Correctly view the position of Bitcoin in the future financial field

Many people describe Bitcoin as digital currency, but digital currency was developed on the basis of the Internet, and both it and the Internet basically appeared in 1994.

Popper said: "In 1994 it was hard to know who would become the big players in the Internet in the future. Some of the big companies began to disappear, and the big companies that are emerging now are behind the Internet." This is why Nathaniel Popper wrote his book "Digital Gold: The Inside Story of How Millionaires Use Bitcoin to Try to Reshape Money" as a historical technology. This book is to let readers see what is the most important thing in the future society? How did Bitcoin reach an important position? And who pushed Bitcoin to that important position?

As we all know, the first Bitcoin revolution led to the Mt. Gox platform losing about $460 million in Bitcoin and eventually declaring bankruptcy, but after that everyone gradually found that Bitcoin began to be welcomed by "Silicon Valley". In March 2014, Bitcoin startups such as Xapo raised $20 million from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Paypal partner Max Levchin, and Xapo founder Wences Casares made a small victory in convincing Bill Gates to use digital currency to connect his work with the economy of developing countries.

Next, let’s discuss the following questions to see what role Bitcoin and virtual currencies will play in our financial field in the future.

Based on our current financial management, how do we view the benefits brought by virtual currency?

As for the money itself, it can be moved around quickly and cheaply without the need for a central authority to allow it or to intervene in a way that controls security risks.

Whether it is a large sum of money or a small sum of money, whether it is close or far away, even if it is to transfer money to a Chinese friend across the table who does not use the same financial system, the speed of money transfer through online is still very fast and the transmission performance is good. People think that virtual currency will replace cash, but this is not an area that you will understand when you see it, especially now that the cash system is already quite mature in some aspects. The idea behind the creation of virtual currency is to create cash that can serve the virtual world.

What is the biggest obstacle to popularizing virtual currency?

One barrier is public confidence and people's willingness to use it. The various crises with virtual currencies have affected people's willingness to try it. Another barrier is how to use it properly, because it's complicated, so you have to store these private keys offline, in a safe place, so that they are not easily hacked; and if you rely on third-party services, you will not get all the benefits of it. So people are trying and operating the complexity of it, but it is a big stumbling block for those who want to use it but are held back by the technology.

Who are the losers in Bitcoin?

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. From the perspective of global economic planning, the biggest loser may be the US economy. To some extent, Bitcoin has become a competitor to the US dollar, but at this stage, the purchasing power of the US dollar has suffered a certain degree of damage both at home and abroad. Now we need to consider not how much impact Bitcoin has caused, but what aspects it will impact in the future.

Any advice for consumers interested in using Bitcoin?

There are services out there like Circle and Coinbase that have a certain brand and if you join, it's a little bit of a security measure on your money, but that's not the pure way to use Bitcoin. The purest way to use Bitcoin is when you know your Bitcoin account and password, you are the only one who can access your money, and there is no other service or platform that can do that. If you lose your private password, then your money is gone, and that's a big danger that people find with Bitcoin. At a bank, if you lose your bank card password, they give you a new one, and there are real risks with that pure approach; but in some ways, if you want to understand Bitcoin, then you have to do it the way it is, like you are the person in charge of the Bitcoin account, and you can send Bitcoin to anyone anywhere.

If you want to use these services, you can see some new elements of Bitcoin, but not everyone can discover them. These are generally reputable and verified companies, like Circle and Coinbase and Xapo, which are unlikely to disappear in the middle of the night. The money invested in Bitcoin must be within your means, because investing in Bitcoin is very risky and it is very likely that the value of Bitcoin will be zero tomorrow. At the same time, it is more fun to explore than stocks. You own a stock and you can sell it or hold it, but Bitcoin is a little bit interesting because you can experiment with it and see how it works.

Summary: People who use Bitcoin actually reject this story. You can't find any other technology that people can devote themselves to. This is why I write about Bitcoin and what makes Bitcoin so attractive, especially on a spiritual level. It's not just one thing. The value given to Bitcoin is different in different places, such as China, Europe, Argentina, etc. It is a real window of this era, a window for us to understand why people are so passionate about it.

In the United States, financial transactions are a very private matter. Your personality is revealed by your credit card statements: where you like to shop, how you shop, how much you spend, etc. There is a reason why when people go missing, the first thing to do is to look at their financial records, because it tells you where they are and what they are doing. Today, these things are controlled by financial intermediaries, but you are the one who has the most power to reclaim control of information and where you want to spend your money. At the most basic level, people have a deep-seated feeling of having access to their own money at any time, and the promise of Bitcoin has a potential sense of freedom, so today's attitude towards Bitcoin is a response.