What is Bitcoin? Hugh Akston

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is to money what email is to a letter.

What is a “letter”? Some of you have no idea how long-distance communication worked in the ancient times. If you could afford 10 to 50 cents every minute, you made a “long distance call” and talked to your friend. Yes, a phone call from Gallup to Window Rock or to Zuni was about 17 cents every single minute! For less important stuff like social media updates or whatnot, you would just send a letter because it was only 20 cents for a stamp and you could write pages and pages and include photos (imagine that)! For real, you used to have to hand write a note to a friend, then fold it and put it into an envelope, then go to the post office and buy a stamp and send your social media updates that way. So messed up.

Then someone invented email. You should have heard us elderlies back in the day.

“Where do you put the stamp?”

“How does it get there if you don’t bring it to the post office?”

“It can’t be any good if it’s free.”

“When I get my photos developed, do I put them here, on the screen to email them?”

“How many days will it take to arrive?”

“I told Matilda that the email was in her mailbox, but she cannot find it!”

That was messed up too, lol.

But we got the hang of it. AOL CDs. That’s all I can say, I know you won’t understand. It was the olden days.

So, um, bitcoin?

Right. Bitcoin is digital money. Just like email is digital postal letters.

Email was fast, cheap, could embed images, videos and web links... email was postal letters on steroids.

Bitcoin is also fast, cheap, can have contracts

Bitcoin is money.

See, bitcoin is to money what email was to mailing a letter to your friend.

Bitcoin is just a new kind of money. Like email, you can’t touch it, but like email, it gets the job done. You can buy stuff with it from your friends or online or at the grocery store. You can get paid with it. It’s just a new kind of money.

Why is Bitcoin a good way to keep my money?

Right now, each Bitcoin is worth about $40,000, but when Bitcoin first came into existence, a Bitcoin could be purchased for about 2 cents. How long will they keep going up in value? Well, there will only ever be 21 million coins. The code says so, and it cannot be changed. Unlike cash, more Bitcoin cannot be printed. Most good estimates believe that Bitcoin will stabilize at about $500k to $2M USD each in the late 2020’s.

Inflation and economic crash cannot occur within the Bitcoin world like it can in other economic systems. Because of this, huge financial players like Amazon, VISA, Apple and Paypal are moving to Bitcoin, or making their own type of crypto currency. Entire countries like Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Italy accept bitcoin widely. In El Salvador Bitcoin is legal tender!

What if the internet goes off? Or the electricity? What if I lose my phone? Can I lose my bitcoin?

The short answer is that bitcoin can be lost just like anything. Your bank account can be frozen for many reasons, ask any hemp grower. Or the fact that USD inflation took about 1/12th of the money out of your

bank account in 2021. Yup, inflation robbed you of one month’s pay last year! Money is easy to lose.

For bitcoin you will need to keep your bitcoin wallet address and seed phrase in more than one safe place so that it can be retrieved if your phone is

Stolen or your hard drive crashes. You need to find someone knowledgeable that you trust to help you store and use your bitcoin.

Should the entire electric grid or internet go down, then you would not have access to your bitcoin, nor any way to spend it, nor anything to spend it on. But it would still be there, inaccessible, waiting for the grid to come back.

Where do I get all my other questions answered?

The best way to get the information you want is to actually do it. Actually, buy some Bitcoin and actually send it to a friend. The first time is like falling down the rabbit hole (best of luck, Alice). However, the second time makes more sense and as you gain experience you gain confidence.

There are many Discord, Telegram and Slack servers that have great information. There are always great YouTube and Twitter influencers who are more or less understandable and information rich. I’ve even heard of decent Bitcoin information on Facebook.

What is the difference between cash and bitcoin?

Basically, cash is buying power in your hand or your debit card whereas bitcoin is buying power in your phone or computer.

To use cash, you need a few things:

Banks to keep cash safe Networks which allow cash to go from you to any company or from your boss to you. Exchanges like ATM’s or bank tellers in order to get actual paper cash in your hands. An account or wallet to store your cash in before you spend it.

Bitcoin has these too.

Bitcoin Banks are called Nodes. Nodes make sure that all the transactions are valid and keep your bitcoin safe. Bitcoin Networks are not necessary since the Nodes (Banks) all share one giant internal network. Bitcoin exchanges like Coinbase allow you to buy bitcoin with a credit card, others like BitPay allow you to spend bitcoin at the grocery store. The CoinStar machines at the grocery store can act like an ATM and allow you to change out bitcoin for cash. Bitcoin has wallets too. Most bitcoin wallets are just an app on your phone. A bitcoin hardware wallet is a flash drive with a password. It’s ironic, but you can also print off your bitcoin wallet on a sheet of paper and put it in your pocket.

This is not financial or investment advice.

Hugh Akston is a bitcoin enthusiast and investor. He is a long-time programmer, app developer and tech up-and-outer. He loves land, cows and chickens more than DeFi, yield farming and Bitcoin mining, but you tend to do what you’re good at, amirite? Buy a homemade tamale from him at the Red Rock Chapter turnout ;)

Bitcoin may be a more stable type of money, but in the end, it will not feed you like a well-watered piece of land and good relationship with family. Invest wisely.