Seeing Bitcoin beyond a get rich scheme

bitcoin image forbes.com

Bitcoin the first successful decentralized digital currency (cryptocurrency) means different things to different people, many perceive Bitcoin as a way to get rich quick, although some people have made a lot of money from Bitcoin others have also been caught up in the volatility of Bitcoin and end up getting frustrated, honestly, Satoshi Nakamoto the faceless Bitcoin creator never stated in Bitcoin’s whitepaper that creating wealth for people was one of the reasons he created bitcoin, actions by Satoshi Nakamoto in the early stages of Bitcoin further proved he didn’t create Bitcoin so that he could line his pocket, the first three lines of Bitcoin’s whitepaper abstract stated its purpose: “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”. Bitcoin’s goal was to decentralize the financial system and create an avenue for faster, transparent, more private, less expensive borderless money transactions, and also a peer-to-peer network accessible by anyone in the world which has no single point of failure.

A CENTRALIZED WORLD

We live in a world where most things are controlled by a central body, governments set the rules for all to adhere to which is fine, totally fine for most areas of our lives it puts people in check, but not when it comes to our finances, I believe I should have more control over my hard-earned money. I deposit my money in a bank without doing almost anything with the deposited money, I get charged from the bank for their services for keeping my money which they also make more from by investing my money in other businesses, my government can easily freeze my account whenever they will and I won’t have access to the money I strived hard to get which does not make so much sense to me, the central banks continue to bail out banks for their own bad business decisions Why? The central banks can print new money when they like, which leads to more inflation. Bitcoin helps solve some of these issues I have with our current financial systems,

BITCOIN USE CASES

I am an African so most of my use cases may be African-centered, I believe Africa needs a solution like Bitcoin more, well the whole world needs Bitcoin. These are a few use cases:

1. Transaction transparency: I wrote an article for Logrocket recently, I was to be paid 350 dollars for my article, the Logrocket blog payment platform stated it has paid my 350 dollars to my bank in Nigeria it was to take 3 working days for me to get a deposit in my Nigerian bank account, it’s more than 8 working days now I haven’t gotten any deposit all I can do is send letters upon letters to hopefully get this resolved, I have no way to verify the transaction, no way to proof Logrocket has made the payment, or my bank has received the payment I’m left in the dark and all I can do is to send letters which I hate writing. 350 dollars is not so much a big money, but it’s a payment for my intellectual property so I will be hurt, and feel cheated if I don't get my 350 dollars from Logrocket, If the payment was sent as a bitcoin transaction, at most it would have taken 1 hour for me to receive my money, or if a Bitcoin layer 2 solution like the lightning network was used I would have received my money instantly, I will be able to verify if Logrocket blog has sent my money, see the details of the transaction, see the status of my transaction in a more efficient and transparent way, but the reverse is the case now I am sending letters to get money for my own intellectual property.

2. Faster / Real-time payments: I wrote about my personal experience in the transaction transparency use case, I will write about a prevalent issue in the health sector in Nigeria here. Lots of cases have been reported of hospitals not attending to patients without receiving proof of payment, these days proof of payment is mostly a credit message from banks either via phone or email, these proof channels are 80% reliable but not 100% so sometimes the may arrive very late, which means the patient might not be attended to before a proof arrives, or let's assume a patient needs attention emergently, and the only source of payment for this patient is a relative in the diaspora that needs to make payment to the hospitals account before they can commence treatment If he makes use of any of the cross-border payment solutions, it should take up to 3 working days before the payment arrives if the hospital refuses to treat the patient without a proof of payment the patient may have lost his/her life before the payment arrives, If Bitcoin was used in such a situation the payment will be received almost instantly and everybody will be fine.

There are so many other positive Bitcoin use cases, but let me stop at these 2 today.

WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE SOME BITCOINS

There are so many reasons you should own some bitcoins but I will state a few:

1. Your Bitcoin can save a life or the lives of your loved ones in situations where you need fast and reliable payments
2. Bitcoin is not inflationary like our government-backed financial currencies
3. Bitcoin gives you more control over your finances
4. Bitcoin is more transparent than our current financial systems
5. Bitcoin is more private than our current financial systems (yes it is transparent, but also very private if you adhere to Bitcoin’s privatization principles.)
6. It has a definite supply, only twenty-one million bitcoins will ever exist (21,000,000), unlike our government-backed currencies which can be printed as they will

Bitcoin has been around for 13 years, Bitcoin is a teenager and has continued to gain massive adoption around the world, I believe I will see Bitcoin become an adult and get to the stage of maturity, but I don’t envision Bitcoin getting old and become obsolete or cease to exists, it will continue to evolve and gain massive adoption as digital inclusion increases and has many people realize its importance in our world today, and the Bitcoin community ensuring we don't deviate from Bitcoin’s core values I believe Bitcoin is here to stay. So I will encourage you to get involved with the movement and find some time to learn more about Bitcoin I believe you will fall in love with Bitcoin if you really understand it.

If you are an African developer and you are interested in learning, and building bitcoin applications, and open-source projects then Qala is for you click on the link to visit Qala’s web page.

Thank you.