{"id":3396,"date":"2018-02-15T13:11:31","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T18:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/?p=3396"},"modified":"2018-02-15T13:11:31","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T18:11:31","slug":"the-art-of-the-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/the-art-of-the-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most\u00a0topical portions of the lectures this week was the portion concerning the Ithaca dollar, a currency invented in 1990.\u00a0 The concept\u00a0behind the currency is that one hour of labor equals ten Ithaca\u00a0dollars, rather than rewarding people differently for the different jobs they perform.\u00a0 This is quite reminiscent of Bitcoin.\u00a0 In 2008,\u00a0a paper entitled\u00a0Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System<\/i>\u00a0was published to a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto.\u00a0 The paper detailed a type of universal currency that could be sent electronically and stored in electronic wallets.\u00a0 Although electronic money existed before that, Nakamoto was the first to envision such a decentralized currency, backed by no governments.\u00a0 In order to make this happen, he came up with the idea of the\u00a0blockchain<\/em>: a public ledger, accessible by anyone, that contains every bitcoin transaction ever made.\u00a0 This shares quite a few similarities with the Ithaca dollar, the main being its decentralized nature.\u00a0 There are no government agencies backing it \u2013 no federal reserve to control the flow of the money or to insure it as they do for banks.\u00a0 The only way that the currency has value is because people\u00a0believe<\/em> that it has value.\u00a0 Nakamoto’s currency was a massive success, and one Bitcoin is now worth upwards of ten thousand dollars.\u00a0 But it makes us think \u2013 why does any currency have value?\u00a0 The United States gold standard is gone \u2013 a citizen can no longer show up to the US Treasury and demand gold in return for his dollar bills.\u00a0 Yet the value of the dollar stays remarkably stable.\u00a0 The answer lies merely in adoption<\/em>.\u00a0 Everyone believes the US dollar still has value and accepts it in exchange for goods and services, so it does.\u00a0\u00a0The biggest obstacle that Bitcoin faced was convincing people the same, and that started by getting some online retailers to accept it, leading to more widespread use.\u00a0 Bitcoin still has many obstacles to face \u2013 high transaction fees and slow transaction speeds, to name two \u2013 but it has overcome what many thought were impossible barriers and I believe it will continue improving and growing until it is a commonly used currency around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most\u00a0topical portions of the lectures this week was the portion concerning the Ithaca dollar, a currency invented in 1990.\u00a0 The concept\u00a0behind the currency is that one hour of labor equals ten Ithaca\u00a0dollars, rather than rewarding people differently for the different jobs they perform.\u00a0 This is quite reminiscent of Bitcoin.\u00a0 In 2008,\u00a0a paper … <\/p>\n

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