Blogs & Articles: Bitcoin Is For Everyone 🔗 3 years ago

I wrote this piece to support Swan Bitcoin’s initiative that is shares its name with. Please participate in the campaign by tweeting a picture and a sentence with two hashtags: #BitcoinIsForEveryone and one for your country.

If you want to hear me read this article, watch this video on YouTube:

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Who is Bitcoin for?

Bitcoin is for you
Let’s start with the most important person in the world — You!
Wonderful, special, you.
Yes you!
Whoever you are. Wherever you are. Whatever you’ve done. Or whatever you haven’t. None of that matters.
You can use Bitcoin.
If you want.
You are welcome.
Bitcoin welcomes you to use it.
Just wait until you see all the things you can use it for.

But Bitcoin isn’t only for you.
Bitcoin treats everyone the same.
So it’s also for anyone else. Whoever they are. Whatever they’ve done. Whatever they haven’t. It doesn’t matter. They can use Bitcoin. If they want.

Bitcoin is for everyone.
Each and every one.
Every single person.
There are absolutely no restrictions on who can use it.

Bitcoin doesn’t require government identification;
Or that you open an account;
You don’t need permission from your parents;
Or a university degree.

Bitcoin doesn’t need to see a note from your doctor;
Or your credit score;
Or proof of where you were born;
Or an invitation code.

Nobody needs a license to use it.
Or anyone to vouch for them.
Or anyone else’s permission at all.

This is, partly, why Bitcoin is so important.
Bitcoin is for everyone.
Even the people who don’t have government ID, or parents, or a university degree, or a doctor, or good credit, or proof of where they were born, or anybody else in this world to vouch for them.

So Bitcoin is for people who have wealth. And it’s also for the poor.
It’s for the people who live in the richest countries on Earth. And it’s also for the people who live in the poorest ones. It’s even for people living where there isn’t any functioning country at all.
Bitcoin is for people with lots of friends. But it’s also for the lonely.
It’s for those with formal education, and those who have to live by their wits alone.
It’s for those with nice homes and cars, and those with no shoes on their feet.
Bitcoin is forEVERYONE!

Bitcoin can be used anywhere.
There’s no place Bitcoin can’t be used.
Bitcoin itself is not in any one place.
It is anywhere its users are.
It has no location. No center. No headquarters.

Bitcoin can be used by a street food vendor, whether they’re in Manhattan or El Salvador.
It’s for the roadside fruit stand in the Caribbean, in Lebanon, and in Nigeria.
It’s for the refugees, dissidents and reluctant emigrants from places like Venezuela, Syria, Argentina, or Hong Kong — People who must leave behind everything else they have to find a new place to live.
Bitcoin is for the people who depend on relatives working abroad to send wages back home in countries such as the Philippines, India, China, Egypt and Mexico.

There are so many people all over the world without access to reliable money;
Without access to a financial system;
Bitcoin can be used by every one of them, wherever they are.

So bitcoin can be received by any wheat farmer,
anywhere in the world,
from any nearby miller,
who will grind that wheat into flour,
and sell it to a local baker,
who will make it into bread
to sell it to a neighboring family
who can then be nourished,
to do what it is they do,
which may be something the wheat farmer may buy from them,
using the bitcoin he received for his wheat.

Anywhere.
Everywhere.
By anyone.
Over and over again.

Bitcoin can be used for almost anything.
Whatever the profession, whatever the activity,

Bitcoin can be used for almost anything.
Almost.

What Bitcoin can’t be used for is what makes Bitcoin FOR everyone.

Yes, Bitcoin can be used for everything involved in making bread. Or shoes. Or factories. Or hydro-electric generators.
You may then ask “Can’t Bitcoin also be used for something bad?”
Well, Bitcoin can be used for alcohol where that is illegal, and cannabis where that is illegal, and guns where those are illegal, and fireworks, books, bibles, and more where they are illegal. But so can any money.
Bitcoin has only been around since the year 2009,
and people bought and sold illegal things before we even began counting those years.

But remember, Bitcoin treats everyone the same.
Bitcoin gives no one any special treatment.
This is what makes Bitcoin different from other money.
What makes Bitcoin special is that Bitcoin can’t be used to help some people get away with something at the expense of others.

The very first Bitcoin transaction ever, in the very first block of Bitcoin ever, which will forever remain a part of Bitcoin, has an embedded message inside of it that says:
“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
What is the significance of this?
What is a bailout?

In the case of banks, a bailout is when:
despite the fact that a bank that has failed;
that it has gone bankrupt;
that it has lost its money;
that this has happened because it has made negligent and irresponsible decisions;
despite all this,
the bank receives a grant of free money to prevent it facing the consequences of its mistakes;
And its executives, officers and shareholders do not pay a price for their mistakes.

That’s a bailout.

Now, if this were to happen once, and only once, a bank might learn its lesson — “You’re getting a second chance. Don’t be careless or negligent ever again”

But when this happens a second time, there is a very different lesson.
That lesson is:
“Be as careless as you’d like,
because you won’t ever have to pay for your mistakes,
but you can get to keep the rewards of your risky bets if they do pay off.”

Who does pay for these mistakes?
It isn’t nobody.
It’s everyone else.
Every one.
The farmer, the foreign worker, the factory worker, and the teacher. It’s even the six year old who will enter the workforce only twenty years later with a debt burden to pay off because the banks got bailed out when she was only a child.
When people who take careless risks don’t have to pay for them,
they stop taking care to not take careless risks.
In fact, they are rewarded for taking careless risks.

This, sadly, is the world we are living in today.
A world where banks lend recklessly,
governments spend irresponsibly and
debt mounts exponentially.
A world where those who rack up the debt,
Not in the millions of dollars,
Not in the billions of dollars,
But in the trillions of dollars,
Do not pay it back.
They have no intention of paying it back.
They make others pay it back,
Either directly or through inflation.

In some places this amounts to gradually increasing prices for food, clothing, and more.

In many places it means the later you are born,
the less likely you are to be able to afford a house,
or the greater a financial burden it will be to pay for an education or to afford quality health care.

In other places, it means a wheelbarrow full of money cannot buy a loaf of bread.

This is the effect of bailouts and policies like them.

Bitcoin can be used for almost anything
But it can’t be used for bailouts.
Or for the many schemes like bailouts that go by many other names.
And this is what makes Bitcoin truly for everyone.

Bitcoin’s money cannot be created by government decree.
It cannot be printed by central banks.
It can not bail out the failed, reckless banks.
It can not be used to finance the debt of the recklessly spending governments.

The supply of bitcoins cannot be inflated.
The rate of issuance cannot be accelerated.
No government can enforce a law saying they shall have millions of bitcoins,
or that the banks shall have them.

And so, thanks to Bitcoin, the family who hold it for the sake of using it to buy bread is protected from the decisions made in some faraway capital city to bail out banks.

National currencies are currencies made
by those with the power to print money,
for the people who print that money
at the expense of those who work for money.

But Bitcoin is money made
by unstoppable and unchangeable algorithms,
to serve everyone equally,
at nobody else’s expense.

That is why Bitcoin is FOR everyone.

So while Bitcoin can be used for almost anything,
It is what Bitcoin can’t be used for that makes it special.
It can’t be used to force some people to pay for the mistakes of others.
It can’t be used to create a privileged class of financiers, bankers, and politicians who need not earn their money, and who do not face the same consequences as others if they lose it.
Bitcoin isn’t just for the privileged.
Bitcoin is FOR EVERYONE.

Finally, Bitcoin is for any time.

Bitcoin lasts forever.
Bitcoin doesn’t tarnish,
It doesn’t rust.
It doesn’t dissolve.
It doesn’t decay.
It doesn’t dilute, evaporate, or inflate.
It doesn’t depend on the existence of any government.
It doesn’t need to be redeemed for anything else to prove its worth.
It’s value is that it is for everyone, and that it always will be.
Bitcoin is FOREVER.

You can save your Bitcoin for tomorrow, next week, next year or until the end of your life.
And you can pass it on to whoever you want to when your time comes.

We said that Bitcoin is for everyone and we really mean it.
Bitcoin isn’t just for you and for everyone else alive on Earth right now.
Bitcoin is also for everyone who has not yet been born.
Bitcoin is for everyone to come.

Whatever the politics of the Earth are generations from today,
Bitcoin will still be there for whoever wants it.
Nations will come and nations will go.
Bitcoin does not rely on the continuation of any nation.
But math and physics do not change.
They stay the same.
Forever.
And these — math and physics — are all Bitcoin needs to be around.
Forever.

Let us recap then:
Bitcoin is for everyone because Bitcoin is for anyone.
Bitcoin is for everyone because Bitcoin can’t be used to advantage some at the expense of others.
Bitcoinis for everyone because Bitcoin is forever.

Bitcoin
is
FOR
EVERYONE!