Bitcoin, all you actually need to know.

Hint: It’s not the price…that’s the least interesting thing about it.

Forget the headlines, anything friends / family have told you, forget the voice in your head telling yourself, “I’m not smart enough to figure this out, or investing is not for me.” You can understand it.

Part of fully understanding a topic is being able to explain simply to anyone.

I’ve taken my months of extensive research and peeled back everything except what you actually need to know to, in order to have that satisfying AHA!! moment.

Give this article 10 minutes of your full focus and using simple English (no dictionary.com required) and through simple everyday examples you’ll get what makes Bitcoin / CryptoCurrency truly revolutionary and the real reason why you should be excited about it. Spend the 15 minutes, and you will probably also own a bank owner’s yacht in the near future! Seriously.

Pep talk over, let’s dive in!

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One thing almost all of us actually take part in, or at least can understand is getting paid via direct deposit.

You give your employer your bank account number, and on payday you can login to your banking app and see the money you got paid was added to your previous balance.

Hearing that Bitcoin is “Digital money” might sound scary, but guess what, that whole direct deposit thing, that’s “digital money” too. In fact, if you’re paying for things with a debit / credit card most of the time (like us normal sane humans), those transactions are purely “digital money” as well.

Hardly anyone uses cash anymore, and society is moving towards purely “digital money” either way! Be it through digital Banking or Bitcoin.

So what does that mean? At least to me, it means that my money is simply a number displayed on a screen somewhere, rather than feeling how fat my pocket feels. That number is your balance.

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That makes that number’s accuracy really damn important to everyone. If you logged in and saw your balance was $5000.00 today, logged in tomorrow and it said $400.00, but you didn’t spend any money, you’d be pissed.

Who do we currently trust that number’s accuracy with? Bank owned software running on computers owned by a bank.

Bitcoin is the idea that we should place our trust in software and computers owned by everyone (thousands of nerds like me around the world who know how to set it up).

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Great, but what’s the advantage of that / what does that mean for me?

To answer that, let’s get back to our direct deposit scenario.

Whether it’s a Bank’s software or Bitcoin’s software, at the end of the day, your balance (that number we really care about) is just text and numbers living on a file on a computer somewhere.

Don’t let your eyes glaze over, this is really simple. Chances are you’ve saved a Microsoft Word or Google doc file before. We’ll call this one “AccountBalances.doc”.

The Bank’s “AccountBalances.doc ”file might look like this.

999922334 — — — — — — — — — — $1,000.00 — — — — Jane’s Employer

000123456 — — — — — — — — — — $50.00- — — — — — Jane

Let’s examine how the “AccountBalances.doc” file might look after the Bank’s software updates the file following a direct deposit transaction takes place where Jane’s employer pays Jane $300.

999922334 — — — — — — — — — — $680.00 — — — — Jane’s Employer

000123456 — — — — — — — — — — $350.00 — — — — Jane

Wait, why does Jane’s employer have $680.00 instead of $700.00? The Bank charged a $20.00 fee for updating their digital “AccountBalances.doc ”file on all their computers and helping Jane’s employer pay Jane.

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Let’s look at that same scenario play out in the Bitcoin world.

999922334 — — — — — — — — — — $1,000.00 — — — — Jane’s Employer

000123456 — — — — — — — — — — $50.00- — — — — — Jane

After the direct deposit transaction where Jane got paid $300 by her employer, after the magic Bitcoin software works, the file might look like this.

999922334 — — — — — — — — — — $689.99— — — — — Jane’s Employer

000123456 — — — — — — — — — — $359.99 — — — — — Jane

Jane’s Employer was only charged 2 cents for paying Jane, and $19.98 was saved. Jane’s employer decided to keep $9.99 of the savings they saved for using Bitcoin, and give the other $9.99 to Jane.

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Let’s explore a little more what having Bitcoin software and computers, owned by everyone, updating the “AccountBalances.doc” file means, vs having the Banks software and computers update it.

What it means is that people now have the power to pay one another without the need for a Bank or PayPal or Venmo. Also not have to pay such high fees. That means your paycheck is fatter, or if you’re a business owner your profits are higher. The only person who loses is the bank executives who are on a yacht somewhere bought with the high fees they charged people.

If you’re particularly inquisitive, you might be asking yourself, “But why was there still a .02c fee still and who received it?

Nerds like me who setup their computers to run the Bitcoin software and update “AccountBalances.doc” get the fees. Bitcoin calls those people miners.

Maybe you’ve heard of Bitcoin mining and the article made it sound mysterious, but it’s not, it’s literally nerds double clicking some software on their computers that update the “AccountBalances.doc” file so that when Jane logs in and looks at her balance the right number is displayed.

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Maybe you’re still like, “So, lower fees…that’s what is so revolutionary?” No. It’s that kids born today won’t recognize a bank from today, because Bitcoin will either replace them or so drastically change the way they work. Let’s review and quickly go over again what any of us really cares about.

Money is becoming digital whether you want it to or not. Money is logging in somewhere and looking at a number on a screen. That number on the screen stays accurate by software on computers updating the “AccountBalances.doc ” file.

Therefore, what we really care about is the “AccountBalances.doc” file staying safe. Let’s look at this from a Bitcoin vs Bank security standpoint.

In Today’s world the “AccountBalances.doc” file is stored on probably about 1,000 computers the bank owns, in different physical locations all around the world. The reason it’s on so many computers in so many locations is so that a meteor doesn’t hit one building with the computer in it that holds the “AccountBalances.doc” file and wipe out everyone’s balances.

When the meteor hits the one place, the file is safe because it’s still stored on other computers located in different physical location. Btw, this concept is also what the “cloud” is, you know that thing that keeps your photos / videos safe, the “cloud” is just a bunch of computers in different locations all holding the same files, whether they be “AccountBalances.doc” or an image file.

ANYWAY, back to Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s “AccountBalances.doc” file lives on 12,000 computers owned by individuals all over the world (The world’s biggest, most secure “cloud”).

Let’s say you wanted everyone’s balances to go to 0 by destroying the “AccountBalances.doc” file on all the computers that host the file. Does it seem easier to set bombs off at 10 big buildings owned by the banks at different places in the world, or does it seem easier to destroy 12,000 individuals’ computers holding the “AccountBalances.doc” file in 70 different countries?

You’d probably say blowing up the 10 buildings owned by the bank, and you’d be right. By the time you blew up computer 11,800 in the Bitcoin cloud, 3 more nerds in 3 random countries probably already setup their computer that hosts the “AccountBalances.doc” file on it. The 10 locations with bank owned computers don’t change all that often.

You might also now get the “cloud”, and think that both options are really secure, but pretend North Korea got their act together and built super fast accurate missiles, and had 10 of them. Theoretically they could now target 10 locations with banked owned computers and wipe out all our money if those 10 missiles were to hit their targets. In Bitcoin’s case, they’d have to shoot 12,000 missiles to locations all over the world at once to destroy all money.

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Ok, so paying less fees and the “AccountBalances.doc” digital file being more secure because it’s stored on more computers around the world at once is what makes this revolutionary? I’m still not sold.

I simplified things a little to make this easier to digest, but in the real world, there are thousands of banks in all different countries. So there are actually thousands of the “AccountBalances.doc” files all owned by different banks and on different sets of computers owned by those different banks.

That complicates things. Let’s say you live in the US and visit Japan. Once you’re in japan your bank doesn’t even exist there. Your $50,000 balance in your american bank account is now meaningless there. You now have to convert some of that money into Japan’s money. Doing that means your bank has to communicate with Japan’s bank, and they both have to figure out how to do the conversion math and both update their “AccountBalances.doc” files.

Doing that isn’t easy, and wire transfers between countries can often times take 7 days because of it, and charge outrageous fees. With Bitcoin, there’s only one “AccountBalances.doc” file, and when you login and look at your balance, that amount of money is the same amount of money anywhere around the globe. It’s a truly global currency, and way less complicates things. Paying for things in another country with Bitcoin is also instant, and certainly doesn’t take 7 days.

Saving $19.98 in our direct deposit example isn’t that exciting, but saving $500.00 and having your money available instantly when you travel to another country, is starting to get more exciting.

Maybe you don’t travel, but even when you buy from other countries. You might have noticed a lot of the time that’s pretty expensive. Reducing such high international fees by only having one global “AccountBalances.doc” file means the prices of foreign goods will be much less and the world can trade with each other much more easily.

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Ok, so bigger paychecks, less fees, cheaper foreign products, and an easier way to use money when visiting another country. Getting closer to revolutionary, but I’m still not sold.

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Ok fine, how about this? Only about 3 Billion of the 7.5 billion people on earth have access to bank accounts and financial services. With Bitcoin anyone who gets their hands on a Smartphone now has the power to use financial services and transact with anyone else in the world.

Now we’ve added: empowering over half the world to participate in the global economy.

Let’s not stop there though. Bitcoin is also programmable money, meaning money that can do things automagically. What’s programmable money mean?

It means that when a devastating earthquake or hurricane hits an area, money, that people choose to allocate for emergency relief, can automatically leave their account and go to the people hit by the devastation, instantly. That means money wasn’t wasted on advertising campaigns (text 55555 to “HELP” to donate) or charity organizers who help get the money from you to them. MORE money automatically gets to EXACTLY who needs it FASTER.

Also, your 4g enabled car can pay for parking by the second, instead of in 15-minute chunks, all automatically, in Bitcoin. So if you walk to your car a little faster than someone else, and get there 10 seconds faster, you pay less than someone else pays. With such low fees there is no reason to pay for things in large chunks of time, and makes paying by the second feasible.

Now your wheels should be turning. There’s also a million other ways this new programmable money with tiny fees can be used to change the world that no one has even thought of yet. It’s sort of similar to when the only thing you could do on the internet was send emails (and it took 4 days), but people said, “There are going to be a million ways to use the internet we haven’t even thought of in the future.”

That’s why if you have read that Bitcoin is as revolutionary as the internet. It actually is. It’s also similar to the internet because anyone on earth can contribute to it without getting permission from anyone.

What do I mean by that? I mean that no one needs permission in any country to put a website on the internet. They can just do it, and anyone in the world can see the website. With Bitcoin anyone can transact with anyone else in the world, without having to ask permission from banks or customs agents or anything. Just like with putting up a website.

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Hopefully by now your mind is racing with possibilities and you’re super excited to share this with everyone. Also hopefully, I did my job well enough that you think even your mom could understand the article and are pumped to share it with her. Don’t just send her the link. Do her dishes, or walk her dog, or something else that saves he time and tell her that you’re doing it so she has 15 extra minutes and to read this, and to read it seriously. Tell her to treat it like a class assignment and take it seriously. Don’t push her or anyone to invest, let them get excited on their own with the AHA!! moment hits and ask you how to invest.

If you’re confused or not excited, read it again from the top. Repeat until it sinks in and you are excited. Also don’t stop with just your mom, share it with everyone as soon as possible, so that your paychecks are fatter, so that people around the world can have access to banking, and most importantly to change the world.

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What about my Yacht?

If this article did sink in for you, congrats, you now realize this is the future of money and know more than 99% of the people who claim to be “In the know” about Bitcoin. Armed with that knowledge you can now invest the proper way and be rich within 10 years.

A lot of people will hear about Bitcoin, not really understand it at this level, and sell it when their $1,000 turns into $10,000 in 1 or 2 years, but you don’t want $10,000 you want to own a Bank Owners yacht in 10 years.

The proper way to get there is to buy as much Bitcoin as you can afford to right now, without changing your life in any significant way, forgetting about it for 10 years, and educating people about this new technology, to help accelerate mainstream adoption (it’ll happen even if you don't, but slightly more slowly).

Pretend you were there when electricity was first invented, you knew everyone was going to want it. Owning Bitcoin is sort of like owning the power poles and power plants and other infrastructure that s this new awesome product to all these people (electricity).

You are that early. You can still own a piece of the infrastructure and everyone is going to want it in the future, just like they all want electricity now.

If you invest, and you don’t sell it until Bitcoin takes over money in the world, then rich people’s dollars will be worth next to nothing and they will want Bitcoin instead. You know how those people will get your bitcoin from you? By selling you their yachts and private jets.

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If you have questions and enjoyed this article, feel free to follow me on medium. I’ll do new Bitcoin articles from time to time. Maybe go over mining in more detail, maybe go over how to buy Bitcoin, why choose Bitcoin over other CryptoCurrencies, and lots of other things. If you don’t want to wait and are eager to learn more, please watch all the videos on this Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJWCJCWOxBYSi5DhCieLOLQ

Thanks for reading! Please share this everywhere and help change the world!