I think Bitcoin is a wonderful technology that does what it says: Create and run digital money, on it's own in a self-sustaining model which rewards the miners of the network, without the need for any third party or bank outside of the machines themselves.
I guess if this was written 4-6 years ago it would also be more relevant.
But today I decided to scroll through the source codes of many different projects - EOS, Ethereum, and yes, Bitcoin. This is what I saw:
"build: failing"
"Bitcoin is an experimental digital currency.."
So this is a reminder to you that yes, the code is there and readable by the public. In fact, as a developer this makes me respect Bitcoin a LOT more, but it also humbles Bitcoin... it's only code.
It's only code; it's experimental. To put your real tangible money into pure code is one of the riskiest things out there, as:
1 ) anything digital can be hacked given an exploited vulnerability on the hardware or software level. The network itself can be hacked; your phone wallets can be hacked; even the Ledger Nano can be hacked the moment it's plugged into your machine to send funds.
2 ) your use of this digital money hangs 100% on whether or not you have an internet connection, which gives the illusion that it's free, however both the internet and the computation requires payment in order to use.
I repeat: It's an ambitious concept, written by very knowledgeable programmers working together around the world. But this is man's attempt at reinventing the wheel. It's not necessary.
And all it does is open you up to a false sense of wealth, and the risk of losing it all anyways.
To those banking heavy on it, I suggest you fully understand Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptos. I believe that we ought to link every digital asset directly to a real-world object or use. For instance: Instead of a unit of Storj (STORJ), there ought to be units of pure disk storage as a currency: Ownership of 100 Terabytes on Google's Cloud service, and that ownership be traded, instead of these utility tokens that are just another form of payment.
And yes, you can say you OWN a Bitcoin, however you're owning a piece of open sourced code -- not even actually, it's basically a single number on that database, which is NOT a Bitcoin -- just a number.
I guess it's an enticing idea because it's not that far from the banking system with digital cash, however proponents of cryptocurrencies should easily be able to see that nothing is actually there, either.
This explosion in price makes zero sense to me, other than a massive attempt at virtualizing real money, to artificially inflate something with a limited hard-coded supply (which is just code anyways), to sell to the masses via impressive advertising of said virtual money.
But it's all virtual, it's a game. And believe me, I've been in and out of this space for over two years, watching the projects and seeing a lot of how the trading markets work.
So remember, it's just virtual code. If you want to have your total wealth in your head be perceived as higher just because Wall Street is moving in, have at it.
And you can see all of the times I crossed in and out of these markets, here on the Steemit blockchain. I frankly trust Commodity Futures more than Cryptocurrencies.
There's Corn, Wheat, Oil, Silver, Natural Gas, Soy, Wood, Platinum, Copper, Water, Iron -- all of these natural resources that our society 100% depends on. 100%.
And then there's "Bitcoin" -- like WoW Gold and Credits for your Dating app, except nobody leads it and it's on government regulated banks to provide you with liquidity -- the same people you wanted to avoid by coming into cryptos in the first place.
The one without a server has been forked, and its forked have been hacked, it's forks have been used for ponzi schemes, it's a massive facilitator of scams and gradual sucking of wealth to the miners. What would happen to Bitcoin if we found out that Google owned 99% of the mining power, meaning that almost all fees went straight to them? We would call it "Google Money" then, yea? Since they can deploy their own custom blockchain code.
Seriously, the chance of Bitcoin being hijacked, being hacked, being shut down, forked, dropped from banking support -- these are 100% risks to your money. That's not even counting the wallet hacks, exchange hacks, scams, and all of that stuff where you can lose all your money because of an experiment.
Like I said, the fundamentals for Bitcoin are garbage. It's not decentralized, not hard money, not anonymous, not safe... but yet the price goes up.
The New Financial Paradigm is one of Clarify, of Fundamental Soundness. I envision a world that utilizes blockchain, yes, but in a way that merges with and facilitates global trading of real, natural resources. I cannot see this real financial paradigm operating with assets whose values were created out of nothing. To see such a scheme advance for so long, defies all logic outside of incredible deception.
And I apologize to hodlers but that's just how I see it. Yes, the dollar needs to die; all fiat currencies do. In fact I think because we failed to stay linked to the natural world, there are many people on this world that shouldn't be here, and unless MASSIVE efforts towards self-sufficient and interdependent communities occur now, many won't make it once the perception of value shifts back to real resources.