DECIPHER

Today marks 13 Years since the publication of the Bitcoin white paper. In that time it has earned a market capital of over a trillion pounds, it has caused controversy worldwide, it has been banned in China multiple times, liberated people in financially abusive relationships, and it has banked the unbanked.

Most importantly, Bitcoin has proven you can be your own bank. By using a wallet such as BlueWallet, Zap and Cake Wallet (which is primarily a Monero wallet, but has the ability to add Bitcoin and Litecoin Electrum type wallets) or running your own Bitcoin node like Umbrel (which includes a lightning wallet) you are not asking permission from anyone to send or receive the money in that wallet.

Bitcoin is a cryptographically proven way to send money from person A to person B without A knowing B or B knowing A on a publicly distributed ledger of which every node has a copy of, so if a malicious actor were to try and say they have more than they actually do it would be rejected by the network.

The problem with this of course is people wanted an easy way to own Bitcoin without the hassle of learning how to mine Bitcoins because honestly, it's too late to start mining now… too late and too expensive with the consumption of energy increasing every year along with the probability of getting the Bitcoins.

So, people turn to exchanges, which act as a middleman that Bitcoin posed as a solution for. The exchanges will charge a fee sometimes the fee is large, and sometimes it's not, depending on where you go. It seems as though Bitcoin and many other digital currencies are becoming less and less decentralised, which up until recently, it was Chinese Bitcoin miners that controlled 65% of the Bitcoin network hash rate, enough to perform a successful 51% attack until, recently, making it illegal which would make it possible for a double spend.

Ownership of your Bitcoins is essential, and the methodology is simple—don't share your private keys with anyone the now famous (because of MtGox) saying goes like this:

“Not your keys, not your Bitcoin”

Ergo, if you keep your money on an exchange it's technically not yours since the exchange can close/freeze your account and, more often than not, without the help of support. Like a bank account, a government or other 3rd party could steal your money, as proven in the MtGox case where some hackers stole over 400k in Bitcoins, though it's argued that the owner of the exchange stole the money as it has been spent.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7i3jyl/i_cant_stress_this_enough_use_an_offline_wallet/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/qlghp8/famous_bitcoin_addresses_and_transactions/

One of the most important stories throughout the history of Bitcoin is the Pizza transaction, which originated from Bitcointalk.org Laszlo Hanyecz ordered 2 large Pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins which at the time were equal to around €20, this transaction alone proved that Bitcoin has monetary value.

There's a legend of the so-called 'Tulip Trust' whereby a wallet is said to obtain 1 million Bitcoins.

660,000 Bitcoins https://btc1.trezor.io/tx/a289ea76bcc396412e90d63b90eb462ea2adb326aa027d5a1bb8864c7c152012

Every 4 years the reward protocol is programmed to halve the reward, starting at 50, it's now 6.25, in 2024 it will be 3.125 until it eventually reaches zero or as close to zero as it can get estimated around 2140.