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Checks gave birth to all sorts of new fraud and cybercrime that had never existed before. Whenever you pay someone with a check you are revealing some very personal information about yourself. Each check has your first name, last name and address. You also surrender both your checking and routing numbers on each check which can open you up to some check fraud problems. Every single time that you swipe your credit or debit card you are surrendering personal information about yourself not only to the vendor that you are buying from but also to your bank.
With each transaction, they know where you are, when you are there, how much you spent and often times what you purchased. ApplePay removes some of this information being revealed but you still do not have private control of your funds. One of the beautiful things about bitcoin is that you can store and transact value without having to attach your identity to your money.
This is what makes bitcoin the most private payment network on the planet. Not only do you keep full control of your personal information when you spend with bitcoin but you also keep full control of your funds. It is this type of financial privacy that will enable more economic inclusivity than any existing payment mechanism in the world today. Do you think you should have to surrender your personal information to spend money?
Tell us what you think with a comment below or a tweet at BitcoinReasons.
Why is it that so many people seem to think that money is innately evil? In order to better understand what money is, I would like to ask you a question. If money is the root of all evil, then what is the root of all money? Is it these pieces of paper that we use to buy things? Money is a piece of technology that we use to weigh and measure goods and services against each other.
In short, money is a tool for exchange and organization. Without money, we simply could not organize and solve problems of large scale. Unfortunately, too many people view money as the end rather than the means which is one of the reasons money gets a bad reputation.
Money is anything that does three things. Money is a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Anything that performs these three functions is, by definition, money. This means that no matter what you use to do these three things, you are using money. Money needs to be storable. One of the first forms of money was salt because everyone wanted it to season their food. Once it was so widely desired, people who had salt would use some for seasoning their food and they would store the rest so they could trade it with others. In this sense, salt was a store of value. Money needs to be exchangeable with other parties.
After salt became sought after by everyone in a society, it was easy to trade with others for goods and services. Bitcoin is not yet accepted directly by most as a means of exchange but many payment processors are enabling it to be used as one. Some platforms exclusively use bitcoin as the payment mechanism because they understand its utility as a means of exchange. Money needs to be used as a unit of account. Since everyone was using salt to store value and exchanging it with other people in their society, salt could also be used as a unit of account.
In ancient markets, simple scales were used to account for different amounts of salt. Trading things measured out in salt was what would allow for people to account for certain things. Trade can easily be accounted for using Bitcoin since each bitcoin can seamlessly be divided into million units.
In order for money to be able to successfully do these three things, it needs to have 6 characteristics; durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, scarcity and acceptability. The more of these qualities that something has, the better that something functions as money.
Bitcoin possesses all of these characteristics to an even greater extent than gold. The first application that brought the internet into mainstream use was the invention of e. For the first time in history, people could send mail to each other electronically and this was groundbreaking technology at the time.
But as we all know, the value of the internet is so much more than email. Bitcoin is no different. Its first application is being recognized as a form of money but it will not be long before people around the world realize that it is capable of doing so much more than just buying things.
Bitcoin is a distributed network that can send, receive and store information and it does this better, faster and with a lower cost than any existing system. Since modern money has become information, this has immense implications for the future of trade, all forms of record keeping and information exchange. When you go to the store, you have all sorts of choices on what products you can buy. You can decide what type of car to drive, or what dry cleaner to use and what cell service provider will drop your calls but what about money? Do we have the freedom to chose what money we use?
Up until the invention of bitcoin, the control of all money supplies has been in the hands of a small group of elites and central bankers but now that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are here, that control is shifting from central banks to the people.
What do you think is at the root of all money? It is the most influential math experiment in history and it does what it wants. This is exactly why bitcoin will change the world. This is not to be confused with digital payment systems like we already use today but we will touch on that in a minute. There have been numerous attempts to create a digital form of cash but they have all failed to create something that is digitally scarce. With each failure, programmers have come one step closer to discovering the blueprint for a system of digital cash that actually works.
In , that blueprint was finally uncovered by an individual or group of individuals using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. If bitcoin fails, nothing happens. It will be just like all of the other attempts to create digital cash that came before it. But what we are seeing is that it is not failing at all. It is changing the way the world works just as the internet has. This was a breakthrough in the transference of money not only because money could now be sent across an entire continent in seconds but also because it created a huge leap forward in reducing the risk of moving money.
A process that used to take up to days and was at constant risk or being stolen was now almost instant and immune to hijack. Western Union had discovered a new system that would forever change the world. The problem with Western Union and other similar services is that anything centrally owned and operated can be centrally obstructed. These centrally controlled systems require you to trust them with the custody of your money. Bitcoin, however, is radically different.
Up until the advent of bitcoin, in order to send money, you needed a trusted third party like Western Union. All of these systems require that you trust the transfer system to not steal your money and bitcoin removes the need to trust these third parties in order to transact value. Bitcoin has managed to bring together three crucial elements for a digital cash system to work.
Cryptography, compensation and distribution. Without any one of these three elements, the system would not work. Banks and payment networks rely heavily on strong cryptography and encryption technology to keep transactions secure. Remember those passwords and code books that Western Union used? Encryption technology has come a long way since the early days and has become incredibly complex but to get an understanding of some of the underlying technology behind bitcoin, this video does a great job explaining something called Public-Key Cryptography.
These strong cryptographic mechanisms can be very costly to operate and maintain which is why banks charge a small fee to store and transfer your money. Compensation is necessary if you want a system to operate. The problem with bank fees is that they are disproportionately high compared to bitcoin fees. The difference in price stays in your pocket. This is where the magic happens. Distribution is what makes the bitcoin network so resilient. There is no single point of failure. In short, bitcoin removes the need for these other mechanisms by replacing trust in a central third party with trust in a distributed network that is secured by math.
No matter what you think about bitcoin, it is already changing the world. It is the topic of discussion with governments, banking institutions, corporations, freedom advocates, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and disruptarians around the world. It has subverted power over global money flows and is enabling more individuals to have more control over their daily lives and futures. How do you think bitcoin will change the world? In our hyper connected tech world we have probably all heard a number of buzzwords that are related to cybercrime. Identity theft, ransomware, hacks, leaks, fraud, viruses, phishing, forgery, malware and spam are all terms that we either hear on the news or the latest primetime tv drama and that is because cybercrime is evolving at an alarming rate.
Cybercrime refers to criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the internet and it is one of the fastest growing black markets in the world. Cybercriminals work in illicit parts of the internet with incredibly high risk and even higher profit margins. In order to stay one step or several steps ahead of law enforcement, hackers are always evolving and advancing to use the most cutting edge technology available.
One of the biggest security weaknesses with the banking system is that banks are legally required to collect all sorts of your personal information in order for you to store value or use their network. These laws create an abnormally large collection of personal data for hackers and cybercriminals to target by forcing your personal identity to be attached to all of your electronic spending. The end result is the erosion of financial privacy and the creation of large caches of your personal data ripe for exploitation by dark markets.
The larger these collections of personal data caches become, the greater incentive for a group of hackers to target them. These data caches can be at banks or on social media accounts. Click the button below to download my free ebook. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. How do you feel about your life today?
Are you living every day in excitement? Are you excited every single moment? Are you living your best life? You like to watch HBO. You don't like the appearance or smell of vomit. You don't like the appearance or smell of poop. You don't like the idea of wiping another person's snot. You think "Wheels on the Bus" is a stupid song.
You like going on dates with your partner. You would like things to stay exactly the way they are with your partner.
You value a daily shower. You think weekends at Costco are worthy of a facepalm tweet. You like to shut the door while you're in the bathroom. You take more than one minute to make yourself presentable and ready to be seen in public. You don't like to say "no. You like keeping your living quarters tidy and neat. You enjoy spontaneous outings with friends. You disapprove of the five-second rule. You like to drink coffee while it's piping hot. You like to speak complete sentences without being interrupted.
You prefer your iPhone screen to be smudge-free. You prefer your iPhone screen to be free of any kind of stickiness. You care about your iPhone or iPad at all. You like to phone your friends or family during the day. You dislike Goldfish crackers or Cheerios.
Don't Act: Reasons Why You Shouldn't by Todd Robert Anderson. Here is an excerpt from a book about acting unlike any that has preceded it. I've been overweight since birth so I don't know what it's like to be "skinny". But this year I've You know you shouldn't be eating this!
You strongly believe certain body parts should remain perky. You strongly believe other certain body parts should remain intact. You are not fond of stretch marks. You have a low tolerance for physical and psychological pain. You have a low tolerance for asshole-ish behavior. You like your current circle of friends who don't have kids. You hate minivans, or even worse -- SUVs. You are fond of your current shoe collection.
You like having control of the music in the car. You detest unsolicited advice from complete strangers. You like your job.