Chapter 3 Bitcoin Is More than Digital Gold
Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world's most important developments.
—Leon Louw, Nobel Peace Prize nominee
When I first discovered Bitcoin, I was firmly in the “Tulipmania” camp. How could a string of numbers, backed by nothing, and without an army to enforce its use, constitute a currency? Well, I hope you are beginning to see what I eventually saw—Bitcoin is more than a currency, and it is much more than digital gold. It's a disruptive technology that smashes together crowdsourcing, cryptography, and economics to produce the ability to quickly, securely, and frictionlessly transfer virtually anything. It is a quantum leap in the peer-to-peer network phenomenon. Bitcoin is to value transfer what Napster was to music.
There is more to Bitcoin than just value transfer, but in the early days the centralized payment networks are the low-hanging fruit that is easy for Bitcoiners to pick. Most people come to Bitcoin just like me—first a skeptic, then a student, and finally a believer. The creation of Satoshi Nakamoto transcends digital gold and solves a problem that has stymied computer scientists for over 30 years. The Byzantine Generals' Problem has been the major hurdle for secure transmission of value over the unsecure Internet. Satoshi Nakamoto provided a solution to this problem and then he/she/they slipped quietly away.
The enigma that is Satoshi Nakamoto has driven many to collect ...
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