“Bitcoin? That’s just internet money for criminals and speculators.”
I said basically that for years. Sounded ridiculous. Fake digital coins with no backing? Please.
Then I actually looked into what it IS rather than what people say about it. And realized I’d completely misunderstood it.
After learning about fiat currency (Essay #1), how banks create money (Essay #2), and what happened to silver (Essay #3), the question becomes obvious: What’s the alternative?
If the current system is designed to quietly transfer wealth from savers to banks, if physical money was deliberately removed, if unlimited currency creation is destroying purchasing power… what’s the fix?
Turns out, someone already built one. In 2009. And most people still think it’s a joke.
What Everyone Thinks Bitcoin Is
Let me list the common criticisms, because I believed all of them:
- Speculative investment / get-rich-quick scheme
- Internet money for criminals and the dark web
- Tulip mania / greater fool theory
- Too volatile to be real money
- Backed by nothing, just numbers on a screen
- Wasteful energy consumption
- Will be banned by governments eventually
These criticisms seem valid on the surface. The price DOES fluctuate dramatically. It WAS used on Silk Road early on. It HAS no physical backing. Energy usage IS significant. Media portrays it negatively. Financial institutions dismiss it.
So I dismissed it too. Bitcoin seemed like a scam—digital tokens people were bidding up for no reason. Why would I care about fake internet money when I’ve got actual dollars?
But then I went back and read the Bitcoin whitepaper. All nine pages. Written by someone using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, published October 31, 2008.
And I realized: I wasn’t looking at an investment. I was looking at a solution to the exact problems we’d been noticing.
What Bitcoin Actually Is
First, let’s clear up what it’s NOT:
Bitcoin is not a company. There’s no CEO, no headquarters, no board of directors. You can’t sue Bitcoin. You can’t shut down Bitcoin by raiding an office.
Bitcoin is a protocol. Like email (SMTP) or the web (HTTP). It’s open-source code that anyone can verify. It runs on a distributed network of computers worldwide. To shut it down, you’d have to shut down the entire internet—and even then, it would just restart when the internet came back.
The key innovation: digital scarcity
Before Bitcoin, anything digital could be copied infinitely. Photos, music, documents—copy-paste forever. This is called the “double-spend problem.” How do you prevent someone from copying digital money and spending it twice?
Banks solved this with centralized ledgers. They keep track of who owns what, verify transactions, prevent double-spending. But that requires trusting the bank. And as we’ve learned, banks create money when they lend, manipulate supply, and benefit from inflation.
Bitcoin solved this differently: a distributed ledger (blockchain) that everyone can verify, where every transaction is recorded permanently and publicly, and the network collectively agrees on who owns what through consensus.
No central authority needed. No bank required. Just math, cryptography, and network consensus.
The Fixed Supply—This Is Crucial
Here’s the part that broke my brain:
Only 21 million Bitcoin will ever exist.
Not “probably” or “approximately.” Exactly 21 million. It’s written into the code. It’s not a policy that can be changed by a vote or a decree. To change it would require convincing the majority of the global network to adopt new code—which would essentially create a different currency that nobody would use.
Let me repeat that: Nobody can create more Bitcoin. Ever.
Compare this to what we learned earlier:
Fiat currency: Infinite supply. Central banks and commercial banks create it constantly. No limit.
Silver: Was money for 4,000 years. Got removed because the supply was finite and constrained bank lending.
Bitcoin: Fixed supply of 21 million. Nobody can create more. Inflation is impossible.
That’s not a bug. That’s the entire point.
Hard Money vs Soft Money
There’s a concept from Austrian economics worth understanding:
Soft Money = Easy to produce more of it. Supply increases over time. Examples: fiat currency, seashells, beads. Loses value as supply grows (inflation).
Hard Money = Difficult or impossible to produce more. Supply fixed or grows predictably. Examples: gold, silver (historically), Bitcoin. Holds value because scarcity is maintained.
The hardness of money can be measured by its stock-to-flow ratio: How much EXISTS (stock) versus how much NEW is created each year (flow).
Gold: Stock-to-flow ratio around 60. Takes 60 years of current mining to double the existing supply.
Silver: Stock-to-flow ratio around 20. Easier to mine than gold.
Bitcoin: Stock-to-flow ratio becomes infinite after 2140, when the last Bitcoin is mined. No new supply. Ever.
Bitcoin is literally the hardest money ever created. Mathematically provable scarcity. The supply schedule is transparent and can’t be changed.
Gold mining could accelerate if the price rises enough. Asteroid mining could flood the market someday. But Bitcoin’s supply is absolutely fixed. 21 million. That’s it.
The Real Use Case
Media focuses on the wrong question: “Can you buy coffee with Bitcoin?”
That’s missing the point. Bitcoin is for STORING value across time, not daily transactions (at least not yet—there are solutions being built for that).
Think of it like gold. You don’t buy groceries with gold bars. You hold gold to preserve wealth over time and protect against currency debasement.
Bitcoin does what gold does, but better:
Easier to verify: Gold requires physical testing, assaying, trusting stamps. Bitcoin is verified by code that anyone can audit.
Easier to transport: Try flying internationally with $100,000 in gold. Now try carrying that amount in Bitcoin—12 words memorized in your head.
Easier to divide: Splitting a gold bar is difficult. Bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places (0.00000001 BTC = 1 satoshi).
Harder to confiscate: Gold can be physically seized. Bitcoin requires your private keys—which can exist only in your memory.
Provably scarce: Gold supply is estimated. New deposits could be found. Bitcoin’s supply is absolute and transparent.
From Essay #1, remember: The dollar has lost 85%+ of its value since 1971.
From Essay #3, remember: Silver was removed from coins because it held value too well.
From Essay #2, remember: Banks profit from creating unlimited currency.
Bitcoin can’t be debased. Can’t be seized easily. Can’t be controlled by any institution. And can’t be removed from circulation.
It’s the first form of money that’s truly outside the banking system.
But Isn’t It Just Backed By Nothing?
This is the most common criticism, and it misses the point entirely.
So is fiat currency. The dollar has been backed by nothing since 1971. At least Bitcoin has:
- Proven scarcity (21 million cap)
- Transparent code anyone can verify
- Network security through proof-of-work
- Decentralized consensus across the globe
- Energy expenditure securing the network
What backs the dollar? Government decree. Military enforcement. The collective faith that others will accept it tomorrow. That’s it.
At least with Bitcoin, I can verify the code, see the supply cap, audit the blockchain, and know exactly what I’m dealing with. Try auditing the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.
What About The Energy Usage?
Yes, Bitcoin mining uses energy. Quite a lot of it. This is by design—the energy secures the network through proof-of-work.
But let’s compare:
Traditional banking system: Millions of buildings worldwide. Bank branches. ATMs. Armored trucks. Data centers. Employees commuting daily. The entire infrastructure of modern finance. How much energy does that consume?
Gold mining: Massive environmental destruction. Open-pit mines. Chemical processing. Huge energy expenditure. And for what? To dig metal out of one hole in the ground and store it in another hole in the ground.
Bitcoin: Transparent energy use, increasingly renewable (miners seek the cheapest energy, which is often stranded renewable). Secures a global monetary network 24/7.
The question isn’t “does Bitcoin use energy?” Everything uses energy. The question is: “Is securing a global, neutral, uncensorable monetary network worth energy?”
I’d argue yes. Others disagree. Fair enough. But let’s be consistent—if you criticize Bitcoin’s energy use, criticize the traditional financial system’s energy use too.
Won’t Governments Ban It?
Some have tried. China banned Bitcoin mining multiple times. Mining just moved elsewhere—to Kazakhstan, the US, Canada, other regions with cheap electricity.
You can ban people in your jurisdiction from using Bitcoin. You can make it illegal to trade on exchanges. You can make life difficult for adopters.
But you cannot shut down the Bitcoin network itself. It’s distributed globally across tens of thousands of nodes. There’s no central server to raid. No company to shut down. No off-switch.
And increasingly, governments are realizing it’s better to adopt than fight. El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender. Other nations are quietly accumulating it. Even the IMF can’t ignore it anymore.
The cat’s out of the bag. You can slow adoption, but you can’t stop it.
Isn’t It Too Volatile?
Short term? Yes. Bitcoin is young (barely 15 years old) and relatively small (market cap around $800 billion—large for individuals, small for nation-states).
Volatility is expected in something this early. Gold was volatile too during its monetization. Every new monetary technology goes through this.
Long term? Bitcoin has been the best-performing asset over any four-year period since its creation. The volatility is decreasing as market cap grows and adoption spreads.
If you’re looking at Bitcoin as a get-rich-quick trade, you’re going to have a bad time. If you’re looking at it as a long-term store of value and hedge against currency debasement, the volatility matters less.
Could I be wrong? Could Bitcoin fail? Absolutely. Technology risk is real. Government coordination against it is possible. Maybe something better will replace it. Maybe I’m missing huge risks.
But monetarily—as a solution to inflation and bank control—it’s elegant. Maybe even brilliant.
Connecting The Dots
Let’s tie together what we’ve learned:
Essay #1: Money should store value. Fiat doesn’t. Currency isn’t money.
Essay #2: Banks create infinite currency through lending. Those closest to creation benefit most.
Essay #3: Silver was real money. Systematically removed because finite supply limited bank profits.
Essay #4: Bitcoin is the first digital money that can’t be inflated, controlled, or removed.
See the pattern?
The current system requires unlimited money creation to function. Physical money (gold/silver) was removed because it constrained that system. Bitcoin fundamentally breaks the model—it’s digital, so it can’t be physically removed, and it’s absolutely scarce, so it can’t be inflated.
That’s why you hear:
“It’s a scam” – From banks who lose power if it succeeds
“It’s too volatile” – It’s 15 years old, of course it is
“It’s backed by nothing” – Neither is your dollar
“It wastes energy” – Compared to the current financial system?
“Criminals use it” – Criminals use cash, cars, and phones too
These aren’t good-faith criticisms. They’re defenses of the existing system by those who benefit from it.
An Exit, Not Just An Investment
Here’s what finally made it click for me:
Bitcoin isn’t primarily an investment, though it might appreciate. It’s not primarily a payment system, though it can be used that way.
Bitcoin is an opt-out. An exit from a monetary system designed to quietly transfer wealth from savers to banks and governments.
You don’t have to use it. Most people won’t, at least not yet. But understanding what it IS versus what you’ve been told about it… that changes things.
It’s the first monetary system in human history that:
- Can’t be controlled by banks
- Can’t be inflated by governments
- Can’t be confiscated easily
- Can’t be censored or stopped
- Requires no permission to use
- Operates 24/7 globally
Whether it succeeds long-term is an open question. But as a solution to the problems we’ve been noticing—currency debasement, bank control, wealth transfer through inflation—it’s the most elegant answer yet proposed.
Make Of It What You Will
So is Bitcoin the hardest money ever created?
The math says yes. Fixed supply. Global accessibility. Unstoppable network. Transparent code. Provable scarcity.
I’m not telling you to buy Bitcoin. I’m not giving investment advice. The price could go to zero tomorrow—though after 15 years of people saying that, it keeps not happening.
What I AM saying: After understanding what money should be, how the current system actually works, and what happened to money that held value… Bitcoin makes sense in a way it never did before.
Not as a get-rich scheme. As a monetary solution to real problems.
You might look at all this and still think it’s nonsense. Fair enough. I did too, until I actually looked.
But once you understand the problem with unlimited fiat currency, you can’t unsee it. And once you understand Bitcoin’s solution, you can’t unhear it.
Next time you look at a dollar, remember: It loses value by design. Next time you hear “Bitcoin is worthless,” ask yourself: Compared to what?
If you want to understand Bitcoin properly, read the whitepaper. Nine pages. Written for people who understand basic cryptography, but the concepts are accessible. Available free at bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
And no, I’m not being paid to say any of this. Bitcoin has no marketing department. No PR firm. No company behind it. Just code, and people who understand why it matters.
End of Essay #4
