My 2013 Essay on Bitcoin
(WayBack Machine POD* at the bottom)
*Proof of Date
BITCOIN: PREPARE FOR THE NEXT REVOLUTION
If you haven’t heard about Bitcoin yet — the new “opensource” digital currency — brace yourself, because you’re gonna!
The actual mechanics of Bitcoin are fairly technical to grasp at first but explaining them is not within the scope of this, my first article on the matter. Lots has been written elsewhere and there is no shortage of info for the eager enquirer (with the Wikipedia link above being a good place to start). All that you have to know for now is that bitcoin is a new digital currency that can be converted at a fluctuating market-determined exchange rate to USD dollars (presently approx 90USD to 1 bitcoin) and most other major world currencies. It is not controlled by any one institution or government and its issue and supply is 100% transparent for the whole world to see.
Bitcoin is nothing short of revolutionary. Indeed, the description “open-source monetary system” would be more accurate than just “open-source currency”. And that is exactly where its potential lies. Ever since its beginnings 2 decades ago the internet has totally disrupted the archaic, inefficient, and tightly centralised models of yesteryear’s industries. The first industry to succumb was surely music, with Napster’s peer-to-peer model changing the landscape irreversibly. Then came the movie industry, followed by books and publishing in general. Political systems also fell under the power of grass roots connectivity, changing power dynamics forever. Underway at present is the transformation of education and soon the medical industry.
So it should come as no surprise then that the most inefficient, costly and centralised industry of the lot — central banking — would eventually appear in the trigger hairs of the grand decentralised model of the world wide web. Bitcoin is nothing less than the silver-bullet the Occupy Wall Street movement was looking for all along. Honestly, they can put down their “Occupy” placards now, and replace them with “Buy Bitcoins” instead. The 1%, whose ultimate power rests in the fact that they control the central banks, was never going to be wrested away through political action. Instead, the perfect solution to subvert central banks is to bypass them altogether. Who needs corrupt, greedy overlords when there is a new international, decentralised, peer-to-peer, totally transparent monetary system available to all?
To be sure, the road ahead for Bitcoin is not going to be without bumps. Governments and central bankers, who have enjoyed disproportional power for 1000s of years, are not just going to roll over in submission. They will throw everything they can into the fight. So expect smear campaigns, covert government-sponsored hacking of the bitcoin network and every other dirty tricks campaign money can buy. But it is the opinion of this writer that in the long run its a war they can’t win. Its kind of like open-source software I guess, no single entity can control it. In fact the only strategy that may work is if they entered the bitcoin market themselves and started buying up all the bitcoins they could get their hands on. But eventually this would drive the price of bitcoins so high that it will be impossible even for them — the Free Market system doing its work perfectly! So get ready for the biggest revolution the internet has ever ushered in. And buy your Bitcoins today. I did.
END
Now BTC is being taken seriously by the world, plenty shills make claims to have got into BTC way back when. So just to prove the validity of my claim — here is a screenshot of my blog at the time from WayBack Machine:
And here is the link to WayBack machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130501030336/http://www.l-i-n-k-e-d.com/bitcoin-unprecedented-disruption-potential
And here is my next blogpost on Bitcoin written on 10 April 2013 (after 10 days down the rabbit hole) :
BITCOIN: THE NEXT STEP IN THE EVOLUTION OF MONEY
Just so you know, if you think I’m bragging, the joke is ultimately on me. I am not super wealthy by any means. In 2013 I was pretty skint and could only put some of my meager South African savings into BTC. Whilst I am considerably better off now than I was then, a rare opportunity was missed. If I had thrown everything at it (and the kitchen sink) I would have had some serious money.
