You are not late in the world of Bitcoin

Chapter 0 Introduction

A friend said: The price of Bitcoin is too high, I won’t buy it.

I said: It is right not to buy it, but it is wrong not to understand Bitcoin.

A friend said: If you can’t make money, why bother knowing about this stuff?

I said: If six years ago, 10,000 bitcoins were only worth two pizzas, or $25, would you understand?

My friend said: I didn’t know about this thing at that time. If I had known, I would definitely buy it.

I said: Understanding now and understanding six years ago are actually the same. I mean, you can earn the same. As for investment, the cost of investing now and investing six years ago is definitely different. But if you invest based on understanding, from the perspective of opportunity cost, it is also the same. I mean, you can earn the same. In fact, it is different. The opportunity cost six years ago is greater than the opportunity cost now.

My friend said: What the hell. You guys are doing this is a pyramid scheme, and you asked me to join you just to recruit people. (Okay, I summarized my friend's words.)

I said: Oh, sorry. I have been studying Bitcoin for most of the past few years, which is why I keep talking about it when chatting with you. Let's not talk about it anymore and talk about something else. Come, have some tea.

My friend seems to be very representative. The main reason for refusing to learn new knowledge is that he thinks it is "too late!!!". The price of Bitcoin is too high, so there is no need to buy it. But the things they rely on for survival are the knowledge from decades or even hundreds of years ago, such as mechanical design, farming, and Taobao. But they don't think it is "too late!!!" to learn this stuff

This article attempts to explain why in the world of Bitcoin, or in all new technologies, it is never too late to enter "now!!!"

The main reference for this article is the first chapter of Kevin Kelly's new book "The Inevitable". I just criticized KK last week, and I don't know if I will be accused of plagiarism this time (there should be a crying expression here).

Chapter 1 The development of technology has turned everyone into a novice

The world is changing too fast now, leading to a very strange scene. There are more and more unknown things. Almost everyone is a novice in the face of new things. Therefore, most people yearn for the pastoral life in the past. If you ask others, if there is a time machine here, you can go to the past or to the future, but you can only use it once. Where would you go? Most people will say, go to the past. It's as if the future is all dark world.

Compared to believing in new things, most people tend to trust traditional things.

For example, when many people are sick, they would rather choose traditional medicine than modern medicine. Most people do not believe in genetically modified food and would rather buy very expensive organic food. There is also a large number of people who oppose nuclear power plants, but it seems that few people oppose coal-fired power plants...

The computer I use was bought three years ago. It still has a dual-core chip, 4G memory, and no SSD hard drive. Now it is very slow. It takes 5 minutes to boot up and 1 hour to start Bitcoin Core. I am very stingy when it comes to upgrading my hardware. Why should I spend money to upgrade it if it works? And there is a possibility of losing files during the upgrade process.

The same is true for my other hardware. I rarely buy new ones.

As for our knowledge, the update is even slower.

I have absolutely no desire to read the latest scientific literature published in Nature.

My knowledge of physics is still at the university level, and I have absolutely no desire to follow the latest developments in physics.

I rarely understand the basic principles of the latest technology.

Even if it is a new APP, I have little desire to download it.

This is how modern people are. Technology is developing too fast. In this context, we have all become rookies.

Bitcoin was born in such a humanistic environment. When Bitcoin was first created, except for a few people like Satoshi Nakamoto and Finney, almost everyone had zero knowledge of Bitcoin.

At that time, everyone was on the same starting line and no one had an advantage.

I'm talking about knowledge reserves. If there is an advantage, it's those who are open to new things. Those who are not open-minded are really at a disadvantage.

But Bitcoin is constantly evolving and will never stop at Satoshi Nakamoto’s explanation. You may have known Bitcoin very well a year ago, but a year later, you are a novice again.

Last year, because I invested all my money in buying Bitcoin, I needed money to live. I made a decision to ignore the coins and stop learning Bitcoin. Instead, I returned to my field of mechanical design and learned to make money in mechanical design. After a few months, the new job was more stable, and I had a better understanding of new products and machinery. I couldn't help but return to the ocean of knowledge about Bitcoin. I immediately discovered that there were many new things in the Bitcoin world, such as side chains and tree chains. The war between Bitcoin and blockchain has begun to tilt towards blockchain, and non-Bitcoin products on blockchain have begun to show their strength. I realized that I had become a rookie again.
As long as you stop learning and don't evolve with Bitcoin, you will quickly become a rookie. Your advantage will be eroded by time.

In front of new things, everyone is a rookie, and new things evolve too fast. If you don't try to keep up, your advantages will disappear. The only permanent advantage is to keep an open mind.

Chapter 2 Learning about Bitcoin is always timely

Since everyone in the Bitcoin world was a rookie six years ago and was standing at the same starting line, you were not late at that time.

But now?

If you look further ahead, for example, imagine taking a time machine to 10 years from now and looking back at the present from that time's perspective, you may find that Bitcoin then is very different from Bitcoin now. Just like the Bitcoin world this year is slightly different from last year, it will definitely be very different in 10 years.

First of all, the form of Bitcoin that will truly change people's lives in the future must be different from the current form. Now you need to be very careful when storing Bitcoin, it takes 10 minutes to transfer once, and it is often not confirmed. If you say that this is something that everyone will use daily in the future, I don't believe it.

Secondly, Bitcoin will develop endlessly. This can be seen from the past six years of history. CPU mining only existed for about two years, and the Bitcoin world eliminated GPU mining in less than three years. From forum posting transactions to the closure of Mentougou, and then to the flourishing of exchanges, it took less than four years. From Bitcoin to altcoins to second-tier tokens, and then to the proliferation of blockchain applications, I think it has only been about four years, especially second-tier tokens and blockchain applications, which have only been around for the past two years.

Finally, in the Bitcoin world, the cycle of elimination is accelerating. If you want to start a company in the Bitcoin world, you must be very careful, because the probability of bankruptcy is too high. If you innovate and develop applications in the Bitcoin world, the average lifespan is estimated to be 1 month (just a guess).

As for the above three points, no one has enough time and energy to master all the knowledge. Anyone who claims to be an authority in the Bitcoin world is often arrogant. Everyone is a rookie and everyone is at the same starting line. It has nothing to do with how long you have been in the industry or your experience.

Finally, I would like to add that in the past, people planted trees for the benefit of future generations. In the current era, people learn from past mistakes and are teachers for the future. In the Bitcoin world, there are pitfalls everywhere. The earlier you enter, the easier it is to take a detour and the higher the probability of falling into a pit. It is not necessarily that they all make money smoothly and reach the peak of their lives. They have left valuable experience for later generations to learn from. From this perspective, who can you say is happier?

As long as you keep an open mind, there is never a good time to start learning about Bitcoin.

Chapter 3 You are not late on the price either

I talked so much that I seemed to have forgotten the most crucial thing, the price.

Yes, it seems that the most critical factor that prevents others from entering the world of Bitcoin is price. In fact, I have always advocated that learning about Bitcoin is far more important than investing in Bitcoin. But price is an unavoidable topic. After all, Bitcoin is an excellent investment product.

Then I will explain from an investment perspective, analyzing from the two perspectives of "marginal" choice and "opportunity cost" why I think it is not too late to invest in Bitcoin now.

Investment must be based on the premise of understanding the investment target. Those who are too lazy to understand the investment products but want to make money from them are mostly because they trust others and others understand the investment products for them.

Therefore, if you don’t understand Bitcoin, there is no point in investing. It is never too late to start learning about Bitcoin, as mentioned in Chapter 2.

Here is an example to explain the concept of "margin" in economics. Well, I'd better go to Bing and check it out myself.

Why are diamonds so expensive even though they are dispensable to human survival? And why is water so cheap even though it is essential to human survival? This is why we need to start our analysis from the concept of “margin”.

This is because the value of an item is determined by the marginal utility it brings to people - although water is very important, because it is abundant, a little more or less at the margin will not have much impact on utility; while diamonds are insignificant, but because they are rare, one more or one less at the margin will have a great impact on utility. It is for this reason that the value of diamonds is much higher than that of water. (Excerpt from "Principles of Economics")

Before investing, you must have learned a lot about investment products. You have been choosing, how much of this financial product should I buy? Or should I buy this stock? Or should I buy some Bitcoin? In other words, investing in Bitcoin is actually making choices on the margin. Or a more common term, called capital allocation, is how to allocate your investment amount.

Six years ago, investing in real estate, Taobao stores, and domain names all yielded very high returns. From a marginal perspective, if Bitcoin did not exist, but you knew about real estate, etc., your investment would be more successful.

Six years ago, or in earlier years, the price fluctuations of Bitcoin, the technical instability, and even the difficulty of storage all required you to spend much more energy than investing in real estate. These are all costs. This is why most of the early entrants did not become rich. Most of them made a small profit or even lost money. However, those who invested in real estate six years ago have already made amazing wealth.

Now, looking at all the investments, you continue to make choices on the margin. Bitcoin has become a very suitable choice. The technology is more popular, the price fluctuations are much smaller, and the policy risks are disappearing. It is not too late to invest now.

Another perspective is that opportunity cost is the real cost.

Opportunity cost refers to the profit or income lost by implementing one investment plan instead of another feasible plan. If a sum of money can be invested in stocks or Bitcoin, the expected return on investment in Bitcoin is the opportunity cost of the decision to invest in stocks.

The purpose of calculating opportunity costs is to provide benefit comparison information when selecting the best option among several feasible options.

The earlier you invest in Bitcoin, the higher the opportunity cost compared to real estate investment. The opportunity cost of not investing in Bitcoin now (if you are really optimistic about the future of Bitcoin) will be very high.

If we say that the price of Bitcoin has increased by tens of thousands of times from almost zero in the early days to thousands of yuan now, you will definitely say that early investors benefit more than late investors, whether from the perspective of "marginal" choice or opportunity cost.

Yes, that's right. But as modern people, we must have a mindset to only calculate our own accounts and not calculate others' accounts. All the things in the past have become sunk costs and will never come back. For yourself, the most important thing is to try to calculate your "marginal" options and your opportunity costs. If you can calculate clearly, you will not be late for investing in anything. But if you don't calculate, or only rely on the opinions of others, you will always be late because you haven't started yet.

Chapter 4 A Few Analogies

Bitcoin vs. Mechanical Products

After 6 years of development, the number of people who are not newbies in the Bitcoin world is about 10 million, and the price of Bitcoin has risen to the thousand-yuan level. (Haha, maybe when the number of non-newbies reaches 10 million, the price will rise to 10,000 yuan - the author's fantasy.)

Bitcoin is such a strange thing. The more people know about it, the higher its price will be. On the contrary, the more people know about mechanical manufacturing, the lower the price of mechanical products will be. For example, the more people know about mobile phone manufacturing, the lower the price of mobile phones will be.

Bitcoin vs. Mechanical Design

Before I started learning about Bitcoin, I had been doing mechanical design for 7 years. But I never thought that mechanical design has existed for hundreds of years, and there must be hundreds of millions of people around the world who understand mechanical design. Is it too late for me to learn this?

But the strange thing is that before I learned about Bitcoin and invested in Bitcoin, I thought this way! It was not until I learned a little bit of knowledge that I realized the fatal weakness of this thinking pattern.

Before learning something, think about whether it is useful or not? Will it be too late? This is a disease! First, you don’t know whether it will be useful before you learn it. Second, you learn knowledge not to compete with those who have this knowledge, but to cooperate with them. If you don’t have this knowledge, you can’t cooperate with them, and you can’t create together and share the wealth.

Bitcoin vs. English

Maybe no one would think that it is too late to start learning English now. Oh, there are too many people in the world who know English, it is too late for me to learn English, so I won’t learn it. It’s just an excuse.

You will earn money whenever you learn English, and you will also earn money whenever you learn Bitcoin knowledge. It is that simple.

Chapter 5 Conclusion

You are not late to learn about Bitcoin, and you are not late to invest in Bitcoin.

Thanks to @老刘, @脉星, @老廖, and several anonymous friends for their donations last week. Thank you very much, you give me the motivation to keep writing.

Finally, if you find the article useful, please give me some Bitcoin to encourage me to continue writing.
Author: tan90d (Weibo @LightningHSL WeChat tan90d)
My BTC address: 14mhzjkJ71oMAMkKu3dy98dnUpkyQBHL1r
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