My Note
My highlights
48 highlights from Kindle. These are the lines I stopped at.
Bitcoin is the first network-centric, protocol-based form of money. That means it exists without reference to an institutional or platform context.
The interesting thing about the change between a platform and a protocol is, when you have a protocol there is no central appeal. TCP/IP doesn’t work in reference to a service provider. TCP/IP works without context everywhere in the world.
You think people are freaking out about bitcoin? Imagine how much they freaked out when you told them that now, instead of trading in gold, they would trade in pieces of paper. For a lot of people, this was unthinkable. I mean, after all, clearly this paper does not have any real value. It took about 400 years for paper, as money, to become accepted broadly. It was a big aberration.
One of the most popular forms of these abstractions was to use precious metals to express value.
So, money is also a very important social construct. This is an ancient technology. Yet, ironically, it’s one of the technologies that is least studied from a historical and technological perspective.
money isn’t value. Money represents an abstraction of value; it’s a way of communicating value.
money is a form of communication.
They very quickly invent armed robbery. They figure out that if you beat up the other monkey and take its stones, you can exchange them for bananas. Surprisingly, the second thing they invent is prostitution. They figure out that sexual favors can be exchanged for stones, which can be used for bananas. What does that tell you about the nature of money?
They are writing about money. Because money is older than writing.
All of the ancient writing we find, the first forms of writing, are ledgers.
One thing that surprises people is that money is older than writing. We know this because when we look at archeological discoveries of writing, we find hieroglyphics and we find cuneiform. When we look at all of these ancient forms of writing, guess what they’re writing about. Money. They’re writing ledgers.
If you grasp that, you can look beyond the price, you can look beyond the volatility, you can look beyond the fad.
Bitcoin is the internet of money. Currency is only the first application.
We can take many of the basic concepts of the current system that depend on legal contracts, and we can convert these into algorithmic contracts, into mathematical transactions that can be enforced on the bitcoin network.
At the end of the day, bitcoin is programmable money. When you have programmable money, the possibilities are truly endless.
They are going to be a part of the future of this planet because they have been invented. It’s as simple as that. You cannot un-invent this technology.
We’re still at the laughing-at-us stage. That’s quite all right, because by the time they get to fighting us, they’ve already lost. This technology just went global with the introduction of more than $2.5 billion from Chinese investors who discovered a counterbalance to the world domination of the global reserve currency of the US dollar.
“First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win.”
There are 2 billion people on the internet and only 1 billion of them have bank accounts. We can change that.
The vast majority of the world lives under repressive and corrupt regimes with central banks that impose hyper-inflation at 30 percent a month.
Just like if a website fails on the internet, or an application fails on the internet, the internet doesn’t go away.
Bitcoin creates an environment that is ripe for innovation, because it’s not just a currency; it’s a technology, a network, and a currency.
Bitcoin creates a completely flat and decentralized network where every node is equal, where the protocol is neutral to the transactions, and it pushes innovations to the edge of the network, allowing exactly the same phenomenon we saw on the internet: innovation without permission.
Bitcoin is neutral to the sender, the recipient, and the value of the transaction. That means it gives every citizen, every user of bitcoin, the ability to innovate in terms of financial instruments, payment systems, and banking. You can operate on the same level as Citibank. That is truly revolutionary.
One of the most important principles of the internet is neutrality.
The fee will be exactly the same, because fees depend on the size of the transaction in kilobytes, not on the amount or content.
So, we can deliver the product, but we still have one big problem: How do we get paid?
The first barrier is that it is difficult to transport products and services across borders. With the internet, we solved that.
If you think about starting up a business in an international environment, there are two primary barriers to becoming a global business.
As the adage of the entire internet once went, “I just replaced your entire industry with 100 lines of Python code,” that’s exactly what we’re doing with bitcoin.
These organizations make enormous profits for a function that can be done in bitcoin nearly for free.
They can connect to a world of international finance that is completely peer-to-peer. Bitcoin is the money of the people. At its center are simple mathematical rules that everyone agrees on and no one controls. The possibility of connecting these 6 1/2 billion people to the rest of the world is truly revolutionary.
With a simple application download, they can immediately become participants in an international economy, using an international currency that can be transmitted anywhere with no fees and no government controls.
They operate in cash-based societies with very little access to international resources. They don’t need banks. Two billion of these people are already on the internet.
Six and a half billion people on this planet have no connection to the world of money.
Approximately 1 billion people currently have access to banking, credit, and international finance capabilities—primarily the upper classes, the Western nations. Six and a half billion people on this planet have no connection to the world of money.
The invention of bitcoin, the technology that makes it possible, cannot be uninvented. It creates the possibilities for decentralized organization on a scale never before seen on this planet.
I’m here to tell you to ignore the price, to ignore bitcoin the money, and understand bitcoin the technology, the invention, and the network it creates.
I discovered bitcoin for the first time in 2011, and since the internet, I have not felt so completely overwhelmed by the possibilities that I saw. I was there at the dawn of the internet in 1991 when it was pre-commercial.
Other applications include distributed fair voting, stock ownership, asset registration, notarization, and many other applications we’ve never thought of before.
This particular solution, this invention, is far more important than currency. Currency is just the first app—just the first application that you can build on a distributed consensus system.
Bitcoin is not a company. It is not an organization. It is a standard or a protocol just like TCP/IP, or the internet. It’s not owned by anyone. It operates by simple mathematical rules that everyone who participates in the network agrees on.
someone transferred $150 million between two bitcoin accounts, in one second, for zero fees. Just that allows you to grasp how disruptive this technology is going to be in terms of international payment systems.
Bitcoin is digital money. It is money just like euros or dollars, only it’s not owned by a government. You can send it from any point in the world to any other point in the world instantaneously, securely, and for minimal or no fees at all.
Money is just the first application. Bitcoin is a technology, it is a currency, and it is an international network of payments and exchange that is completely decentralized. It doesn’t rely on banks. It doesn’t rely on governments.
It’s like saying that the internet is all about email.
Bitcoin is digital money, but it’s so much more than that. Saying bitcoin is digital money is like saying the internet is a fancy telephone.
We began this book project with a vision: to provide an easy-to-read, short-story style overview of why bitcoin matters, of why so many of us are excited about it.