Category: Learning Blockchain

For several days after I sold my Bitcoin (or more accurately, sold my .044972 Bitcoin), I had daily encounters with people pointing out that I left money on the table and asking if I’m sorry I got out before the top. The answer is a resounding no. Why?

• My decision to get out was not based on economics—it was based on pollution.
• My coin purchase was not an “investment.”
• Bitcoin does not work as advertised.

(more…)

In the last three posts, I bought Bitcoin, discovered how it is stored, and even went to Iceland to find out where they come from. (Fact check: That is not why I went to Iceland.)

Over and over again in these posts I would refer to Bitcoin as “money.” And over and over again I had to correct myself. Keeping “Bitcoin” separate from the idea of “money” is surprisingly hard.

Let’s be clear: Bitcoin is not money.

In other news, Bitcoin is money. (more…)

In a previous post, I reviewed what I learned about storing bitcoins in various kinds of wallets and chose a way to store my coin so that it would be truly mine. Today, I will talk about actually moving Bitcoin.

(more…)

The morning after a baby tooth came out was always fun around our house. The excited digging under the pillow, the delight of finding a shiny gold dollar, and the wonderful clinking sound sound as it went into the bank. The girl had Bessie, her cow bank, and the boy loved Hay-Hay, his chicken bank. They were a place to store coins but they were also toys with personality.

Because bitcoins don’t actually exist, storing then isn’t nearly as charming or fun. (more…)

There’s gotta be a reason this blockchain stuff is so hard to wrap my brain around. Maybe I’m just old with an old-guy brain. Maybe this blockchain stuff fundamentally makes no sense.

But I’m hoping it’s just that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are, in fact, really hard to understand. If that is true, there is hope for my becoming a blockchain expert in 2017. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Read two books
• Watched videos and read stuff on the internet
• Talked to my smartest friend
• Interviewed a neighbor who works on a blockchain startup
• Wrote a whitepaper on some of the stuff I’ve learned for another friend
• Attended a Bitcoin meetup

I’m still scratching my head. (more…)

In my first post in this series on Bitcoin and blockchains, I described how hard I worked to ignore this thing that didn’t make sense. In this post I’ll cover why I am spending 2017 becoming a blockchain expert.

Spoiler alert: the reasons are the usual suspects—pride and money. (more…)

Ignorance is bliss, but staying ignorant can also take an awful lot of work. Take, for instance, myself and the Bitcoin Blockchain. (more…)