Category Archive: adoption

Twenty mind-bending secrets about Bitcoin

1.  Fun with programmable money

• Bitcoin wallets are like personal debit cards that you can create
  and assign yourself to store your bitcoin. Some new wallet versions can
  be programmed with bizarre abilities.
• You can program features like GPS coordinates on your phone that make the money unavailable off if your kid leaves the city.
• You can also create “treasure hunts” where coins will suddenly be
  released for you to use if you find yourself in the right place at the
  right time.
• You may also release money by calendar dates –  gifting bitcoin
  money that can’t be used until their 18th birthday or Christmas. Or set
  up a will that releases amounts in intervals long after your death.
• Huge potential for ideas not yet imagined.

2.    First purchase with bitcoin

• Bitcoin’s price wasn’t established by a committee, government, or special council.
• Florida resident Laszo Hanyez may go down in history for buying the
  most expensive pizza ever recorded. He also makes history for making the
  first significant purchase using bitcoin.
• His 10,000 bitcoins used in June of 2010 bought two Papa John’s Pizzas worth about $30 at that time.
• Today’s equivalent price is about $5 million.
• For the first 18 months they were worthless. The pizza purchase was
  the event that set the price of bitcoin at about a third of one penny
  each.
• Within weeks, they were being bought and sold for 8 cents, representing a price increase of over 1,000%.

3.   Bitcoins to billions

• In 2013 the price of a single bitcoin went from $13 to over $1,000 for an increase over 7,000%.
• At that rate, the owner of one bitcoin today would be a millionaire in two years.
• And would become a billionaire only 18 months after that.

4.   Bitcoin is not alone

• Thousands of other digital currencies have since been created once bitcoin became popular.
• Litecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin and many more can be purchased on various online exchanges.
• Thousands of people buy altcoins, hoping the bitcoin lighting strikes twice.

 5.   World’s fastest supercomputer

• The current computing power protecting the Bitcoin network is over
  6,000 times more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers of the world
  combined. And still growing faster.
• Computer power is measured in “petaflops”. One petaflop is equal to one thousand trillion calculations per second.
• Top 500 supercomputers combined can calculate 250 petaflops. (Indicated by the arrow on the graph below).
• By comparison, the bitcoin network can calculate 883,000 petaflops.
• It is roughly the equivalent in scale between eight sticks of butter verses the largest 15,000  pound African Elephant.

6.   The amazing bitcoin wallet

• Before you buy bitcoin you can create your own personal bitcoin wallet before you fund it.
• The number of possible wallet IDs that can be created are roughly the same amount as atoms on the earth.
• You can create as many as you want. They are free.
• New wallets can be secured with two or more passwords.
• You can also print your wallet to make a “Paper Wallet”  that allows you to store your bitcoin off-line.

7.    Spend bitcoin with smart phones for everyone

• The $25 smartphone is on the way.
• It is estimated that in 2014 there will be more cellphones than people on earth.
• Many poor countries just skipped  land-line telephones and went straight to cellphones.
• Where they don’t have electricity, they charge them daily using solar panels.
• Most developing countries do not have access to banking – but the bank can come to them with bitcoin and a smartphone.
• Sending digital cash has already proven to lift entire villages out of poverty.
• This opens up their entire world from which to buy and sell items rather than just a few neighbors with cash on hand.

8.   Magic the Gathering and bitcoin

• The first big online bitcoin exchange was Mt. Gox. It got its start and name by trading playing cards for “Magic The Gathering Online EXchange.
• They once accounted for over 80% of all Bitcoin trades.
• They started trading bitcoins when they were worth less than a dollar.
• Unsurprisingly, when the world found out that bitcoins were worth a
  lot more than playing cards, the tiny company was overwhelmed.
• More than half of all first generation Bitcoin exchanges have closed down.
• Now big finance companies are creating their own exchanges in the US that are regulated and insured.

9.    Say goodbye to “Bitcoin” and hello to “Bits”

• Currently, one full bitcoin is divisible down to eight decimal places.
• The Bitcoin community has started referring the the sixth decimal point from a full bitcoin where they will be called “bits.”
• Bits are part of bitcoins as pennies are to a dollar – except it would take a million of them to buy a full bitcoin.
• Calling them “nano-dimes” sounded dumb.
• Today one hundred dollars migh buy you .2 bitcoins. Or it can buy
  you 200,000 bits.  It’s the same amount, but which one makes you feel
  richer?
• At some point, we might be able to sing that song (commonly played with hand- drums).  “Shave and a haircut..  2 BITS”

10.    Spy Vs Spy. Your bank in a microdot

• Future Bitcoin billionaires can include their entire banking Bitcoin
  fortune – in a dot the size of a period. When you have access to any
  computer or phone with Internet connection you can simply type in your
  account number and password as needed.
• Your account is all stored and available to you on the public ledger
  available anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.

 11.    Forget money laundering. Your activity is recorded

• Every transaction is tracked the Bitcoin public ledger, recorded and
  shared around the world. The ledger cannot be changed and it’s
  continually reconciled, verified and protected by bitcoin’s world-wide
  network.
• Every time a bitcoin trades hands, a trail of digital breadcrumbs follows it forever.
• You may or may not allow people to know your personal wallet
  information, so your bitcoin account is as secret as you want it to be.
• Once bitcoin passes through widely known wallet addresses, it may be
  traceable by super-secret organizations that may, or may not, rhyme
  with Em- essay.
• Relax, if you aren’t doing any really, really bad – it’s probably
  not worth the trouble for anybody to track your every spend. Not one
  bit.

12.    Gambling once accounted for most transactions

• The web gambling site “Satoshidice” once accounted for about half of bitcoin transactions.
• Due to murky gambling laws in various jurisdictions, gaming on  Satoshidice is currently not allowed from US-based IP addresses.
• Provably Fair (http://provablyfair.org/)
  is a website that  has risen to act as an independent probability odds
  checker for people to validate the odds of customer bets being
  mathematically fair for the computers running the gaming systems.
• Many online casinos are having their computer programs independently and voluntarily certified.
• Today bitcoin use is spread over several industries in addition to gambling.

13.    Watch people trade in their paper money

• The website Fiat Leak shows a world map which allows you to see which country is exchanging their native currency for bitcoin in real-time.
• The larger the coin floating up – the bigger the dollar amount.
• The amounts all accumulate over a 10 minute period, which is the
  point that the ledger is reconciled and copied throughout the world for
  verification.
• Once you go digital, you don’t go back.
• Ask the tape recorder.

14.   It might become currency for poorly run countries

• Total value of bitcoin measured in US Dollars has surpassed 100 national currencies out of 160.
• Some are
  beginning to ask if it is possible to one day to scrap some smaller
  national currencies that continue to fail –  and use bitcoin instead.

15.      Bitcoin may be more important than the internet

• Several hundred million dollars are projected to be invested into Bitcoin startups by large corporations in 2014.
• Comparisons of importance are made by experts and scientists daily,
  who often talk about the importance of how this will change the world
  and often compare it with the invention of the Internet itself.
• Marc Andreessen, who invented Mosaic, the first web browser, is one of many technical professionals who talk about Bitcoin and
  reminds him of how he and his friends changed the Internet and World
  Wide Web back in 1993 when it was still considered a techie geek
  technology.  As a reference point, most of the US was using the internet regularly just seven years later.

16.   Watch bitcoin network grow

•  See the time-lapse representation of the bitcoin network build out as it assembles and grows together around the world.
• It’s not much different than watching the progress of the early internet grow.

17.    Robbing money may become obsolete

•  New digital wallets will require at least two signatures (passwords) or more to use.
• This might include government’s robbery of its own citizens as many countries help themselves to one’s banking funds when they want.
• One can require as many signature passwords as you like. Go nuts and
  require 51 signatures… Imagine the Senate being compelled to reach
  majority before spending your taxes locked in a public wallet.

18.    It can stop identity theft

•   As making payments with bitcoin is the equivalent of cash, there is no banking information required from a retailer.
• The hacker attack at Target, Neiman Marcus, and Michael’s (among a
  host of others) that stole users banking credit card information
  wouldn’t have happened if they had only accepted bitcoin payment.
• Paying in bitcoin is not a promise to pay. It’s payment in full.

19.   No permission required

•   Over half of the world have no banking account. They can’t get
  access to regular loans, credit or checking account. They can’t get
  permission from the creditors.
• Bitcoin doesn’t require a bank account or credit report, and you
  don’t have to be of legal age for contracts. And they can buy and sell
  in a world-wide market for once. They didn’t need permission from the
  courts.
• One doesn’t need to be a citizen, or have identification or forms to fill out to own it. It requires no government permission.
• You are your own bank. No permission required.

 20.  Bitcoin the currency is only the beginning

• The Bitcoin network and ledger has features that can also function
  as a way to store records of ownership, titles, copyrights and
  trademarks, home and car titles.
• It can replace the function of a notary public.
• All records are shared and distributed in a central location shared
  by the entire world copied on thousands of millions of computers.
• As the Internet did to the publishing industry, Bitcoin could
  similarly disrupt several other fields or even render them obsolete.
• Anybody’s job it is to move funds from one account to another may
  need to learn a job as those functions can now be programmed, automated
  and transparent.
• Bitcoin 2.0 technologies and new start-up companies have already begun.

This list is only the start. Look into the amazing bitcoin and report
back your own found mind-benders in the comments section. Then play
bitcoin trivia with your friends – they may not believe you.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Building a Bitcoin Economy: how to stimulate adoption

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.