In 2016, I attended a talk given by Andreas Antonopolous at a Bitcoin meetup in downtown San Francisco. Coming into the talk, I had thought very little about Bitcoin, or “blockchain” technology more generally. The way that Andreas spoke about Bitcoin and the economic, social, and technical implications that it has for our world was nothing short of inspiring. I emerged with a profound curiosity for this new monetary technology and what it might mean about the future. I bought and read Andreas' initial volume of “the Internet of Money,” a collection of his talks about Bitcoin, and felt excited to be living at the particular historical crossroads at which we find ourselves.
My interest in Bitcoin dwindled shortly thereafter. Aside from some speculative buys during the 2017 bull market, I didn’t give Bitcoin much more thought for the next four years or so, thinking of it mainly as a hyper-volatile digital cash which requires as much energy as a small country in order to operate. While these statements may be true, in the last few months I realized again, this time more viscerally, that in fact it has the potential to be much, much more than this.
To my current understanding, these are the key aspects of what makes Bitcoin important:
- Bitcoin is self-sovereign money. No one can prevent you from transacting with it or storing it.
- The supply of Bitcoin is determined. No one can increase the supply of it and devalue the currency you hold.
- Being digital native, it is instantly transferrable across the world.
- It is open source code. It is free speech. Anyone could contribute to it, and anyone can view all of the transactions that have taken place over all time, and yet
- No one has the power to manipulate it. Decentralization ensures that the power of any individual, or small group, is limited.
- Furthermore, everything above becomes more true as more users and nodes join the network.
I know I am missing a lot here. I also am not as prepared to refute every, or even some common objections to its use as some more experience bitcoiners might be. Its future is far from certain; while governments can’t kill it as such, they can create regulations that make its use onerous. However, its resilience from past attacks and crises and the value it offers as a truly superior monetary technology lead me to believe that it will only play a more and more important role in the world.
Below are some of the resources that I’ve been using to learn about Bitcoin. I hope you find them as useful as I have!
Articles / Books
- I highly recommend this book as an intro to Bitcoin’s innovation as a monetary technology.
21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole
- Not a Bitcoin book, but an interesting history of digital money and cryptocurrencies in general.
- A technical overview of how Bitcoin works; I’m still reading through it
- The first in a series of collections of Andreas' talks. For me this is what sparked my interest in the first place.
https://medium.com/@amitiu/onboarding-to-bitcoin-core-7c1a83b20365
- A neat article about how to start contributing to Bitcoin Core. I also highly recommend this podcast episode which Amiti appears on: https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/becoming-a-bitcoin-core-developer-with-amiti-uttarwar
https://www.brandonquittem.com/bitcoin-rhythms-of-history/
- Mind-expanding view of how Bitcoin fits into our moment in history.
https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3