If you still think that bitcoin is this obscure currency with no intrinsic value only used by drug dealers and the likes or worse, that bitcoin is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, you just don't get it. There are countless resources to start educating yourself.

In this article, Bitcoin with capital B refers to the eponymous payment system, protocol, and platform—often referred to as The Blockchain—while bitcoin with lower case b refers to the bitcoin digital currency.

Bitcoin is a technological breakthrough. To begin with, Bitcoin is revolutionizing the obsolete financial sector. Bitcoin gives people direct power over their financial assets—the same way the Internet gave people direct power over information and communication. Indeed, with Bitcoin, for the first time in History, storage and exchange of value are no more guaranteed through trusted central entities (such as banks)—but through a trusted process backed by mathematics certainty. Paradoxically, a loose network of untrusted computers disseminated all over the world automatically manages this trusted process. And this is exactly because it reconciles these apparent contradictions that Bitcoin can be considered as a technological breakthrough.

The scope of this article is not to explain how Bitcoin works and why it is secure. Let us just say that Bitcoin’s innovation and security rely on clever uses of these past 30 years’ advances in cryptography, game theory, and peer-to-peer networking (a technical introduction on how Bitcoin works and why it is secure can be found here).

As the biggest revolution since the advent of the Internet, Bitcoin represents an outstanding opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors.

Unlike the Internet, opportunities for Bitcoin investors go beyond buying companies’ equities. Bitcoin investors can also buy "shares" of the overall Bitcoin emerging industry itself—by simply purchasing bitcoins. In that case, the bitcoin currency becomes also a valuable asset—as it acts as an index of the Bitcoin industry as a whole.

The bitcoin currency can also be considered as a valuable asset for another reason: bitcoin has the potential to take over gold as the ultimate sound money or store of value (although this won't happen overnight, but may not be that distant). I understand this may be shocking news to some people as it implies a drastic paradigm shift from the gold's 6000-year bubble. But History proved that new paradigms and resulting ecosystems can be adopted quickly.

Like gold, bitcoins are:

. Scarce—since only 21 million bitcoins will eventually be issued by 2140;

. Fungible;

. Impossible to counterfeit—as the security of Bitcoin has proved to be unbreakable since its inception in 2009—although Bitcoin has been receiving more attacks than any other information systems in History.

However, compared to gold, bitcoins—being electronic data—are far much easier and cheaper to:

· Verify—as bitcoins are stored on an online public ledger, the Blockchain—and anyone can check their existence by freely accessing the Blockchain through the Internet; actual ownership of bitcoins can also be established remotely without the involvement of a third party or disclosing any confidential information;

· Store and transfer—since the costs to transfer and store bitcoins are insignificant—especially when considering using bitcoin as a store of value;

· Divide—For the same low transaction fee, Bitcoin can automatically handle even the tiniest transfers of value (the smallest unit of bitcoin, also known as Satoshi, being worth 100 000 000 of a bitcoin).

Last but not least, gold is as difficult to protect as it is easy to confiscate. On the contrary, bitcoins:

· Can be conveniently protected (although, for the time being, that does not come without a few challenges I might talk about in future posts),

· Are impossible to confiscate—since bitcoins can be spent only by their owners; furthermore, bitcoins are redundantly stored on thousands of computers disseminated all over the world; even if most of such computers were seized or damaged, bitcoins will still be accessible by their owners via a simple Internet connection.

Current market cap of all the gold available in the world is around 7 trillion dollars. If, in the coming years, bitcoin, as a store of value, were to grab just 10% of the gold's market cap, the price of one bitcoin would be around $ 50 000!

And that value does not even take into account:

. The superiority of using bitcoins when it comes to retail payment, forex, international remittance, the inclusion of the unbanked, or as a replacement for defective currencies (i.e. most of the currencies of the underdeveloped world—to say the least);

. The applications that may use the Bitcoin Blockchain to store, safeguard, and transfer any ownership titles (stocks, deeds, digital keys...), or to execute smart contracts—without the intervention of a central entity.

I might talk about these aspects of bitcoins and the Bitcoin Blockchain in future posts. Stay tuned.