Our story starts in the 2000 NFL draft. The NFL is the National Football League - America’s and the world’s biggest league for American Football. The NFL draft is where teams pick players from thousands of young hopefuls who are trying to join the league.
It's a strange place to start. I know. We're starting there because of this man.
This is Tom Brady. He’s won more championships as an individual than any other NFL team. He’s broken many records in the game and many consider him to be the GOAT - greatest of all time.
But on the day of the 2000 NFL draft, he was just another guy among thousands trying to get picked. He was not as athletic as some of the other quarterbacks in his draft, and people were worried about his potential as a pro. He was the 199th pick of the draft. There were 198 people judged to be better prospects than him. And that's only that year!
This scene makes you think how hard it is to spot greatness early, even when it's there in front of you. It makes you admire the people who spot trends and great things before others do.
I think it's fair to say that Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin's anonymous creator) changed the internet as much as Brady changed the NFL. In our story, folks like Hal Finney, Peter Saddington, Dave Carlson and Laszlo Hanyecz were the people that read Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper, and recognised its genius, before the rest of the world had even heard about Bitcoin.
Brady changed the NFL by redefining the quarterback position and proving it was possible to play at the highest level for 20+ years. And Satoshi? Here's how he changed the game...
The key breakthrough that Satoshi made with Bitcoin was that of creating digital scarcity. We all know that any image or text on the internet can be copied and pasted. If you're creating a digital currency... that can't fly - it's called the "double spending" problem. Someone spends digital money, copies it and spends it again. Satoshi found a solution to this issue. Bitcoin was the world's first scarce digital asset. Every bitcoin must be an entry in a valid Bitcoin public blockchain and the blockchain rules allow each Bitcoin to only be present once.
Bitcoin is governed by code running on thousands of computers around the world. It is money that cannot be controlled by governments, central banks or any individual. This is such a powerful concept, and that's why governments like China and Russia are doing all they can to stop their citizens from owning Crypto. The situation in Canada involving protests by truckers is the perfect example to show how powerful a decentralised currency is:
In Canada, truckers were officially ordered to have the Coronavirus vaccine, and they began protesting this decision. The situation escalated to the point where the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of anyone involved in the protest. That means these people couldn't pay rent, pay for food, or do many of the day-to-day things they needed to survive. A fully decentralised currency means that no one - no individual, company or even government - has the power to do this.
As well as this, when I want to make a big transaction or make changes, I have to speak to my Bank. Bitcoin is an asset that I can own, control and transport without the need for any third party.
Okay so if there is no one to oversee this system and this currency, how does it work? Who keeps the show on the road? All bitcoin transactions are validated through a process called mining. The computers performing this validation are referred to as miners. Miners are auditing all of the transactions that occur on the bitcoin network and verifying the legitimacy of these transactions.
Miners follow a set of cryptographic rules to keep the network safe, secure and stable. When miners successfully verify a group of transactions, they earn a reward for doing so - currently 6.25 bitcoins.