Will bitcoin survive?

Drop in confidence

From this article  "After the February’s 2018 crypto market slump that brought Bitcoin (BTC) below $7000, the number of Google searches for “Bitcoin” has dropped to the lowest levels since October of last year."

Why this happens?

No one did believe in 2013 that the BTC, then worth cents, will go up to USD 20,000. We have no popular knowledge of cryptography, no even today,  we don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is or was.

Sapiens

This is the short name of the book A brief History of Humankind by the Oxford graduate and professor at University of Jerusalem,  Yuval Noah Harari .

The picture of Homo Sapiens evolution looked something like this in my mind

Figure 1: Evolution as a linear model

It seems we went through all primate species  and in about 5 millions years we became Homo Sapiens. We look before like these hominids 

Figure 2: Species of hominids that disappeared 

They had more brute force to hunt. The survival of the fittest does not apply. These Neanderthals did not survive. They could gather in groups of maximum 150. They had to form a society only in as much knowing personally each other.

This is the reason why Neanderthals disappeared, in spite of their muscular force

Quoting from  the book

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN HISTORY IN THE millennia following the Agricultural Revolution boils down to a single question: how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance.

The banana and the chimpanzee 

A chimpanzee still exists today and did not disappeared as a species. One can tell a chimpanzee. "If you do this, I give you one banana" The chimpanzee seems to understand.

Figure 3: Chimpanzee charcoal drawing

But if  you tell a chimpanzee: I give you one banana now, and after you die, in heaven, I give you another  100 bananas, surely he would not know what we are talking about. 

Because the chimps can not organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks, and can't create imagined orders and devised scripts.

When the Bitcoin came out was like a bible.This bible is called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System and was published in 2008 on the cryptography mailing list.  The idea of making such huge profit in nine years was to humans like bananas in the heaven for chimps,

The myth of Money

 Money is based on two universal principles:

•  Universal convertibility: with money as an alchemist, you can turn land into loyalty, justice into health, and violence into knowledge. 
•  Universal trust: with money as a go-between, any two people can cooperate on any project.

It is incredible how the myth of money has been adopted in totality by Homo Sapiens, like no religion, diet, race or even gender, and so on were adopted. Like all other myths. money is an illusion

Fig 4:  1 US$ note front

The above is a piece of paper, with no intrinsic value that has the picture of Washington plus a signature of the Treasury

The other side

Fig. 5: 1 US$ note back note

It says in God We Trust. These are all we need for humanity to recognize this useless piece of paper as universal money .

What is not clear with cryptocurrencies

1. Are the bitcoins universally convertible ?  Can you turn land into loyalty, justice into health, and violence into knowledge?
2. Can any two people cooperate with cryptocurrencies as a go-between co-operate in any project?

These two questions do not have definitive answers. Because when we look at the jargon the foggy degree of manipulation that nags the universal acceptance

The Jargon of Cryptocurrencies

• FUD "Fear Uncertainty and doubt"
• HODL When cryptocurrencies go through the roof
• SATS, the least fraction of a bitcoin it can be received
• WHALE, people who hold huge amounts of crypto and can dump them on the market 
• Pump and Damp. People controlling huge amounts and manipulate the market
• BAGHOLDERS. People stuck with high prices cryptos after a price drop. 
• 51% ATTACK. When over 50% of a crypto is controlled by one owner and she has absolute control
• FORK represents a permanent move to an alternate operating version than the current blockchain in response to a 51% ATACK
• MULTISIG Large organization require more than one signature to getting money into the company's BTC wallet
• ...

The jargon by itself is a product of homo sapiens who still doubts the cryptocurrency myth at a level of traditional money has.

Are we the chimpanzee of the future?

Some of us are. We will continue to evolve to create the post-homo-sapiens even more superior animal. And Homo Sapiens of today will become the next chimpanzee. And maybe the BTC will become the next form of money of the post-homo-sapiens

But at the time of writing this blog, I clarified what I think by reading a very intelligent  history book by Yuval Noah Harari