Why does gold have value? Why does money have value? Is bitcoin real?
It’s 4th of July. I often wonder WHY founding fathers wanted to break away from Great Britain. Canada didn’t. They did fine. There are many explanations. Some attribute to tension between colony aristocrats (Washington et al.) and their British lords. Some think that the US is different and special. The country is blessed. It wants (or needs) to have its own destiny. Its birth and Constitution, in many ways, changed the world. We can say that its birth was justified and good for the world.
I think one of the reasons the US was successful because it is built on reality. Or it tries to stay close to reality. You can see lots of references to God. Many people interpreted this as religious affection. But I see this as an attempt to stay close to reality.
In God We Trust
This is the official motto of the US. People value the dollar because they trust the US government. It is a government that tries to follow God rules.
Bitcoin is real. It is a product of reality.
To understand why bitcoin is real, we need to learn about Cryptographic Hash Function. The ideal hash function has three main properties:
- It is extremely easy to calculate a hash for any given data.
- It is extremely computationally difficult to calculate an alphanumeric text that has a given hash.
- It is extremely unlikely that two slightly different messages will have the same hash.
How can something be extremely easy to calculate, yet extremely difficult to reverse? We may never understand WHY this happens. But it is part of the reality that we need to ACCEPT.
Perhaps, in the 21st century, God sent a messenger to help us discover this new reality. Bitcoin touches on the big WHY question. Therefore, it is so controversial. Many people see it as fraudulent, rat poison. Many try to build fraudulent business using its name. Bitcoin is real because it operates based on cryptography. It is a reflection of reality. Like cryptographic hash function, we may not fully understand WHY. It is the reality that we need to ACCEPT.
Happy 4th of July. God bless America.
