Pretty cool article. Mostly skimmed through but the definitions in bolded are simple and easy to understand for a beginner. "Non-government money" is a good way to start. Just that some people immediately associate "non-government" with nefarious. So, i'll probably start with "Programmable money".
The way you moved up to defining "BYOB" was also seamless. And congratulations if you are the writer and actually retired at 30. That is very cool. Though as part of your OpSec, you shouldn't be telling people that crypto allowed you to retire. Better take up an alternate story like you are a developers with loads of freelancing income. Something like that would be better to keep unwanted attention away.
Well I don't want to lie haha. And I write about bitcoin/crypto so kinda helps credibility when I make clear I'm retired thanks to Bitcoin. I didn't retire at 30, but in my 30s. Retired at 36, two years ago. I get that you shouldn't go around saying you have a bunch of crypto on the interwebs, but the majority of my money is in bitcoin cold storage so I ain't worried about attacks.
And thanks for your kind words on the article.
Very nice article, I like it!
Bitcoin mining machines and Bitcoin nodes are operated by many thousands of people all over the world, but not a single one of them has any special place of privilege in the network.
What do you consider a privilege? Would it fair to say that the more hashing power you or your pool has, the more power and privilege you have? Being in control of the hashing power increases your chances of mining blocks. It's like owning most of the lottery tickets in a lottery draw. It doesn't guarantee that you will win, but your chances are significantly higher compared to the guy holding just one lottery ticket.
Yeah but you have to actually buy those machines and pay for their running and upkeep. And anyone is allowed to buy them. There's no gatekeeping there. That's what I mean. There's no govt regulation or protocol rules or central authority decisions that say only certain people can participate. For example, you don't have to be an accredited investor, hold a certain amount of bitcoin, or get accepted by a controlling body, to participate.
You have a very good article about bitcoin, every of your write ups are correct, but you can edit this part that I quote above, bitcoin is not blockchain, but your content about it that the existence of bitcoin result to the existence of blockchain is correct because blockchain was created by the creator of bitcoin which is Satoshi Nakamoto, but you can explain that after just indicating that bitcoin is stored on blockchain rather than bitcoin is blockchain, this will make it more accurate.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll look back on my wording there and see what I wrote. My intention was to say bitcoin is the original instance of blockchain. You're right I should make sure I am saying blockchain is a crucial part of bitcoin's tech, but as only a part of it that means blockchain =/= bitcoin. I'll check out my wording and update if I feel the need to.
It occurred to me to write it because like a month ago I was on a first date and the girl asked me how I retired in my 30s and I said I'm retired thanks to Bitcoin. She was like oh I've been thinking about getting into crypto so she started asking me about it and on the spot I was fumbling around with trying to describe all the benefits and concepts of Bitcoin.
Congratulations on your early retirement
Look, I have nothing against honesty in general, but on a first date with a girl it may not be wise to say that you got rich thanks to Bitcoin, because these are things that are only told to people you trust. People are mostly bad at keeping secrets, and your girlfriend might retell your conversation to her best friend, sister, or mother, and then the story just keeps spreading. Since you probably have a fair amount of money, part of it probably in crypto - keeping a low profile would not be a bad idea.
On the other hand, it's always good to try to explain to people what Bitcoin really is, because most people really have a wrong perception of what it's all about.
hahaha well she asked how I am retired so I told her. I'm not gonna lie about things on a date haha. Anyways, I didn't get a second date with her. womp womp. But hey the conversation with her was the catalyst for writing this article so it was worth it.
An article is very well-written, and I agree with most things you wrote there and how you explained them. But why are you saying that only Bitcoin is truly accepted as money? Other major coins are sometimes accepted as payment as well, and it's not like Bitcoin is widely accepted as payment either (there are places here and there, but in most situations paying with Bitcoin isn't an option).
Here's a list of places where one can pay with Ethereum, for example. It's fine to focus on Bitcoin in the article because it is the most popular cryptocurrency, especially when it comes to being accepted as payment, but altcoins have some potential as being kinds of money as well.
Because while yes you can pay with other cryptocurrencies in some places, I don't think the world is moving to other cryptos being money. Bitcoin seems to be the only thing that is actually really considered money. Other cryptos I think will be accepted as payment within the crypto industry. But I don't see people using Ethereum or anything else as actual money on a wide level outside crypto-specific online platforms.
Ethereum for example is money for buying NFTs and whatnot, but I don't ever see the wider world using it for payments - it's the network token so it's money for the network but not for outside the network. Another example is BAT - inside the Brave browser BAT is accepted as money for tipping and paying online, but outside of Brave it is not so BAT isn't/won't ever be broadly accepted as money, it's just money within its own network. During the Doge fad of the first half of the year you had Mark Cuban allowing Doge payments on his stuff, probably mostly just to take advantage of the temporary high publicity of Doge, but I don't think anyone ever sees Doge being considered money, it's considered a meme token.
I could be wrong and maybe in the future there will be another or several other cryptos accepted as money to a large degree outside of their own networks or the crypto space, but I don't see that as likely and it definitely isn't true right now. I don't see any signs of it happening yet. And even though bitcoin isn't widely accepted for transactions yet, it is generally accepted that it IS money. Bitcoin accepted as payment just hasn't spread throughout humanity yet because crypto itself hasn't spread throughout humanity yet.
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]
