The Bitcoin Journey
  • Why learn about Bitcoin?
    • Introduction
    • Table of contents
    • Changing nature of money
    • Role of money in protecting human rights
  • Trust problems with our money
    • Introduction
    • Banks: insolvencies, confiscation, and censorship
      • Gunman takes hostages at Beirut bank
      • Nigerian aid group finds sovereign lifeline in Bitcoin
      • Nigeria's central bank freezes accounts of police brutality protesters
      • Chinese depositors left in dark as three local banks freeze deposits
      • Freezing of bank account to shut down pro-democracy outlet
      • Hong Kong bank account freezes rekindle asset safety fears
      • Belarus tells banks to seize money raised to help out protesters
      • Banks have started to freeze accounts linked to Ottawa protests
      • Whose bank accounts can be frozen through the Emergencies Act?
      • Kremlin critic Navalny's bank accounts frozen
      • Long lines at Myanmar banks after coup
      • The Cyprus banking crisis and its aftermath
      • Bailout blackmail claims Cyprus president
      • Afghan central bank says U.S. plan for frozen funds an 'injustice'
      • Afghanistan sanctions from a first-person view
    • Central banks: money supply and currency debasement
      • Inflation by Wikipedia
      • Monetary inflation across the world
      • Inflation affecting Argentinian citizens
      • Inflation affecting Turkish citizens
      • Egypt devaluates currency by 48%
      • Bitcoin has saved my family
      • Problems with the CFA
      • Role of money in protecting human rights
      • Hanke's inflation rates
      • Milton Friedman on inflation
      • Inflating away sovereign debt in developed countries
      • How inflation is disproportionally affecting the poor
      • Financialization of an economy
    • A note on CBDCs
      • Impact of CBDCs different across the world
  • So, why do we need banks?
    • Introduction
    • Hard money and gold
      • Money and hardness
      • Gold as the hardest money (p1)
      • Gold as the hardest money (pt2)
      • Hard money survives
    • Problems with gold and resulting centralization
      • On centralization of gold
      • Layered money speeding up commerce
      • Global gold standard
      • The order of technology leading to centralization
      • Nations inflating their debt away
    • Abandoning hard money
      • Abandoning the gold standard
      • Abandoning the gold standard (pt2)
      • Breaking the gold standard completely in 1971 pt1
      • Breaking the gold standard completely in 1971 pt2
      • WTF happened in 1971?!
    • Digital money and eCommerce
    • Summary by Lyn Alden
  • What if?
    • Hayek on money the government can't stop
    • The first email
    • The first post
    • The Bitcoin whitepaper
  • How does Bitcoin work?
    • Introduction
    • Computers, code, and a ledger
      • Role of nodes
      • Full nodes
    • Mining and proof-of-work
      • Reaching decentralized consensus
      • Reaching decentralized consensus (pt2)
      • Dealing with conflicts
    • Where do bitcoins come from?
      • Bitcoin's money supply
      • Difficulty adjustment
    • The superpowers of a Bitcoin user
      • Public addresses and private keys
      • Signing transactions
      • Wallets and mnemonic phases
  • What is Bitcoin?
    • Outro
  • Getting started with Bitcoin
    • Using Bitcoin
      • Obtaining bitcoin
      • Storing bitcoin
      • Paying with bitcoin
    • Working for Bitcoin
    • Learning more about Bitcoin
  • Contribute
  • Support me
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  1. Why learn about Bitcoin?

Introduction

Welcome to the Bitcoin Journey. This is a curation of videos, articles, and stories that will help you better understand Bitcoin.

Because Bitcoin is an incredibly complex technology that has broad implications for the world, it can be a daunting topic to explore all by yourself. My goal is to make it a little easier and provide you with a guide that can help you cover the fundamentals in about 3 to 4 hours. I hope this journey can help you truly understand Bitcoin, once and for all.

Although we will talk about what Bitcoin is and how it works, the first half of the journey is dedicated to helping us understand why it exists in the first place. I believe that recognizing why Bitcoin can make an actual difference in somebody's life, even if we initially think we do not relate to this person, can provide the bedrock on which we can explore further.

Some reasons as to why you might want to learn about Bitcoin:

  • Bitcoin is being used by people to protect themselves from human rights violations.

  • Bitcoin is the fastest thing to be worth $1trillion, within 12 years of its invention.

  • The creator of Bitcoin disappeared. Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

  • Bitcoin can become the first separation of state and money in thousands of years, and it is the 6th change in the technology of money since we created it.

  • Central banks have started working on their own digital currencies, called CBDCs. Its impact on our lives could be enormous, for better or worse. Bitcoin provides an alternative.

  • Bitcoin will enable direct, instant, and micro-sized value transfers, changing the way we consume and use the internet.

  • Bitcoin helps people save and plan for a better future, even if the financial system of their country is in disarray.

Each of us will be excited about what Bitcoin means for the world in our own way, or maybe not at all.

What excites me the most is that it allows people to have money that is truly completely theirs, without the need for trust in central parties and intermediaries which may or may not be benign. Although I am fortunate enough to live in a country where the need for such a concern is lower, there are billions of people that do not have this same privilege. I am very excited about what Bitcoin can be to them and their ability to live a good life.

Lastly, before we dive in, I want to say a big thank you to all the creators and authors of the content that is presented in this journey. They, among many others that did not end up as part of the journey, are providing the invaluable educational content on this new technology that the world desperately needs. In the interest of time, I have in most cases only included snippets and parts of their content, though I recommend you check out the full resource and authors if they pique your interest.

I am incredibly excited that you are here. Thank you for taking the time to learn about Bitcoin. I hope you will enjoy this journey.

Let's get started!

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Last updated 1 year ago