To quote a famous meta-economics scholar on the subject of Bitcoin, “Buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buyb uyb uby buby bubyb buy buy buy buy buy buyb u buy buy buy.” I agree wholeheartedly. That is my honest, completely bias-free, objective opinion.
In the past year or so, Bitcoin has gone up and down, travelled laterally along a 3D representation of a Klein bottle, and ended up flying straight into the hearts of the American people. In order to deepen my understanding of Bitcoin’s escapades, I sat down with my Great Uncle Big Papa, who has endured many moons under Bitcoin’s reign, to look into the personal side of this phenomenon. Commenting on Bitcoin’s notorious volatility, Big Papa told me, “Back in my day, 100,000 Bitcoin would get you a pizza, but a gallon of gas cost only a nickel!” He then started recounting his days as a youth being raised by wolves and refused any further comment.
As a result of this, I was forced to go back to the unsatisfactory purgatory of internet research. What I did find might surprise you.
Bitcoin was actually first conceptualized back in the Roaring Twenties during the rise of Tulip Mania — or when people started eating flowers because it brought them wealth in the new year or something. Al Capone and a young (like really young) Philip K. Dick got together and brainstormed a way to profit off of this economic turmoil. Their idea — small pieces of paper that were given value by the mass populace believing that these pieces of paper had value. These pieces of paper would be stored in some sort of ethereal nonentity they deemed “the undernet.” Years later some MIT professor came across their notes written on some napkin at an old Denny’s and created “the internet,” because he came to the conclusion that humans would eventually exist “in” this hypothetical phenomenon and not “under” it. Wow. The more you know, the less you don’t.
Which brings us to the present day. Bitcoin was founded on the philosophy best summarized by a quote from an unnamed Economics major at this very established University that just so happens to be of Virginia— “If we let people print their own money, nothing can go wrong! Inflation? What’s that?” With this extreme confidence, Bitcoin has somehow achieved negative inflation — that is, deflation, that is, when money becomes more valuable, which is a universal good for the general populace as well as corporate greed. Everyone wins!
This is how Bitcoin works — you leave your computer on in sleep mode during the night for a few weeks and then months later you’re a billionaire. It’s as simple as that, ladies and gentlemen — it doesn’t get much simpler. In fact, there once was this guy named Simple Jim. He was supposedly the simplest dude ever. However, I told him about Bitcoin and he replied, “Wow that’s so simple, it’s much simpler than I am. Thus I can no longer be called Simple Jim.” Now his name is just Jim.
On the technical side of things, Bitcoin is actually incredibly complex and nearly impossible for your everyday human being (which I am thankfully not) to understand. However, I will attempt to explain the concept of the “blockchain” in layman’s terms. Imagine you are on a hill. Imagine your friend, Sylvester, is on a different hill. Imagine Sylvester throws a paper airplane to you and you open it to find a math problem. Imagine that this math problem is the simple question, “00101001 + 10100111 = ?” Imagine you write down the obvious answer, “11010000.” Imagine that you then refold the paper airplane and then throw it back to Sylvester. He unfolds it, reads your answer and smiles, giving you a big thumbs up. Imagine that he throws you a fistful of nickels as your reward. And that is the simplest possible explanation of Bitcoin’s code. Of course it is not completely perfect, as surely the nickels would lacerate your skin, but I hope that you get the point.
And there you have it. I hope these simple, objectively true facts have convinced you to go out and spend all your money on Bitcoin. (Please do not spend all your money on Bitcoin. Spend it on something more productive instead, like video games.)
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