Bitcoin is decentralized digital currency. But if you want to understand what bitcoin is, you have to start at the beginning, with the question: What is Money?

Transcript:
Let’s start at the beginning.

Something is money if it has these 3 qualities, a store of value, a medium of exchange, and having a unit of account. 

Lots of things have been in money in history, seashells, beads, silver, gold, and most recently paper money backed by governments, called fiat currency. 

When governments have the ability to create money, they do it – to assist in a liquidity crisis, to finance wars, to fund government programs. But the downside is that the fiat currency is guaranteed to lose value over time and creates a debt spiral, where in simple terms, they take out more credit cards to pay off the old credit cards. 

Bitcoin solves this. Bitcoin is software created in 2008 and is the first, most secure, and most widely known solution to the problem of creating digital money.

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency.

Decentralized meaning that no one person controls it, owns it or could shut it down. 

It’s digital-only - there’s no gold coins or physical form. When you own it, you keep it in a digital wallet. 

And it’s currency. It’s digital money. Not only does it have the 3 qualities of money, but when you compare it to gold or fiat currency, it also has far superior properties of money. 

It makes bitcoin very interesting and attractive from a future growth perspective too. 

It’s person to person. When someone sends you bitcoin or pays you in bitcoin, bitcoin doesn’t go through a bank, a government or any other 3rd party. It is a global, open monetary network that no one controls and everyone in the world with an internet connection can participate in. 

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin but each 1 bitcoin can be divided into a hundred million units called satoshis so anyone, anywhere can buy some with as little as 50 cents and send it anywhere in the world. 

All of this makes bitcoin a very compelling solution to the problems we face.

Since its creation, it has grown at a very rapid pace following the same path of growth that internet adoption took. In those terms, it’s only about 1998.

There’s a lot of growth to still occur. 

If you’re learning about bitcoin now you’re still very early.