Why is Trump backing bitcoin and other cryptocurrency?
My guess is the influence of Vivek R. I think Vivek explained why bitcoin is popular with libertarians and anarchists, how bitcoin was useful for raising money to help the Trucker Convoy in Canada and debunked some of Trump’s misconceptions about bitcoin.
Steve Bannon holds bitcoin as does JD Vance and RFK.
Elizabeth Warren hates bitcoin so I’m sure that was a factor in Trump changing his mind about bitcoin.
Bitcoin super PACs and wealthy bitcoiners have donated to his campaign using bitcoin and USD. Silicon Valley figures such as David Sacks have endorsed Trump and almost all of them hold some bitcoin.
How is bitcoin different from Beanie Baby craze?
The first 50 bitcoin were created on Jan 3, 2009.
The supply of bitcoin is finite, 21 million. My guess is the supply of Beanie Baby is not finite along with Dutch tulips.
Once we reach 21 million bitcoin, no more bitcoin will be minted or mined (estimated year is 2137).
Who calibrates supply? Quick answer is bitcoin miners and nodes on the bitcoin network calibrate supply
Longer answer is:
No single person calibrates supply like Jerome Powell.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency associated with no governent or nation state or central bank.
Currently almost 94% of all bitcoin have been mined.
How are new bitcoin created?
Approximately every 10 minutes, 3.125 bitcoin are created in the form of a “reward”.
Bitcoin miners compete with one another to get the “reward” by using supercomputers to guess a number between 1 and a trillion. In other words:
Mining is a giant lottery, where miners guess random numbers and hope that one of those will lead to the outcome of them producing a valid block.
Valid block = reward = lots of money, currently $218,995
A useful way of looking at bitcoin is look at gold or silver.
What attributes of gold make it a ‘strong’ currency or store of value or medium of exchange or maybe a unit of account?
Also, what is money? what is currency?
Why are some currencies strong (Swiss)?
Why are some currencies weak (Argentina peso)?
References:
The bitcoin white paper was published on October 31, 2008. The paper has some technical details but was written for the layperson and it’s only 9 pages long. I usually read it once a year along with the Declaration of Independence.
John Walker has written about bitcoin in the past and I found them very informative. I will look for and post those links.
edit: live stream of Bitcoin Conference speakers in Nashville
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