Post by

croxroadnews

⚡️ Why Bitcoin Is Magic Internet Money?

Published on

31990:20986fb83e775d96d188ca5c9df10ce6d613e0eb7e5768a0f0b12b37cdac21b3:1700732875747

Jan 19, 2024

This artwork, which was drawn in Microsoft Paint and depicts a wizard in a blue robe carrying a staff with the tagline "Magic Internet Money," is maybe the most accurate depiction of Bitcoin and the early community that supported it. There may not be another image that comes close. The picture was commissioned as part of a push to encourage users on Reddit to participate in a Bitcoin-specific topic and get further knowledge about the cryptocurrency. The feedback it got was extremely positive, which contributed, at least in part, to the expansion of Bitcoin's brand recognition. At the time the advertising was made public, there were a little more than fifty thousand subscribers in the group, and the bitcoin price was still less than three hundred dollars. As a point of comparison, there are presently 1.2 million people registered on the forum. Even more than that, approximately 600 comments were talking about the marketing and the artwork itself. Users of Bitcoin are tipping one other with the "magic internet money" throughout the conversation. It was an example of a genuine grass-roots and community-driven marketing effort for what was, at the time, an extremely specialized group.

A moderator for the Bitcoin subreddit r/Bitcoin wrote a post requesting the community's assistance in developing a campaign and suggestions on how to promote it. Within an hour, the recognizable picture was uploaded by the user /r/mavensbot. After that, he went on to add that the illustration purportedly took just five minutes to complete. For those who are not acquainted with the website Reddit, the following is a description of how the promotion appeared to visitors:

However, the term that refers to the money as "magical" was originally used on a post on BitcoinTalk.org, which is now considered to be quite inconspicuous. A vote had been devised in order to choose a catchphrase for the newly established native currency of the internet. A few dozen people participated in the poll that led to the creation of the notorious meme. The winner of the vote was "Magic Internet Money," with "In Crypto We Trust" and "You Asked for Change, We Gave You Coins" coming in a close second and third, respectively.

Users of Bitcoin have responded well to the quirky and even whimsical portrayal of the cryptocurrency that has been promoted by the mainstream media and other influential personalities. In spite of the never-ending forecasts of doom and gloom over the survival of the currency, the network has "miraculously" continued to function.

The article "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin," which was published in Wired at $2.37

  • When the price of bitcoin was $15.15, Forbes said, "So, That's the End of Bitcoin Then."

  • According to Bloomberg at $93.57, the "The SEC Shows Why Bitcoin Is Doomed."

  • At $105.7, New York Magazine's "Bitcoin Sees the Grim Reaper" headline

  • "Fool's Gold," also known as Slate priced at $131.95

  • "Bitcoin was exposed as a Ponzi scheme," which redistributes money from one libertarian to another, according to a recent article. The Washington Post, which may be purchased for $182.00

  • At its current price of $208.50, "Bitcoin Is a Victim of Disinflation," as reported by The New York Times

  • "Bitcoin is on its way to becoming a 'ash heap'" - USA Today at $208.50

  • At the current price of $290.51, the Financial Times predicts that "Bitcoin's approaching capital crisis."

  • "The flaws in Bitcoin will speed the cryptocurrency's collapse in 2015," Reuters at $327.20

  • "Will Bitcoin still be around in 2015?" - AOL at $332.63

  • "What exactly went wrong with Bitcoin?" - CNN at $333.58

  • At its current price of $433.57, Business Insider deems Bitcoin to be a farce.

At first, some thought Bitcoin was a strange phenomena or perhaps a joke. The narrative is beginning to alter as a result of the fact that the price has been hitting higher lows for over a decade and that its seven network effects are rising exponentially. We are seeing the transition of Bitcoin from "nerd money" to a currency pursued by corporations, governments, banks, and other institutions hoping to profit from it. Several efforts have been to package Bitcoin into something "compliant" or more digestible for the traditional system that it ironically opposes. These attempts have all failed. One of the most recent endeavors has been developing brand-new digital currency forms. This eliminates everything about the network that made it fascinating in the first place and does nothing else. The term "blockchain" is the most recent buzzword to be used for this function. One of the technologies that underpins the Bitcoin Network may be used in this way, and it is the one that is used the most. As a thought exercise, think about any firm you like and do a fast online search of that company's name in conjunction with the phrase "blockchain." At the very least, there will be a couple of pages' worth of results. If you repeat those steps but this time substitute "blockchain" with "bitcoin," you will see a much smaller set of results compared to the first search.

Some people may be surprised to learn this, but the name "blockchain" refers to nothing more than a "chain of blocks," which is just a list of data that are referred to as "blocks." This concept is pretty comparable to that of spreadsheets. Following one another, the pages are encrypted and connected to one another as a whole. This idea has a history dating back over thirty years in the fields of cryptography and computer science; nonetheless, the word and technology have only recently gained widespread attention due to the Bitcoin Network's development. A ledger by itself does not contain any useful information. The fact that a single organization does not control how or which transactions are recorded in the structure is what distinguishes Bitcoin's ledger as being one of a kind. You are left with a database after removing the permissionless feature of the system, which allows anybody to access it and innovate upon it. To put it another way, it's nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet.

Andreas Antonopoulos presents a lecture in which he explores the phenomena of digital gentrification and the corporatization of cryptocurrencies, as well as the reasons why we have to strive to maintain the "weirdness" that Bitcoin gives to the world.

The phrase "I'm interested in blockchain but not Bitcoin" is code for "I don't understand." When someone says this to you, they mean "I don't comprehend." - Andreas

Despite this, several efforts have been made to control it. As of right now, a few of the major countries on the planet are hard at work establishing their own versions of digital currencies that will harness the same "underlying blockchain" structure that Bitcoin does. They are taking the cypherpunk concepts of Bitcoin and eliminating the "punk" side of it while maintaining their own financial anonymity. The year that just passed, 2019, will go down in history as the year when governments finally stopped laughing at bitcoin and reached the "then they fight you" stage with the announcement of the following digital currencies:

  • DCEP (China)

  • EUROChain (EU)

  • Libra (Facebook)

  • e-Dinar (Tunisia)

  • Petro (Venezuela)

  • Aber (Saudi Arabia)

  • Turkcoin (Turkey)

  • e-Krona (Sweden)

  • PayMon (Iran)

Less drastic efforts to conform Bitcoin has been occuring via “financialization”. The process of Wall Street gaining control of bitcoin is unavoidable and is underway. That is, without a doubt, meant to be taken in jest. The term "financialization" refers to the process by which the use of a financial instrument facilitates the transfer of value between two or more parties; this category includes derivatives such as futures and options.

It may be argued that the financialization of Bitcoin and the proliferation of other financial products serve to complicate the market further, making it necessary for market participants to possess a skill set that is out of their grasp. Many people do not want to give up the head start Bitcoin gives them on Wall Street since it is the first time the common person has ever had one. An increased complexity level may result in the concealment of bitcoin production "out of thin air" if an audit of the onchain metrics is not performed. It is quite possible that rehypothecation, which refers to the process of establishing more claims to the Bitcoin Network than there are Bitcoin, is currently taking place. There is no use in debating whether or not this is a terrible turn of events since it will continue regardless of what people think. Users of Bitcoin and other players in the market need to be aware of this process and use the network's audibility to keep their faith. Verify, don't trust.

Even from within the same community that embraced the memes of "Magic Internet Money" and attacked the current quo, there have been efforts of "corporatization" with a previous proposal dubbed SegWit2x. This piece is not intended to educate readers on the particulars and complexities of the changes that were made to the network, nor is it intended to single out individual participants on either side of the dispute. It is possible that Bitcoin will wind up requiring all of the fans and advocates it can get, and at this stage, reviving old wounds seldom favors anybody. That being said, it is still true that those who don't study history are destined to repeat its mistakes. It would be a waste of months of discussion and money expended if nothing was taken away as a result of the experience as a learning opportunity.

To provide some context, during the middle of 2017, an agreement was reached in New York City. It was going to be called the New York Agreement (NYA), and it was going to be an agreement where numerous people with a corporate-focused shared interest agreed to install Segwit if a 2 MB hard fork followed it. You can get more information on the specifics of Segwit here and more about the block size here. The name used to both this proposal and the subsequent hard split of Bitcoin's network was SegWit 2x. It meant that the block size would be doubled, and the proponents regarded it as a compromise between those who still desired even bigger blocks once Segwit itself was adopted. They believed that it would be fair to both sides. If you are interested in learning more about the history of this implementation and the specifics of its implementation, Aaron van Wirdum has written a comprehensive essay about it that can be found here.

It is essential to point out that not a single member of the development team working on Bitcoin Core, the most popular Bitcoin implementation, was asked to participate in this private meeting. Even if the permissionless nature of Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency's greatest asset, the fact that the community's most trusted members have been excluded from the process of applying new improvements to the network in favor of corporate CEOs does convey a message.

Digital Currency Group made the announcement in the form of a blog post on the website Medium. The proposal received early support from 58 of the most prominent firms in the ecosystem, accounting for 83.28% of the total hashing power of the Bitcoin Network.

This increase in the size of blocks may seem like a relatively insignificant change in the big scheme of the threats that Bitcoin will eventually have to face over its existence. After just a few short months, the SegWit2x hard fork that was supposed to take place was finally scrapped. Bitcoin users have been quite vocal about their worries. After the original announcement, a joint statement to cancel the hard fork was issued by just six persons. This statement was quite similar to the initial announcement. This demonstrates how few people were engaged in the decision-making process compared to the typical governance of Bitcoin, or the absence of governance, as the case may be. It is to their credit that they included the following into their decision:

Our objective has always been to ensure that Bitcoin's upgrade goes off without a hitch. Even while we have a strong conviction in the need for a greater blocksize, one thing that we think is even more vital is maintaining the community's cohesiveness. Regrettably, it is abundantly evident that we have not yet created sufficient agreement for a clean change to the blocksize at this time. If things are left as they are, it might cause friction within the Bitcoin community and be detrimental to the cryptocurrency's development. This was in no way intended to be the outcome of Segwit2x.

To restate, individuals who fail to gain wisdom from the past are destined to repeat the same mistakes. In this piece of writing, I want to stress the importance of appreciating the characteristics that give Bitcoin its individuality. Giving away the permissionless aspect of the technology in exchange for government-issued stablecoins, the decision-making process of protocol upgrades such as with SegWit2x, or even simply the financialization of Bitcoin as an asset should, at the very least, be viewed with mistrust. Bitcoin has already achieved this level of success by taking risks and challenging the established order; why should it stop now?

That's all for today, see ya tomorrow

If you want more, be sure to follow us on:

Instagram: @croxroadnews.co

Youtube: @croxroadnews

Subscribe to CROX ROAD Bitcoin Only Daily Newsletter

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

0

0
0
0