Bitcoin

Laszlo Hanyecz, aka Pizza Guy, got hungry on May 22, 2010.

He wanted to eat pizza and asked for advice on a forum about how he could buy one with Bitcoin. At that time, there was no such option, but someone paid for two pizzas in exchange for 10,000 BTC. This was the first recorded transaction where crypto was used.


If you haven’t been living in a cave for the past few years – and maybe even if you have – you’ve heard about the incredible growth this currency has experienced over the last 15 years.


I believe that Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to create an independent and secure payment system. His intention was not for it to become a gambler's playground, making a few people insanely rich. I don’t understand what people actually want from Bitcoin. What I do see is that many just want to get rich quickly. In that case, I can recommend gambling—it’s made for exactly that.


People have tried to explain to me why this digital currency is valuable.

1. The technology itself is valuable.

2. There is a limited supply.

3. Everything is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it.


These are the main arguments I’ve heard, and I’d like to examine them one by one.


1. The technology itself is valuable.

I believe that the technology is revolutionary, brilliant, and valuable. It probably is. However, it’s also public domain. It’s free, available to anyone, and reproducible. Today, there are so many blockchain-based assets that it’s hard to count, multiplying the number of available coins. I know they aren’t Bitcoin, but in essence, they are the same.


2.There is a limited supply.

By now, it’s clear that our universe is not infinite, so nothing within it can be infinite. Infinity is only observed when something is divided into infinite parts, but even that has physical limits (Planck length), making it just a mathematical concept. Bitcoin can also be divided into smaller units, meaning it can be mathematically infinite in a sense. In physical reality, everything remains finite. There are a finite number of stars in the sky, a finite number of rows in an Excel sheet, and a finite number of grains of sand on a beach. Yet none of them are worth $100,000 per unit.


3. Everything is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it.

No. That’s the price, not the value. Someone might sell their fart for $1,000. I’d argue you get more value from that than from investing the same amount in Bitcoin.

The most expensive painting ever sold went for $450.3 million. Is it worth that much? Apparently, since there’s only one of it. That applies to every painting ever created by humans. Yet not every painting is worth that much—some aren’t even worth the canvas they’re painted on.

Look at gold. Today, it’s an essential material in computing, but for centuries, it was practically useless. Still, it was a reliable means of storing value. It simply worked—I can’t argue with that. But was it a good system? Wars, exploitation, and so on.


Do you own any Bitcoin?

Have you ever used it for anything other than speculation?

Do you know of a better cryptocurrency?

What would a good version of digital money look like?

Should we create a truly awesome coin?

What would a truly revolutionary and usable cryptocurrency look like?

____________

If you can, please support my work with the price of a coffee. This amount covers my daily living expenses. This is what I live on—€5 a day. Thank you 🙏

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