Bitcoin Initiation

The day before yesterday I helped a colleague of mine get started with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but mainly bitcoin. I write this post hoping you'll do the same.

We're all here, dear reader, writing and reading posts on a blockchain-based social platform, so we already understand the significance of a decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer digital currency. We already know what it means to not trust in or rely on a middle man, like the banks or central banks. And we know exactly why those banks can not be trusted with our money. However, it's hard sometimes to convince others, who aren't knee-deep into the crypto-sphere as we are, of the importance, or even the viability of digital money. Many people still have a hard time understanding that something they can't hold in their hands can have real value...

It doesn't suffice to tell those people that money already is nothing more than bits and bytes on a computer. Most younger people don't have as much trouble, as they spend "real" money on completely digital products like games, movies or TV series. But even then some will reject the possibility that money itself can be purely digital; they'll say that, if they want or need to, they can go to a bank or ATM to convert those digitized numbers into physical money. The fact that this isn't the case with bitcoin makes them hesitant to assign real value to it. I've tried many times to convince another colleague of mine to buy some bitcoin at least, and I've made clear that I ask this out of genuine concern for him, and I've been asking since bitcoin was worth only 3500 dollar in 2017, but he just won't trust that bitcoin's a real thing...

The two colleagues I'm talking about here are both around my own age, between 50 and 60 years old, but I've had similar experiences with much younger people, even in my own family; some understand immediately, some take a lot of convincing, and others just won't buy it... And I'm genuinely sad for that latter group, as I'm convinced that sooner or later the whole fiat currency experiment will grind to a screeching halt, leaving them behind. So, I ask you this; please try and convince the people you care about to make a small investment in bitcoin. Be honest when you do so and make sure you warn them about the possibility that even the bitcoin experiment can still fail, even if it's been running without down-time for 12 years now; make them invest money they can spare, and if they want to invest more than that, it's their own responsibility.

That's what cryptocurrency's all about anyway: stop trusting the banks and start trusting yourself. So make sure you stress the importance of taking full responsibility of their own money, which means they need to store their private keys in a safe place, and preferably share those keys with one person they can absolutely trust, because you can never know if you get hit by a truck tomorrow. Wait... I don't have to explain all this to you of course :-) One last thing; I've written a couple of months ago that you only need 0.28 bitcoin to become part of the 1% in bitcoin holders. That number has gone down to 0.01 bitcoin. That's 1 million satoshi, or 590 dollar at the time of writing this. To encourage you to start this noble task, I'll leave you with a video that explains what will happen with bitcoin's value in the near to mid-term; the sky's the limit... ;-)

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep safe, keep healthy!