Unleashing CreativityIn this blog, we’ll try to discuss the chemistry of Bitcoin. It’s something that we don’t notice until we’ve studied Bitcoin for a year or two. However, it’s also something that makes Bitcoin so exciting and interesting.
The Illusion
When we first look at Bitcoin we see very familiar things – senders, receivers and accounts. It just looks like modern banking. However, if you happen to be a computer scientist and try to read the source code of Bitcoin, you’ll notice that there are no senders, receivers and accounts. It’s actually nothing like the banking system. There are unspent transaction outputs and inputs, but they don’t correspond to senders or receivers. Suddenly you realize that you’re looking at an atomic nature of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s Atomic StructureIn chemistry, we have elements like copper, iron and helium. Chemistry gives us these complex things that you can combine and create other more interesting things. Like people, or toasters. However, when you dig into chemistry, you realize that copper, iron, helium and every other element, in reality, is a pattern of protons, neutrons and electrons. Nothing more. There are no specific protons for copper, it’s the pattern that matters. There are over 100 elements in nature that all have unique and different properties, but they are made of exactly the same protons, neutrons and electrons.
Bitcoin has a similar fundamental atomic structure – elemental structure. Elements of Bitcoin are the components of transactions and the elements of the scripting language. Those elements have nothing to do with traditional banking. Instead, Bitcoin’s elements are looking for fundamental mathematical properties and cryptographic properties. What you see on the surface – the transactions – are just constructs. They are a specific way of mashing up the elements that create something that looks like a bank. Just like chemistry mashes up the protons, electrons and neutrons to create elements which we can identify.
This may seem complicated because Bitcoin is not what it seems to be. It’s not a payment network, currency or a banking system. It’s a platform that guarantees certain trust function. Out of that you can build whatever you want, be it a currency or something else.
For a simpler analogy, Bitcoin is like Lego blocks. You can buy Lego and build whatever you like. The box might say that this Lego is a pirate ship, but with the same building blocks, you can build a house, a castle or a dragon.
The same analogy can be made with cooking. You have the same ingredients but you can make many variations of food.
Bitcoin doesn’t give you a final result. It gives you a set of ingredients and unleashes your creativity to create something unique.
Focus-Group EconomiesBitcoin comes in direct contrast to the present day economies. They say: “statistics show that 95% of children want little red firetrucks”. So they make a factory that can produce these firetrucks quickly, effectively and cheaply. But these factories can only produce little red firetrucks. The kitchen in McDonald’s can make a hamburger in 45 seconds, but it can make little else.
This is a terrible way to build an economy. It leaves little place for innovation and development. It is fixed on making the same things with minimal improvements over time.
By comparison, the crazy little system we’ve built with Bitcoin is slow and it can’t scale. Right now it’s not as sophisticated as the international banking system. But it delivers freedom and it allows us to unleash creativity.
Source:
https://blog.bitforx.com/2018/05/01/unleashing-creativity/
