Most people have been wondering what bitcoin is, some think investing in it is gamble, a scam or even an evil form of money. According to Andrea Antonopoulos, a bitcoin and open blockchain expert, “The blockchain is not a system of currency, it is not a company, a product or service you sign up for but rather a platform of trust, a concept of decentralization applied to the human communication of value”.
Money is one of the oldest technologies known to man from exchange of stones, beads, shells, to precious metals (such as those available from priority gold), and then paper money(fiat) and then plastic money and now network money. Bitcoin is not ‘money for the internet but the internet of money’, it introduces an innovation, a platform where you can run currency as an application on a network without any points of centralization, thus, it is a system completely decentralized like the internet itself. What then is money? Money is a language which we use to communicate value to each other. We use money to create social bonds, associations, organizations and even relationships.
Bitcoin is the first system of money that is completely decentralized meaning it is not controlled by any entity, it completely separates itself from previous notions of what money is, like nations and institutional controls, sovereign issuers and as such, it takes us from institution-based money to Network money.
It is reasonable that everyone can not accept this as a system of money at first, I mean what do you think people said when they were first presented with a gold depository certificate in place of a gold coin, it probably was written off as not being money. Bitcoin thus, is the first completely global, borderless, open and decentralized type of money as opposed to what we have all known money to be. Andreas said “When you push innovations to the edges of the network, when you remove the requirement of permission, an exponential explosion is bound to happen in innovation”.
These applications which could not be built by the old system of money because they required permission, they required mass adoption to be available and also because they require a large market acceptance have now been dismissed by bitcoin. Anyone can now download an application and use a feature phone with text messaging and immediately acquire the same powers that any institution of banking has today.
The bitcoin and blockchain currency is so true and trusted that not only does it not recognize borders but it also does not recognize people (Machine to Machine can carry out a transaction). It does not matter who or what you are just as long as you can carryout transactions as opposed the old system of money which requires personhood; Bitcoin can be owned by machines or by software agents and it is the base for new applications that has never been done before.
Think about this for a second; before the age of the internet, we had systems of communication for pictures, systems of communications for letters, systems of communications for long and short distance, then the internet came and unified all that. This is what bitcoin is doing, it is not just about economic activity but the basis for market-based security systems, it’s the basis for creating bonds for authentications between devices. And so, bitcoin and blockchain unifies the system of money, today we have systems of money for small and large payments, systems of money for payments between organizations, individuals and governments as well as systems of payments between companies. What the internet money does is it creates a single network which can run a micro transaction to a giga-transaction( In seconds anywhere in the world for any participant without permission).
Bitcoin is therefore a global, unforgeable, scalable and borderless system built on the blockchain which is open and trusted. Bitcoin gives you complete control of your money, it cannot be seized, frozen or censored neither can my transactions be interrupted or stopped and I can do so with total anonymity(only open in the blockchain with everyone as a witness) as can anyone who downloads an Application on their phone in 5minutes and money and most especially banking has changed FOREVER!
