bitcoms

GN

BITCOIN IS TRULY YOURS Cash is not the same as a cheque. If I give you a €100 note, I can’t then change my mind and cancel your cash. Once you have the physical bill, you (and only you) can spend it. By contrast, if I give you a cheque for €100 but then instruct my bank to cancel it, the cheque becomes worthless. Possession confers the value of the cash to you, placing it beyond my control. The same is true of a few other financial assets, such as gold: if you have an ounce of gold, neither I nor anyone else can cancel its value. Gold is gold. I can’t call up my bank and have them change your gold’s chemical properties. A cheque, on the other hand, can be stopped. This is similar to almost all financial assets: shares, property, government bonds, stablecoins, bank accounts, and so on. Unlike cash or gold which are controlled by whoever holds them, these other things are controlled by ‘trusted’ third parties: the company that issued the shares, the bureaucracy which registered ownership of the property, the government which issued the bond, the issuer of the stablecoin, the bank which holds the account – they can all simply freeze, cancel or otherwise censor the asset. Sometimes, they do so. Such assets are not resistant to censorship. Some – but very few – financial assets, such as cash and gold, are resistant to censorship. This is partly because possession confers direct control, and partly because they are fungible: your €100 note and your ounce of gold are as good as – and practically indistinguishable from – anyone else’s. To determine whether Bitcoin is censorship resistant, we can look at its history. Throughout its unbroken uptime over the past decade, no transaction confirmed by the network has ever been cancelled. Confirmed Bitcoin transactions are immutable – once they have been made, they are permanent, and exist indefinitely in the Bitcoin ledger. This is only possible due to Bitcoin’s robust security and its truly autonomous, self governing nature. But censorship is not the only way trusted third parties can cause you to lose your assets. Companies fold. Governments default on their loans. Stablecoin issuers fail. Banks go bust. These are examples of counterparty risk. But with Bitcoin, there is no counterparty risk. Like a physical bar of gold, your Bitcoin isn’t anyone else’s liability and it isn’t controlled by anyone else. Unlike almost all financial assets, Bitcoin is censorship resistant and has no counterparty risk. Bitcoin is truly yours. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-truly-yours

BITCOIN IS BLOODY HARD Bitcoin is the hardest money ever to exist. First, Bitcoin is finite, with a hard limit of 2.1 quadrillion satoshis. Over 90% of these are already in circulation, with the remainder to be issued in accordance with pre-defined parameters between now and around 2140. No more will be created above this hard limit. The circulating amount of gold, probably the hardest of all previous moneys, will likely quintuple over the same period. Second, Bitcoin is the world’s most reliable computer network. Since a bug was found and fixed in 2013, the system has not been down for even a fraction of second. Bitcoin uptime is all the time. No other large network comes close to this level of reliability. Third, Bitcoin is immutable. Because the ledger is not controlled by anyone, it cannot be retrospectively altered or censored. Once a transaction has been confirmed by the network’s nodes, it is set in digital stone forever. Fourth, because it is sufficiently distributed and decentralized – everywhere and nowhere – Bitcoin is highly resistant to attack, whether physical, virtual or political. And despite being worth hundreds of billions of dollars for much of its lifetime, since the 2013 bug there have been zero successful hacks of the Bitcoin ledger itself. As such, the possibility of cyber-thieves stealing valid bitcoins or creating counterfeit ones looks remote. Much of this hardness depends on the stability of fixed rules in Bitcoin’s code. Unlike with many of its imitators, change to Bitcoin code is slow, incremental and backwards compatible (i.e. nodes running old software versions still work). But most crucially, fundamental change is controlled by users rather than miners, businesses, councils or foundations. All attempts to change Bitcoin’s core parameters, such as issuance schedule and block size, have failed. Even a cartel with most of the mining power was unsuccessful when it tried in 2017. Bitcoin is finite, reliable, immutable, attack resistant and stable. Bitcoin is bloody hard. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-bloody-hard

GM

GN

Excellent wide-ranging listen taking in overlanding, self-sovereignty, grass-roots Bitcoin mining and adoption. And much else, including a pithy explanation of Nostr. nostr:note149hhl4dc3anqjaef37x0u4wunwmz8xh4g8e52pegq7qelflmym4q4zv9gm

GM, btw

A new paradigm for classifying politics. Source: the (criminally under-followed) Dark Age Theorist https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=BF9IAerW-LQ

GM Is there enough proper bread in my bin?

BITCOIN IS FOR EVERYONE Many people are excluded from the financial system. A quarter of adults don’t even have access to a bank account. Unlike the financial system, cash doesn’t discriminate. Anyone can use it. But cash is only useful for in-person exchange, and even in these situations it is becoming less widely accepted. To transact without cash, either in person or remotely, you need to have bank accounts, payment cards and suchlike. Or you can use Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn’t care who or where you are. It doesn’t care whether you’re rich or poor, sinner or saint. It doesn’t care because it doesn’t know. It is designed not to know. It cannot know names, addresses, dates of birth, employment histories or credit scores. All it knows are public network addresses and the private keys which control them. No-one has any more or any less right than anyone else to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is financial inclusion. Bitcoin is for everyone. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-for-everyone

GM

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BITCOIN IS DIVISIBLE You don’t need to acquire a whole bitcoin to own Bitcoin. Just as a US dollar is made up of 100 cents, a bitcoin (1 BTC) is made up of 100 million smaller units called satoshis or ‘sats’. If 1 BTC = $20,000, then 1¢ = 50 sats. If 1 BTC = $1million, then 1 satoshi = 1¢. Anyone with even the smallest amount of wealth can own Bitcoin, irrespective of a bitcoin’s worth. Bitcoin is divisible. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-divisible

GM

BITCOIN IS A LAW UNTO ITSELF Bitcoin is a globally distributed ledger beyond any jurisdiction. No government, regulator or global body can order Bitcoin to stop or to change the way it operates. Bitcoin is governed by nothing except its own endogenous code. Bitcoin has no president or CEO. It has no leader. It was started in 2009 by a pseudonymous actor or group who, having enlisted others to improve it, disappeared two years later. Whoever they were, they now have no control over the way Bitcoin works, and no more ability to change its code than anyone else. Bitcoin isn’t controlled by anybody. It doesn’t have shareholders, directors or employees. There is no company or foundation to devise strategy or set policy. It has no marketing or customer service department. In fact, Bitcoin has no customers and no suppliers. It has no debtors and no creditors. It has no investors or financing, and cannot become insolvent. It has no bank account and cannot go bankrupt. Because it cares for nothing except its own internal code, Bitcoin is not at the mercy of exogenous forces such as commercial pressures, economic cycles or financial crises. And Bitcoin is not subject to any external laws, rules or conventions. Bitcoin is a law unto itself. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-a-law-unto-itself

GM

BITCOIN IS EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE So where is this Bitcoin ledger which can be used and seen by anyone? It lives on many thousands of ‘nodes’ – typically dedicated and inexpensive computers – which together form the Bitcoin network. Each node contains a copy of the Bitcoin ledger. Anyone can run a node, and no permission is needed. Nodes can join or leave the network at any time without restriction. You don't need to run a node to use Bitcoin, and you don't need to use Bitcoin to run a node. As there are nodes in most countries, Bitcoin is everywhere. But because the ledger has no specific location, Bitcoin is nowhere. Bitcoin is everywhere and nowhere. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-everywhere-and-nowhere

GM

BITCOIN IS NON-GOVERNMENT MONEY Many people think that money has to be issued by the government. But this is not the case, and it never has been. First, consider currency. In London, the pound is money, the euro is money in Paris, and Bitcoin is money in El Salvador: all of these are legal tender, endorsed by the respective national governments. But money can also be whatever currency people agree is money without the government’s say so. The US dollar remains money in Cuba even though the government says it isn’t legal tender, and Bitcoin is widely accepted in Madeira without the government there saying anything much about it at all. The same goes for banknotes. They are of course often issued by governments via their central banks. But notes have historically been issued by private banks as well. In some places they still are, such as Scotland, where Virgin Money subsidiary Clydesdale Bank (amongst others) still issues sterling banknotes, and Northern Ireland, where (amongst others) Danish multinational Danske Bank does the same. And what about ledger money, which makes up most money in circulation today? The world over, this is mainly not issued by governments at all, but is instead created by non-government banks such as Banco Santander and Wells Fargo when they make loans. In the UK for example, retail banks such as HSBC and Lloyd’s create around 80% of the money in the economy in this way. So while some money is government money, most money is not. Yet people the world over still agree it is money. Similarly, Bitcoin is not government money, yet people all over the world agree it is money. Bitcoin is non-government money. https://www.bitcoms.xyz/bitcoin-is/bitcoin-is-non-government-money

GM