitcoin. We should all have the human right to store the value of labor without interference from any government. Fix the money!
If you decide to exchange your labor for bitcoin to store the value of your labor, then DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
Monetary instruments, equities, real estate, precious metals, … there is risk to everything. That said, considering the mathematical certainties of global currency defaults that will happen, you may find bitcoin to be worthy technology tool (money) to store the value of your labor.
This world’s ~$300T of global debt is a fiduciary amount of debt that all global tax paying citizens for centuries with certainty can not repay. To quote Tommy Boy ‘That’s gonna leave a mark’.
And while you’re thinking about first principles … there is a much more serious debt for every human .. moral debt.
Humans in this world can pay or default on financial and civil debts, but there is no paying back any fraction of a moral debt.
Morally, from birth, we are all individually bankrupt mired in and amassing continuously an every increasing moral debt .. think the national debt clock. We can’t repay against moral debt, because moral debt is not against other humans, but against God of the Bible. See, moral debt is to a HOLY HOLY HOLY God that requires perfection. No amount of bitcoin, good works, philanthropy, removing the oceans, ‘cleaner’ energy, electrifying the world, space travel/exploration, caring for orphans, mission trips, tithing, feeding the hungry, or battling God’s created Earth’s climate (which God has continually been in absolute sovereign control over since ‘let there be light’), that can begin to repay any individual human’s moral debt to God. In fact, any worshipping we do of anything in the created world (universe), even bitcoin, is a moral debt to God.
There are no analogies to contrasting the world’s debt to God’s finite demand for perfect righteousness from his created creatures. God only accepts those found in Jesus. Therefore, if you value God and the continuously moral debt clock we are each amassing HODL Jesus
bitcoin is certainly promising for the world to ‘fix money’ and thereby address many other challenges with the history of money.
Let’s be clear. There is absolutely no comparison to the treasures in Jesus as compared to anything, including bitcoin, this world has to offer. God is still completely sovereign over EVERYTHING in the universe; nobody escapes his demand for perfect righteousness. HODL Jesus.
My humble opinion is bitcoin is a tool that could provide civil societies to right many, many wrongs. Jesus tells us we will always have the poor (Matthew 26:11. This is a certainty and thus we all have the moral debt responsibility to help the world’s poor attain ‘hard money’ so they can capture the value of their life’s labor.