My story with cryptocurrency

The first time I remember talking about Bitcoin was around 2011-2012. It's in the news, in this week's stories, as the latest mystery on the digital frontier. However, I myself am not one to explore the digital frontier. My online experience at the time was more of my Facebook newsfeed and Angry Birds. I sure wish I had been ahead of the curve and just got rich, but I haven't.

Bitcoin has always been on my radar, but I didn't start paying attention to it until 2017. In 2017, Bitcoin continued to evolve in the second half of 2017, not only as the news of the week, but as a front-page viral news, returning to the headlines that year. I followed, month after month thinking I was too late to buy, finally seeing it hit an all-time high around $20,000 in December. When it fell back in the first few months of 2018, I finally got in.

In my first bachelor's degree, I minored in economics. I was drawn to economics because I thought it was a philosophical study that could be applied in the real world. As I see it, to understand money is to understand how the world works.

Now enter Bitcoin...a new world currency. A new world currency? ? I'm still having a hard time coming up with a bolder concept. The philosophical implication of a currency managed through an open network of direct peer-to-peer transactions, on a public ledger, without any central authority - is truly revolutionary. While many see Bitcoin as just another accidental mutation in the tech world, my understanding of Bitcoin is partly filtered through a broader historical, socioeconomic context.

One aspect of Bitcoin’s early days that stood out to me was the 21 million finite coin limit — a bulwark against inflation. I remember my mom telling me as a kid that she could get a slice of pizza and soda for $0.25 (circa 1960s). When I was a kid you would have spent at least $2 (in the 1990s) and now $4 is a good deal. Even at the age of 10, I could understand that expensive pizza is a key issue and inflation is nonsense.

A few years later, with a better understanding of inflation, a university economics professor mentioned that he greatly admired the Bundesbank (Germany's central bank) for so skillfully moderating inflation after the end of Bretton Woods in the 1970s. , and through the subsequent oil shock. This thought has always bothered me. Apparently, in the 1970s, as the world adjusted to a new floating exchange rate regime, the Bundesbank took the (at the time) aggressive policy of publicly declaring its monetary expansion target (inflation rate). This is a transparent policy. Bitcoin’s public ledger takes transparency to another level. As an inflation hedge, Bitcoin is unrivaled. About 850 coins are mined per day today, the next halving will happen in 2 years, and the last bitcoin won't be mined until around 2140. These are non-negotiable parameters. So, no, I don't think it's a scam.

People who are hesitant about cryptocurrencies and blockchain usually say, "I just don't get it..." But most don't understand how microwaves or Tylenol work, and don't object. In short: it is a network (public ledger) that collects and shares data on all Bitcoin transactions that take place. Computers around the world race to process that data (mining) and be the first to solve its hash (similar to solving a mathematical proof), completing the next "block" on the blockchain in the process. The first person to do so gets a miner reward. A newly completed block starts at the position of the last block on the ledger, which is at the end of all other blocks since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, and is consistent with all other blocks before it. A long list of blocks. a blockchain.

Technically it is complex, but conceptually Bitcoin is simple. On the other hand, the current monetary system… between the Treasury, the Fed and the FOMC, over 20 years of unbalanced federal budgets, quantitative easing, and collusion and oligarchy between Wall Street and lobbyists and politicians… ...to put it mildly, it's not sustainable. Strongly speaking, it is manipulated and unjust.

So I started using cryptocurrencies in 2018. A lot of people go through the doors of BTCC the same way. At the same time, I also learned how to use 100X leverage to invest and get rich returns. Since then, I've become familiar with more exchanges, wallets, coins, companies, applications, consensus protocols, newsgroups, podcasts, and personalities, to name a few. More things are happening and developing every day. As DeFi (Decentralized Finance) continues to grow and develop, any responsible consumer looking to build financial security in the future must have a working knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I really believe. Believe it or not, Bitcoin is in its 13th year and the world has changed.