Savvy Trades and Investments

[jtomm]

I would start with The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous.

That book will give you a good background on the history of money and why it even exists. And why Bitcoin is arguably the best form of money that has existed. You may conclude differently after you read it, and that's fine. But at least then it will be an informed opinion. If you continue to find Bitcoin interesting, I would read plenty of books on the subject, as any book is simply one person's opinion.

Take yourself back to, say, 1993 or 1994. You're hearing about this thing called "the Internet" or "the Information Superhighway" as it was sometimes called. If somebody said, "What's the best book I can read about the internet?" Well, there really wasn't just one, and any books that might have existed probably ended up being half wrong, because no one could foresee all the things that developed. And in the early days of the internet, you couldn't really do much more than send email and read some text online. One could have tried the internet, been unimpressed, and said, "these internet dorks are a bunch of idiots." But the internet wasn't done evolving, and never will be.

That's sort of where Bitcoin is. It might end up being something akin to the internet of money. The ability to do things with money that seem completely impossible now. Buying this thing called bitcoin because the price might go up -- that's sort of like back in the day saying that "sending an email" is what the internet was. In a way, it was kind of true at the time, but it didn't include any of the evolution and potential that existed down the road. It's also possible that Bitcoin could still fail for technological reasons. This was true of the internet also. It's only with hindsight that we're all geniuses.

Bob Burnett runs a bitcoin mining company and is someone who was around during the PC revolution. He was the CTO of Gateway Computers, a name I'm sure many will recognize. He was 27 at the time. He said everybody in high level positions at the company was young. There were many highly qualified older computer scientists and engineers, but most of them were not interested in personal computers and thought the PC revolution was a passing fad. They had grown up in an era where computing was centralized on large mainframes and you had to request permission to get access to time on the computer, either at a college or a large organization, etc. And they just assumed it would always be that way. The idea of decentralized computing -- that an individual would have their own computer and there would be demand for such an item -- this just seemed like nonsense to the older guys. They just couldn't envision the change.

The potential of bitcoin is the decentralization of money. The separation of money and state. A money designed with the individual in mind, rather than the govt or some group of bankers who can lord over you and change the rules at any time. Or deny you access to your money, for any reason they decide. A money designed to maintain, or increase, its purchasing power over time, rather than purchasing power being inflated away by those in political control of money and society.

Whether or not it will work out that way is anybody's guess.

So I would suggest trying to understand Bitcoin as a concept, before thinking about it as something to buy for an investment or speculation. Why is it not just beanie babies, or cabbage patch dolls? Why would anybody ever want this bitcoin thing? What is money, anyway?