Like the Internet, Bitcoin will change the way people interact and do business around the world.
Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, run by incorruptible software, offereing a global, affordable, simple an dsecure savings account to billions of people that don’t have the option or desire to run their own hedge fund.
This Bitcoin currency is a voluntary decentralized currency, anonymous. It can’t be shut down by anyone; there are no central servers.
The narrative behind bitcoin has been dominated by bad behavior. The reality is bitcoin is filled with tons of talented developers building infrastructure.
The exciting thing about the current emergence of bitcoin 2.0 applications is that you don’t have to know anything about bitcoin or how the blockchain works to get a lot of utility and value out of the technology.
I think that the future of currency is digital, and Bitcoin has a good shot at being the currency of the future.
Bitcoin’s revolution: an impossible-to-counterfeit digital store of value that can be used as money, that has no sovereign, or central bank involved, that can be sent anywhere instantly at virtually no cost, is irresistible. Anyone who uses it is converted.
With great ideas come great changes. Bitcoin’s that.
Anybody who has enough information about what’s going on in the bitcoin world, you would not buy your bitcoins on Mt. Gox.
Bitcore was introduced to give a trusted platform to spur further bitcoin innovation, allowing BitPay to focus on what they do best: acquire merchants.
What bitcoin does better than the current financial system is it’s a better stored value globally. There are a lot of countries that really don’t trust their banks or their currency, and bitcoin is an alternative.
Energy and bitcoin work really well together because you can pay out in micro-transaction units. As the energy gets used, they pay out, and it’s by the kilowatt rather than by the month.
When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way – computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives – was astonishing.
I just spent the last 8 months working on the second edition of ‘Mastering Bitcoin,’ and I couldn’t even scratch the surface of all the innovation that is happening in BTC.
I love this stuff – bitcoin, ethereum, blockchain technology – and what the future holds.
Bitcoin and the whole discussion around it shows how big a need there is for innovation about what money is and how it is stored.
It’s completely reasonable, even if some Bitcoin currency purists wouldn’t like it, to have credit and debit card payments denominated in Bitcoin rather than dollars, and net settled on Bitcoin instead of on Fedwire.
The big exchanges that hold customer deposits are a big target for hackers, and unfortunately, most bitcoin exchanges store user funds.
Regulators are going to have to come up with a way to treat Bitcoin that is balanced and thoughtful but also recognize that this is a global phenomenon.
People have been scared off Bitcoin by the fact that you needed to put your money in an unregulated overseas platform that has been cut off by banks and scrutinized by the Fed. We are looking to remove the pain points and create a way to invest that is faster and more secure.
Bitcoin’s value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
Bitcoin is probably the most portable money in the history of the world. I can download any amount onto a thumb drive and walk across any border without any problems. Or, I could commit to memory a line of code that I can then input into the network and save or spend Bitcoins.
We can divide bitcoin people into two camps: one that goes along with the existing system and wants it to work complimentarily with the existing system, and then the other half is basically religiously opposed and wants to invent a libertarian, regulation-free world.
At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency designed by very forward-thinking engineers. It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit card fees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions… all good things.
I had been exposed to bitcoin early. I thought the consumer application of it felt, to me, further away. I thought there would be faster adoption of the blockchain in the enterprise space and with banks.
Maybe bitcoin is a kind of a bubble. I don’t like it. I’m not comfortable with it. I’m kind of an old dog to be absorbing that kind of a new trick.
The Internet will continue to be valuable so long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring data. Bitcoin’s value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
Bitcoin is not an actual physical coin, and if computers are shut down, you can’t buy or sell them. That’s why nothing will ever replace gold and silver coins themselves, and all investors should have them at home or in a safe deposit box.
I think it’s going to end up a lot like the Internet. Some countries try to regulate the Internet – bitcoin will be very much like that. It will be legal, and there will be some countries with currency control.
What Bitcoin started is metamorphosing into something bigger: a ‘crypto-tech’-driven economy with its own value creation, not unlike the Web’s own economy. Welcome to the cryptoconomy.
I think examples of free market transactions between peaceful people using Bitcoin and the Internet, I think it’s a wonderful thing. It’s going to make the world a better place.
I am really surprised bitcoin isn’t more popular in India, given the strong gold culture here. I call it Gold 2.0. It has all the attributes other than the fact that it isn’t tangible, and tangibility is less important in the digital age.
I think bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are great ideas. They should be allowed to be traded freely and used freely to find their appropriate role in the economy.
I invested in bitcoin – was that because of my degree? I don’t know.
Bitcoin as a globally distributed public ledger – that’s the thing I’m most excited about going forward. Thinking about how to use Bitcoin in new and innovative ways. In the meantime, we have the boring uses of Bitcoin that are in the process of going mainstream.
We believe the most significant long-term application of bitcoin may be reducing the upfront cost of internet-connected devices to make them more accessible for the developing world.
People think about Bitcoin incorrectly. They think about it as currency or about gold or hoarding, speculation, about how much money do you make. When really, what it is is an API for programmable cash transactions.
There is no more reason to believe that Bitcoin will stand the test of time than that governments will protect the value of government-created money, although Bitcoin is newer, and we always look at babies with hope.
In our early experiences with bitcoin, we found how few people were building bitcoin exchanges the right way. They really weren’t taking the regulation seriously; they were taking it too much like how you would approach something when you’re 18, full of the excitement of youth and throwing caution to the wind.
Calling bitcoin volatile – it’s a non-statement. Unregulated assets with unclear regulatory landscapes are always going to be volatile. That’s what unregulated assets do.
China may censor YouTube. China may censor Twitter. They won’t be able to censor Bitcoin. There’s no central authority. There’s no one you can go to and say, ‘We’re going to turn Bitcoin off.’
Bitcoin woke us all up to a new way to pay, and culturally, I think a much larger percentage of us have become accustomed to the idea that money no longer comes with the friction it once had.
Bitcoin was created with security in mind. The Blockchain is Bitcoin’s public ledger that records every transaction in the Bitcoin economy.
Gemini is a spot bitcoin exchange. To use it, you sign up with Gemini.com and undergo the initial standard review process, similar to what you’d encounter at a traditional bank. Once you’re through, you can ACH or wire cash to the platform, then begin buying and selling bitcoin.
I don’t think it’s any sort of stretch of the imagination to say that, very, very realistically, each single bitcoin, if bitcoin becomes popular, will have to be worth at least tens of thousands of dollars.
Just as the web democratized publishing and development, Bitcoin can democratize building new financial services. Contracts can be entered into, verified, and enforced completely electronically, using any third-party that you care to trust, or by the code itself.
When the actual Bitcoin network launched in 2009, no one knew about it, and many of those who did thought it would surely fail. Just to make sure the thing worked, the scripting language in Bitcoin was intentionally extremely restrictive.
Bitcoin represents the first major breakthrough in economics and finance since double-entry bookkeeping was invented in 1494, and activists need to embrace its power.
Within the coming years, disrupting the Bitcoin network will become increasingly more difficult as Bitcoin wallet software and the protocol become more mature and resilient.
The only thing I can do with my bitcoin is give it to somebody else.
