Episode 26 - All about Bitcoin (The Bitcoin episode)

I need to start off by saying this is not financial advice so if you are looking for that this show isn’t for you. The content of this podcast episode is for informational purposes only. The opinions expressed here are not meant to be taken as financial, investment, or any other advice.

In this episode we are going to talk all about Bitcoin, as it is the most known cryptocurrency throughout the world. To start I want to give a quick history of Bitcoin, who its creator or creators are, and why they created it. Then we will talk about some of the biggest questions around bitcoin. A lot has happened since the “genesis block” of bitcoin (BTC) was mined in early 2009, and Satoshi Nakamoto sent the first-ever transaction to Hal Finney. Bitcoin is a digital currency that operates on a decentralized network and is a global currency not tied to any one country. It was invented in 2009 by a person or group of people who called themselves Satoshi Nakamoto.

The goal was to create "a new electronic cash system" that was "completely decentralized with no server or central authority." After creating the technology, in 2011, Nakamoto turned over the source code and domains to other individuals in the bitcoin community, and then disappeared. With just thirty-one thousand lines of code and an announcement on the Internet there were no paper bills or precious metals this type of currency would be made of. Giving way to a new form of money and payment structure.

A few months after the 2008 financial sector collapse Nakamoto published a five-hundred-word essay about the traditional fiat/government-backed currencies. Nakamoto wrote “The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.”