CivicTech & cryptocurrency advocates, believe that humanity will have no future without decentralizations of power. Seriously amateur gamer, tour cycling lover, Triathlon challenger, Rust lover.

Using Myths to Tell Bitcoin "One"

Feb 10, 2023

Most people have heard of Bitcoin (Bitcoin), but not many people understand its true meaning. Countless people have explained Bitcoin before, so I decided to try to use a completely zero-computer term (not zero-knowledge proof), and use a mythical story to explain how Bitcoin works.

In the ancient world, the elves ruled the world. The number of these elves is not many, but the gods will give him a unique spell with a total of 24 words when he is born. This spell is actually a key to open the treasure chest in the cloud, so the elves will never tell anyone about this spell, or even write it down, just keep it in their hearts. And this "Cloud Treasure Chest" is actually composed of many small treasure chests. As the name suggests, they are transparent and ubiquitous, and everyone can see them, and the number is unimaginable (the elves have calculated that it is about 1⁰⁷⁷ or so, Generally speaking, the total number of atoms in the universe that humans live in is a few zeros less. Well, if there are about 100,000,000,000,000 atoms in a cell).

The special thing about these treasure chests is that the elf can use this spell to put "money" into those exclusive little treasure chests on the cloud that belong only to him. The elf can also transfer the "money" from one treasure chest to any treasure chest. Moreover, since the treasure chests on the cloud are transparent, everyone can see how much "money" there is in a small treasure chest. Also, because the number of these treasure boxes is "as many as particles", no one knows who owns those boxes, so if an elf doesn't tell others, no one knows how much everyone's net worth is: until a certain elf uses a certain The moment the treasure box is consumed, both parties to the transaction know "Oh, so this is your treasure box".

The elves used this to replace human "banks", "cash" and "cards". If you want to buy something, the seller only needs to tell the buyer the address of a certain box, and the transaction is completed only after the buyer uses a spell to transfer "money" from the box to the seller's box. If the elves want to know how much money they have in their account, they just need to count their treasure chests, which is very easy.

Well, back to the human world. Now you just put

Changed "Spell" to "Private key";
"Cloud Treasure Box" was changed to "Bitcoin blockchain";
"Little Treasure Chest" is changed to "Public address";
Change "money" to "Bitcoin", and you should understand what Bitcoin is.

The reason why Bitcoin is difficult to understand is not only the difficult abstraction of the technology in it, but also because there is no good analogy in the real world, so it is difficult to understand it purely by association. (It seems appropriate to use mythology)

However, is Bitcoin difficult to use? In fact, it is not difficult at all. The first time the author actually used Bitcoin to shop was at the affordable concept store in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. I handed a can of chewing gum to the cashier, and the cashier scanned the barcode, and then I said I wanted to pay with the Bitcoin Lightning Network, and he followed me to scan the QR code on the cash register with the Bitcoin LN wallet app on the phone, and all of a sudden. After the sound, the mobile phone will display the paid amount, and it is completed. The user experience is similar to WeChatPay, but merchants do not have to pay fees to Tencent, Alibaba, Apple, Google, banks or card companies that are exploited layer by layer. The cost of merchants has dropped, and competition will still benefit users in the long run.

Remember:

Bitcoin is not a "coin". There is no physical Bitcoin in the world.

Bitcoin mining does not require cutting rocks, but requires a lot of electricity and computers.

It is possible that in the future someone will find a large gold mine or a large amount of gold in a meteorite, but it is absolutely impossible to find a large amount of bitcoin in a mine or on a meteorite. In the final analysis, Bitcoin is actually just a series of numbers, written in a book that is jointly maintained by tens of thousands of computers, supervised by each other, and made public.

No government or institution issues bitcoins at will. Not even the inventor of Bitcoin could do it.

There are no bitcoins in the Bitcoin wallet, but there is a "key" represented by 24 English words (mnemonic seed).

Whoever has this key can operate your Bitcoin.

As misleading as Bitcoin wallets are, Bitcoin ATMs do not have money coming out of the ATM.

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency in the world (but at least 20,000).