In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz convinced someone to accept the 10,000 Bitcoins he had mined in exchange for two pizzas. In those distant days, Hanyecz estimated that each Bitcoin his computer had earned through mining was worth a fraction of a cent. Today, 1 Bitcoin equals to $437, thus Hanyecz’s pizza purchase would be worth about $4,367,900.00 in today’s money.
Hanyecz’s transaction that day marks as the first transaction ever made with Bitcoins. Today, from my living room in Milan, I can send €100 worth of Bitcoins to Kyoto only by generating a QR code from my smartphone. This means that any recipient in Japan with their Bitcoin wallet ready to scan that code would be able to claim the money, which usually happens in seconds. If you are still asking “Why would I prefer this type of money transfer to my brick and mortar bank?” the answer is: Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to transfer money in minutes and for free (or for an infinitesimal mining fee if you want your transaction to be confirmed within a reasonable length of time). Do you know a bank that does that?
Flashback to 2008, two weeks after the collapse of US banking behemoth Lehman Brothers, when a gargantuan credit crunch nearly caused systemic failure of the entire banking system. Governments rushed to animate the feeble banks while businesses found it almost impossible to find new loans to maintain their usual operations. Just when politicians were newly comprehending the concept of “too-big-to-fail,” a paper circulating the internet – Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – was expounding a methodology to use a P2P network to generate transactions without relying on an intermediary. In the context of the intense financial strain, just the anticipation of extirpating “the intermediary” is enough to take Bitcoin seriously.
The underlying […]
