The narrative behind bitcoin has been dominated by bad behavior. The reality is bitcoin is filled with tons of talented developers building infrastructure.
Isn't the purpose of bitcoin mining simply to get rich - or not, as the case may be? Well, at 21, we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol - and particularly in the industrial uses of bitcoin enabled by embedded mining.
Because the supply of Bitcoin is limited, the price of Bitcoin is going to have to increase and increase very substantially over time. My advice is that if you're interested in Bitcoin and excited by Bitcoin, then buy some Bitcoin and hold onto them, and you're likely to do very well over time.
Well, bitcoin is a currency. Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return. You know, bonds have an interest coupon. Stocks have earnings and dividends. Gold has nothing, and bitcoin has nothing. There is nothing to support the bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to somebody for more than you paid for it.
Bitcoin was created with security in mind. The Blockchain is Bitcoin's public ledger that records every transaction in the Bitcoin economy.
The scripting language in Bitcoin is important because it is what makes Bitcoin 'programmable money'. Within each Bitcoin transaction is the ability to write a little program.
There's a tiny number of Bitcoin wizards and an enormous number of smart developers that have no onramp to Bitcoin. We need to make that onramp easier.
The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
It's completely reasonable, even if some Bitcoin currency purists wouldn't like it, to have credit and debit card payments denominated in Bitcoin rather than dollars, and net settled on Bitcoin instead of on Fedwire.
In 2008, Bitcoin was mysteriously introduced to the world in an obscure, technical paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. By late 2013, the financial press was filled with reportage on Bitcoin and its dramatic price increase.
Bitcoin is valuable as a currency because of the economic efficiencies the bitcoin network is already creating as transactions flow over it. As with the Internet, more applications will flourish which will make the bitcoin network, and thus bitcoin as a currency, valuable.
The ability to easily buy and sell Bitcoin has been a really key factor in accelerating Bitcoin adoption.
We are very excited about the use of blockchain, whether it's Bitcoin or not, but we are as enthusiastic as ever about Bitcoin as a global currency and, really more importantly, Bitcoin as a global financial rail.
I think the technology will get bigger and the price of Bitcoin will go up, so I'm speculating to increase my purchasing power. But I don't intend to sell the Bitcoin. I intend to hold it until there's a day where I can just use Bitcoin completely.
Bitcoin as a globally distributed public ledger - that's the thing I'm most excited about going forward. Thinking about how to use Bitcoin in new and innovative ways. In the meantime, we have the boring uses of Bitcoin that are in the process of going mainstream.
Bitcoin is a currency, bitcoin is a network, bitcoin is a technology and you can't separate these things. A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.
Everyone, it's okay to say the word 'bitcoin' and acknowledge that it is the actual platform that is driving this innovation that we're all building on. It's also okay to say 'the bitcoin blockchain,' or 'the blockchain,' if you're afraid that people will think you're weird.