The key to understanding Bitcoin
It’s not about how; it’s about why
The first time I saw Bitcoin mentioned back in early 2013, I was intrigued, looked up the White Paper, and immediately grasped that it would be massive. Though generally, I’m very slow to adapt to new technologies. At the time, I had a flip phone, no social media, and my electric toothbrush was the third most advanced technology I owned.
In the seven years since I’ve noticed how unusual it is for people to immediately grasp the value of cryptocurrencies. Very often these people are more computer literate than I am. They fixate on the how and struggle to understand the technical aspects of complex and novel systems. And they don’t spend enough time on the why.
Bitcoin is better than the Federal Reserve. Cryptocurrencies will emerge better than our modern systems not just in finance, but in a myriad of industries. It’s not about how they are better, but why. Once you shift that focus, things become much clearer.
The problem has always been power. Power is what corrupts our money, it’s what corrupts our politics. It’s what corrupts our inter-personal relationships. Most people don’t spend much time considering the corrupting influence of power because flawed as our systems are they have always been this way, and aside from fringe experiments at a small scale, there has never been a global alternative. It was a problem without a solution. How do you take power without wielding it? It didn’t seem possible.
Now it does.
The Bitcoin White Paper outlined a way to replace power rather than replace who wields it.
That changes everything.
Yes, the technical details must be sound and understood, but that’s not what’s exciting. The great innovation isn’t the solution to Double-Spending or the Byzantine Generals problem it’s a new way of interacting with power.
The world spawned by that anonymous paper written in 2008 is one of the new possibilities. It’s demonstrated that we could exchange value in a secure, decentralized, and trust-less way. From there, it’s a small leap to exchange other types of information without a centralized controlling body or the necessity for trust. Most things can be converted to information and therefore disrupted by this new innovation.
It’s not simply a new technology, it’s a new philosophy.
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This is part of an ongoing series exploring the potential for change inherent in cryptocurrency. Published so far: Bitcoin is so much more than money / What if deflation was good?/ Has Bitcoin lost its way? / Monero & Decred are the new Bitcoin
