Today is January 3, 2024, the 15th birthday of Bitcoin. Let’s first wish Bitcoin a happy 15th birthday!
The conventional narrative in the media goes like this: 15 years ago, on January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin on a server in Helsinki, Finland.
However, according to NickYam‘s investigation, the actual truth is more likely that Satoshi Nakamoto received The Times newspaper from January 3 to 9 of that year, conducted a trial run for a few days, and officially launched Bitcoin on the 9th.
However, regardless of the details, Satoshi Nakamoto chose the publication date of The Times newspaper on January 3 as the timestamp for the Genesis Block. Therefore, people consider January 3, 2009, as the birthdate of Bitcoin.
15 years, truly, how time flies.
Today, Bitcoin has evolved from being virtually worthless to becoming a unique global asset with a market value of $886.2 billion, surpassing the market capitalization of Elon Musk’s Tesla and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and ranking among the top ten global assets.
Today, the Bitcoin ETF approval is imminent, and global asset management giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity have already entered the fray, submitting applications for Bitcoin ETFs to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
However, some are still in a state of observation, skepticism, and ridicule. From being unable to see, to being unable to understand, to looking down upon it, ultimately, it’s a matter of falling behind.
Bitcoin is a touchstone. The way one approaches Bitcoin is enough to depict a person’s essence. A Bitcoin holder’s history of holding Bitcoin is the strongest reflection of their character. This radiance cannot be concealed, nor can it be masked. It is the best portrayal of a person’s true personality. For every Bitcoin holder, there are only two kinds of people in this world: those who hold Bitcoin and those who don’t. For the latter, we can instantly identify that they are not qualified partners.
If a financial influencer, by this time, is still loudly warning you to stay away from Bitcoin, whether they invoke conspiracy theories or ideological cudgels, it is advisable for you to distance yourself from such an influencer. After all, filling your mind every day with low, weak, and anti-intellectual porridge will eventually turn your brain into porridge.
Bitcoin teaches without speaking; its actions instruct. It has taught us too many things, impacting our concepts and shaking our minds at every moment.
Through prolonged interaction, it gradually elevates our level of thinking and cognitive understanding.
Let’s take an example. It is well-known that obtaining Bitcoin requires Proof of Work (PoW), which involves computational power, i.e., computer hardware and electrical energy. Even in the early days when Bitcoin seemed to have no utility (and may still seem useless to many today), everyone needed to incur this cost to obtain it.
Bitcoin teaches us about the principles of “preciousness” and “utility.”
What is precious will eventually be useful, but what is useful is not necessarily precious.
The periodic table of chemical elements has hundreds of elements. Many of them, when discovered, were considered to have no apparent utility. For example, rare earth elements had little value before the Industrial Revolution, but as scientific and technological development progressed, these rare elements became highly valuable.
On the other hand, items like bread and air are highly useful to humans, indispensable even, but no one would consider them highly precious.
Traditional industries, including traditional Internet (referred to as Web 2.0), focus on being “useful.” The starting point is to create something useful, sell it to users, and make money.
Bitcoin, including blockchain (referred to as Web 3.0), starts from being “precious.” Even if no one knows what use it has now, the key is to make people pay a cost (and prevent cheating) to obtain it, thereby making people cherish and value it.
Goods will be useful because they are precious, but not necessarily precious because they are useful. The blockchain differs from traditional industries and the traditional Internet precisely in the logic of this difference.
Different logic leads to completely different ways of thinking and methodologies. Different starting points mean completely different sequences of doing things.
Fundamentally, it is because humans have subjective agency. They will automatically and spontaneously seek utility for precious possessions.
So, what is the source of value?
Subjective value theory argues it is demand, while the labor theory of value argues it is labor. This economic philosophy can also be attributed to the analysis of “useful” and “precious”:
The feeling of “useful” is determined by the usage scenario, while the feeling of “precious” is determined by the cost incurred.
I was once obsessed with subjective value theory and read “Human Action” repeatedly. But when exploring Bitcoin in depth, engaging in blockchain practices, I increasingly realized the power of the labor theory of value and began to repeatedly study “Capital.”
“Capital” plainly states that the increase in productivity will lead to a decrease in value. The more efficient, the less valuable. Bitcoin’s PoW efficiency is very low, so its value is high. Other chains are pursuing higher efficiency, which means they are actually pursuing lower value. (By the way, the same logic applies to AI.)
If this abstract explanation seems counterintuitive, let’s use the recent example of giving away gas to engrave inscriptions to illustrate.
These 10,000 engraved collectibles can be processed in several ways:
The most efficient method: Write a crawler to download 10,000 avatars. Then write a script that can complete all engravings on the chain within a few hours. It’s extremely accurate, fast, and efficient.
A moderately efficient method: Download the avatars, encode them, and then develop a “one-click engrave” webpage, allowing users to quickly complete the engravings on the chain with just a few clicks. Since human actions are minimal and there is little need for manual input, there is almost no chance of making mistakes.
The least efficient method: There is only one on-chain contract, and all others require users to do it themselves. Users need to manually download avatar images, encode them using encoding tools, manually copy and paste into the contract interaction tool, manually verify inputs are correct, manually complete wallet installation and network addition, manually request gas from the contract, manually interact with the contract to complete on-chain actions. This set of actions takes a long time, is laborious, and there is a certain probability of making mistakes or damaging the engraving.
After completing 10,000 engravings using these three methods, which method produces the highest value? I think the answer is self-evident.
From the perspective of “usefulness,” what’s the point of engraving these pictures on the chain? It’s hard to figure out no matter how much you think about it. However, looking at it from the perspective of “preciousness,” the product of one’s own labor and sweat, engraved by the blockchain, forming a unique collection, irreplaceable and delightful to look at every time, the heart feels joyous. “The importance is not the picture itself but that I personally engraved it.” Rationality is limited, and feelings won’t deceive people. This is what Wang Yangming called “brightness within.”
Imagine if Satoshi Nakamoto had issued all 21 million bitcoins directly in the code in January 2009. What would be the value of Bitcoin today?
But Satoshi Nakamoto chose not to. He wanted to mobilize people all over the world, consume so much manpower, resources, energy, and land, and still take more than a hundred years (approximately until 2140) to produce all these 21 million bitcoins.
Low efficiency is indisputable.
Value is undeniably high.
You may argue that without PoW, other methods, such as setting rules, can also artificially create scarcity, right? However, rules set by people can be broken by people. Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t believe that people could uphold their principles in the face of tremendous incentives. It’s not that he was unwilling to believe in people but that he couldn’t trust people. After all, Satoshi Nakamoto explicitly wrote in the Bitcoin whitepaper: “What we need is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of (trust in) trust.” Only with substantial costs will people be convinced of Bitcoin’s preciousness.
Only with sufficient preciousness will Bitcoin be continually explored and discovered for its usefulness.
Bitcoin is useful because
it is precious.
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