An ELI5 on #Bitcoin.

Think of Bitcoin as a startup founded in 2008, created by a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, initially bootstrapped with his personal capital. No VC funding; just electricity.

His product? An unobtainium.

1/7 🧵

Bitcoin, an unobtainium, is an intangible, rare material, that allows you to store value across decades and generations. It's resistant to confiscation; censorship; theft by inflation; and attacks by corporations, governments, or even aliens - as in Avatar (2009 film).

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In order to possess this rather unobtainable material, you must have a 78-digit random number, also commonly represented as a set of 24 words. Never reveal this to anyone. Ever. Write it down on a piece of paper or etch it on steel; then take it to the grave.

3/7
Bitcoin can be teleported across space (with on-chain transfers) and time (using timelocks); without the possibility of intercepting it in transit. It's either with you or with the counterparty — there's no intermediate state.

It's not magic; simply laws of thermodynamics.

4/7
Satoshi stepped down as the CEO of Bitcoin in 2011. Who runs it today? No one, and everyone, at the same time. It has no board of directors. It's just a set of mathematical equations, unfailingly enforced by very strong network effects. There's no known way of stopping math.

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Today, it's a melting pot of bleeding-edge engineering and research, with hundreds of developers working on it for free. Each day, Bitcoin gets harder, smarter, and more secure; constantly evolving, and self-healing. True anti-fragility at work.

https://t.co/cI6MkklbZS

6/7
When you buy Bitcoin, you're using a product, but also buying equity in its success/failure. The price depends on how the market values its properties, and how difficult it is to produce more of it. It may be a passing fad or a very important feat of the human civilisation.

7/7
This is years of learnings marshalled in a few tweets. I learnt everything from:

@PrestonPysh @real_vijay @Breedlove22 @jimmysong @saifedean @michael_saylor @stephanlivera @100trillionUSD @pierre_rochard @RaoulGM @matt_odell

Go follow them!

For memes, follow @udiWertheimer.
Tagged the wrong Raoul. 🤦

The real one: @RaoulGMI

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I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.