When I first heard about the Bitcoin peer to peer network, I was skeptical. I didn't know what cryptography was. I didn't understand much of the math. I read the white paper because I heard about it on a podcast. The Gambler's Ruin problem was about the only thing in the I understood. I only was able to create a wallet because Andreas Antonopoulos said accepting Bitcoin required nothing more than writing down twelve words. I didn't "buy Bitcoin." I took posted a legacy address on Twitter. "Can someone please give me a little bit of this Bitcoin thing?" It was something to that effect anyway. A nym sent me a bitcoin tip using ChangeTip . "Here's $1.50 worth of Bitcoin. Buy yourself a cup of coffee ." It wasn't self custodial, but this anon showed me that you can just send people bitcoin with a tweet, when Twitter was hackable like nostr. It encouraged me to fall deeper down the rabbit hole. After about a week of sleep deprived obsession, I sent the small amount of Bitcoin to my self custodial wallet. Holly Shiitake mushrooms Batman! It works! A stranger sent me cash money over the Internet, an online payment without needing a bank, government, or gold. That's pretty radical. It seemed like kind of a big deal. 311,000 blocks before that(2009) the legacy financial system almost really died , unlike the 450 times the mainstream media declared bitcoin dead . This wasn't just some phoney bologna story on The Joe Rogan Experience. It was a peer-to-peer network like Gnutella and Tor I was broke, but this taught me Bitcoin was something I could earn. That's how my dad taught me about money. He woke up at 4 in the anti-meridian, busted his ass so he could cash his check at the grocery store. Brought home the bacon, bread, and stashed the leftover cash for the week. The money didn't really need to go into the bank because you could spend it anywhere, even on utilities. He wasn't an agorist. He did side jobs for cash-money. He would give me a couple bucks to spend whenever his machine impaired ear drums heard the ice cream truck. That's my earliest memory of cash-money, buying ice cream off the ice cream truck. I was a sucker for PacMan shaped ice cream bars. We watched the Dodgers every now and then. One time, on the way to the horse trough style urinals, my dad whispered, " look down ." It was a green piece of rectangular paper with a portrait of the 18th president of the United States. I snatched it as fast as I could. Fifty bucks richer. As any five year old knows, cash is a bearer instrument. As the saying goes, "Finder's keepers, losers weepers." Whoever holds the cash can spend the cash . Whoever holds the bitcoin keys can spend the bitcoin . That's how bitcoin works. There is no physical cash, only a record of the transfer of ownership frome one digital signature to another digital signature. All the Bitcoin exists on a peer to peer network. Digital signatures are timestamped using a hash cash like system. In The Bitcoin Standard , Saifedean Ammous compares this time stamping cash system to the limestone on the island of Yap. The Islanders used these solid rocks as money. The rocks are almost impossible to move. Since they couldn't move them or get more to the island without doing a tremendous amount of work, ownership was transferred by word of mouth. If the owner of a rock proclaimed the stone has a new owner, word got around. The time chain works the same way. The digital signatures are like the transferring the ownership by word of mouth of on the island of the bitcoin peer-to-peer network. This island happens to be world wide. Digital signatures require a public private key pair. In Bitcoin, the public key is called an Xpub. This xpub is used to derive all of the Bitcoin addresses associated with the key. If someone finds your xpub on the floor of Dodger stadium, they will not be able to spend your sats , but they will know how many you have. Most people at Dodger stadium are pretty cool, but there are some bad apples. You don't want someone who knows how much Bitcoin you have to threaten you with a baseball bat. That's why it's important to keep the amount you own a secret . If someone finds your private key, it is like finding the $50.00 bill on the floor of Dodger stadium . There's a chance, if you lose it, you can find it, but don't hold your Dodger Dog scented breath. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Anyone with your private key can spend your Bitcoin, therefore, you must keep it secret. 🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌0000🍌 These days, most people hear about BTC stocks, MNAV, and endless supply of shills that promise the greatest thing since bananas on a block chain. Bananas timestamped on a peer to peer network is a phrase that doesn't make any sense because bananas can't enter the world wide web island. If the can't get on the island, they can't get stamped from that island. Although bananas on a blockchain are not possible, the timechain could work as an
