Joe’s Guide to Bitcoin and the Magical World of Blockchain

Submission by Joe Carr (@Isaboa on Discord)

Let’s have a chat about Bitcoin, blockchain, crypto.. You know that thing you’ve heard mention of on occasion the past handful of years. Everyone has THAT guy in their workplace, Bobby from receiving, who’s such a condescending man-boy that you can’t help but just be all “NO” before he even opens his mouth. The countless talking heads on the news speaking of the looming “bitcoin bubble” about to pop naturally you change the channel. Here we are a whole decade after this new technology was invented.. and it just refuses to go away. Although it is not constant, there are regular reminders of this invisible internet cash that you are literally clueless about.. you just don’t get it, you don’t understand. And honestly you haven’t put an ounce of effort into trying. Cause well, it’s new and complicated and foreign to everything we have ever known, and you don’t really care. But see, that is a big part of what makes magic internet money so damn special, it’s revolutionary and we don’t really have a point of reference to describe or understand it. So beyond the elite tech savvy evangelists shouting about the dawn of a new era, real people just don’t get it, nor do they really want to get it. They certainly don’t wanna hear Bobby from receiving talking about the difference between Bitcoin and Alt-coins and the magic of blockchain immutability.

So that’s what this little article is about. Lets cover the basics in a way that a normal human being can feel comfortable with. Something that sidesteps the typical condescending nature of cutting edge technical innovations. Let’s just go over what the hell is going on here. Hopefully you’ll finally give enough attention to this whole crypto thing that you’ll feel confident enough to contribute to this global conversation. Cryptocurrencies and the technologies they are innovating is not some speculative bubble the news claims (that’s just a weird side effect).. it is here and it is not going anywhere. The toothpaste is out of the tube, it can’t be put back. It will change things. Likely not as much as Bobby claims, but just as you learned to understand and ultimately use other tech, such as the internet — you will with blockchain. It is unavoidable. And really it isn’t all that complicated either.

Rare photo of Satoshi Nakamoto, IRL

BITCOIN JESUS

First lets real quick go back to the beginning. And an individual called Satoshi Nakamoto, aka Bitcoin Jesus. This is the guy (or guys, or girl.. no one knows) who first put together the cryptographic components and built bitcoin. The whole thing was made from the dark recesses of cryptographic math genius conversations… and inspired by the market crash of 2008. And yeah, Satoshi is a mysterious figure.. but it isn’t weird, ’cause they (the original think tank) were all crypto nuts who are super secretive. The lore behind bitcoin and the birth of crypto blockchain is thick and pretty awesome really. The whole movement has its mystery; for all we know satoshi is a time traveling alien. It’s fine though, ’cause what he made works, and is pretty dang rad.

Blockchain works hard so you don’t have to

BITCOINING

In accounting there is a ledger. A thing that keeps track of accounts, balances, transactions etc. But it is only as accurate and legitimate as the person tracking and verifying things or the base data put in. How do you trust a ledger? That’s the crazy impressive thing that bitcoin did. They made a transactional ledger that is constantly being verified by a decentralized network of independent computers, or “nodes”, making this ledger immutable. Fake or inaccurate data cannot be logged into the ledger, as the other nodes keeping watch will discard it. They don’t agree that should be there, so it’s refused. The ledger is holy. The nature of the process for transactional verification, interdependence within a decentralized network. And immutability with certainty is what makes Bitcoin special. And it has never existed before Bitcoin Jesus made it. Pretty dang cool. To characterize such an innovation as merely a digital currency is not doing it justice.

IMPLICATIONS

So, you have this ledger that cannot be wrong. It then makes it possible to have a limited quantity of digital assets. Like if you have a digital thing.. say a photo.. you can copy it and email it, and send it, and save it to a jump drive or whatever. It is not a rare thing. But a bitcoin with its special blockchain ledger system is totally different. All of a sudden there is such thing as a limited quantity of digital goods (i.e. digital currency). There are currently 17.25 Million Bitcoins.. and there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. Which really in the grand scheme of things is not a lot. That is why so many evangelists talk about bitcoin being worth millions in the future.. ’cause it is pretty rare, so it’s kinda possible for the value to be ridiculously high. (But to only see the value is to miss the big picture)

“Standing on the shoulders of giants” except with magic internet money

AFTER BITCOIN

Maybe you’re old enough to remember the time “before Google”? I am. We had all sorts of early search engines. The first I used was web crawler. And it was pretty awesome! A revolutionary tool to interact with the world wide web. Although it was the first I used, it wasn’t the best. Other companies innovated on the principle and made even better search engines, like dog pile and alta vista.. and then finally Google did it bestest. Which is why they are a mechagodzilla tech and money powerhouse. This is what happens with new technology. Sure Bitcoin was first, and it is very important. But since Satoshi’s magic baby there have been hundreds of other currencies and projects that have built on the foundation of Bitcoin’s simple crazy genius and made things even more useful than just a digital currency / ledger.

See, a bunch of super smart folks figured out you can do way more cool things with this immutable ledger and blockchain tech. One example is smart contracts; basically a tool to do a transaction with complex details and funding all built in. Like an escrow service. People use these smart contracts today to do things like sub-contracted services — and it protects everyone involved by acting as a safe, secure digital middleman. This fundamental ability to do “smart” things with the blockchain and immutable ledger even makes it possible to make a platform! What’s a platform you ask? Well, it is the foundation you can build on in the form of applications. In this use, instead of being called Apps, they are called Dapps (Decentralized Applications) This is all still very new, and the Dapp world is very young. So there aren’t many useful applications.. but given time this will change. This is one of the many facets of our digital world being shaken to the core by this new and innovative technology.

sophisticated infographic that proves my point

DECENTRALIZED

I know, I know. I keep using this word “decentralized “. Decentralized obviously means “not centralized”, and it is an important distinction of most blockchain / crypto efforts. Basically, when you use facebook or google or hotmail or whatever.. you are using a centralized system. Somewhere there is a massive (or many massive) warehouse(s) of servers working for facebook (or whatever megacorp). They store your data and make it possible for you to like that puppy gif. This is how things work; companies house data and offer it up for use. When you file taxes with turbotax? Centralized servers working for intuit. When you post to instagram on your phone? It gets uploaded to a massive server. Centralized housing and serving of data is everything. Now let’s go back to Satoshi’s baby. Because we have a trustless system; because the nature of the system takes constant trust exercises to prove a facets value / worth, the data is not in a central location. Instead, it’s all over the world in thousands of independent workstations /servers who all work toward the same goal. (They have varying ways they do this-I’m not gonna get into it ’cause boring and complicated.) This decentralized nature has huge implications, because not only does it allow a system to not be controlled by a central figure (or corporation), it also makes it near impossible to cripple. If one, two or four hundred of those independent nodes goes down, the overall chain is unaffected. The strength and security of a decentralized network is light years ahead of any centralized system.

If blockchain was an animated gif from myspace..

TOTALLY NOT EVIL

There is another benefit of this whole trustless decentralized system. It’s not evil, that’s right! Totally not evil. I’m not even being sarcastic. Due to it all fundamentally being a ledger of facts and transactions (although it is quickly evolving beyond that), it inherently just wants to be right all the time, and to prove it’s rightness whenever asked. And since it eliminates SO MANY middlemen (middlemen are historically evil.. just look at car salesmen) it is all about solving problems in ways that benefit the end user; real people! Instead of the parties that historically have granted access to trust. And then we are talking about treating data.. not as a commodity, but as something we all can participate in managing. From encrypting to storing to serving. There is no central Megacorp that owns this data. It isn’t owned by ANYONE. It just is, and it is accurate, secure and private. This will allow advanced systems to be built; apps, services etc., that truly protect the user and are not susceptible to the vulnerabilities (or evil nature) that large data companies propose. Every week we hear of the latest data breach. Fact is, your SSN and personal data have likely been stolen multiple times over. These centralized systems are dinosaurs, and they are doomed. The fundamental nature of blockchain and decentralized networks predicts a future where our data is actually ours. This is kind of a big deal, especially since we’ve all been losing the fight against bad people doing bad things with our data for quite some time.

This is CRYPTO country! Yeehaw!

GOLD RUSH

Because Bitcoin was built as a currency, a digital money, and because the beauty of blockchain and the digital ledger is for everyone (no gatekeepers, no middlemen), this has caused a bit of a goldrush.. The early crypto years (we are still in them) are often referred to as the wild west. Millionaires were made overnight in basements, just from being an early adopter and speculating in the crypto market by buying and selling of these invisible internet money things. It’s crazy, and the traditional financial markets have responded by saying “this is crazy”. But remember the old guard of money, finance, accounting etc.? They are all threatened by this game changing innovation. To say this will impact them and their entire world is an understatement. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Yeah, the market is crazy volatile with crypto. And the stories of overnight millionaires really doesn’t do the whole movement any favors (it attracts scammers and people looking for a quick buck). It all can make your head spin, but this is due to this primordial stage of such a powerful technology.. Not because the tech is inherently volatile. Consider the claim of a “bubble” which will pop. Well, this only looks at valuations.. again only seeing the innovation as a currency. Blockchain and Crypto is far more complex and important than a simple currency (although it is a pretty rad currency). And inevitably, over time, the wild wild west will get less wild. More people will see the potential, the future and the advantages this brave new world has to offer. Companies will figure out and launch real world use cases of this weird new way of handling the data and transactions of everything. Valuations will eventually get boring and stable. Less than 1% of the world is currently even involved with crypto and less than that actually understand it! Of course it is a shit show right now, it is not even in its adolescent stages yet. But crypto is not going anywhere.. and despite the claims otherwise, it is quickly getting more adoption, more regular folks like you. And more innovations using the tech for purposes never even imagined by Bitcoin Jesus. Get used to Bobby in receiving talking about this shit, cause he’s kinda right. We’re witnessing a sea of change in the way our data-dependent world works. And you can keep ignoring it, keep calling it a “speculative bubble” or you can enjoy the show! Enjoy your unique vantage point on the kind of innovation that happens once in a lifetime.

WHAT NOW

Well, this isn’t an article to convince anyone to buy anything — so don’t go any buy a bunch of Bitcoin. Dear lord don’t do anything stupid! But maybe, instead of avoiding the rare news / article or conversation on this brave new world.. maybe engage? Maybe do some research on one of the many tiny projects with huge vision and ambition? Maybe, when you find a project that resonates with you, support it. Curiously, another facet of crypto is the fact that anyone and everyone can directly support a project by using it, buying it, or hosting a node. Being part of the infrastructure, part of the governance, part of the solution. The nature of blockchain projects is a direct connection between the people who facilitate it and the project itself. They are one and the same. This, along with a litany of other facets is also new, original and revolutionary about this technology.

You’re basically James Bitcoin Bond now

WRAPPING UP

So, yeah. There is a rambling partially incoherent article about this magical invisible confusing blockchain ledger thing. It is filled with gaps and commas and run on sentences. Curiously, it is not written by a techy guy (I know right?). Rather the author, myself, happens to be an artist that lives in the woods and loves old antiquated things far more than advanced technology. Basically, I got interested in the technology as a tool to use on the merchant side of my work. Being an independent artist, you gotta wear a lotta hats. And there are very few trusted methods of managing sales and money at a global scale (I sell my work all over). Even more curiously, the current mainstream solutions are really expensive and not very secure. Add in a propensity to not like “big data” treating me and my fellow humans digital selves like cattle to be bought and sold at market, and you have a recipe for someone primed to learn about and get involved with crypto. I went from being marginally interested in the tech, to hosting nodes on VPS servers around the world in order to maintain the blockchains of projects I have grown to adore. Like ODIN, for example. My story is not abnormal. In the future, there will be people from every walk of life contributing to systems and supporting a healthy, ethical treatment of data and infrastructure. Not just Bobby, but also Barb and Bill and old man Babineaux .. they’ll all be part of this. Sure, this might be an overly optimistic and utopian forecast of the future. But whatever, all the rules have changed. Just ask Bobby in receiving, he’ll confirm. The time has come for a brave new way of doing everything.

Joe Carr is an independent artist living and working in the woods of Alaska. His work has been displayed in movies, tv shows, books and magazines. He is also part of the ODIN team as a community liaison and general purveyor of good vibes and reasonable perspectives. You can find his work on his personal website www.antiquatedpress.com and in galleries all over the world. For feedback, questions or general salty rants you can email Joe at joe@antiquatedpress.com