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When you buy something with a credit card, you provide all the information to defraud you. That doesn't make a lot of sense. If I hand you $10 cash, unless you're going to whack me over the head, you can't get me to give you any more. With a credit card, I authorize you to charge $10 and you could charge $50 and, in the immediate term, there's no way for me to stop it. Every few weeks we find out millions of credit cards have been compromised. What we have is not really fine.
Enter bitcoin. On the security side, in a bitcoin transaction, you are never providing any other party with information that could be used to defraud you. When you send bitcoin to somebody, even if they're not trustworthy, they cannot use the information you provided to extract more money than you want to give.
Second, efficiency. In a bitcoin-like system, money can move essentially instantaneously, and the fees can be much smaller than with traditional transactions.
What is so hard for most people to grasp about it?
The hardest thing not unreasonably is that bitcoin is completely decentralized currency. There's nobody in charge, no company, no government, no consortium collectively everybody acts to run it. Most of us grew up in a world where government has oversight over currency like the dollar.
Heck, if that^ was any part of the take away value for the average nobody to remember from this piece then I consider it a huge success minus all the rest. I can imagine some minds being blown after reading that. Enter bitcoin. On the security side, in a bitcoin transaction, you are never providing any other party with information that could be used to defraud you. When you send bitcoin to somebody, even if they're not trustworthy, they cannot use the information you provided to extract more money than you want to give.
Second, efficiency. In a bitcoin-like system, money can move essentially instantaneously, and the fees can be much smaller than with traditional transactions.
What is so hard for most people to grasp about it?
The hardest thing not unreasonably is that bitcoin is completely decentralized currency. There's nobody in charge, no company, no government, no consortium collectively everybody acts to run it. Most of us grew up in a world where government has oversight over currency like the dollar.
That's a good point. In popular media you always hear reports on how bitcoin can assist criminal enterprise, but never on the point that it vastly increases economic freedom! The media machine is out to get us!
