fee-essential-guide-to-cryptocurrency-and-bitcoin.pdf

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’s Essential Guide to
& BITCOIN
CRYPTOCURRENCY
FEE’s
Essential Guide to
Cryptocurrency
and Bitcoin
Essays from the Foundation
for Economic Education
Contents
4
Introduction
5
Bitcoin for Beginners
12
From Bitcoin to Ether: Today’s Blockchain Basics
20
Bitcoin Technology: A Festival of the Commons
22
Bitcoin: Currency of Currencies
26
What Gave Bitcoin its Value?
34
What Cryptocurrency Can Teach Us About Political
Governance
36
About FEE
Introduction
W
hat would life be like if our currency wasn’t controlled by
government and corporate agencies? What if there were no
limits on the amount you can transfer to another person,
no interference from authorities when those limits are exceeded, and
perhaps best of all, no physical cash? It all sounds pretty futuristic.
Thanks to a few industrious entrepreneurs, the monetary future
has arrived. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that was created and designed
to give total financial autonomy to its users. There’s no censorship, it’s
protected from inflation, and it’s cheaper than other payment systems
— just you and your coins, however you choose to use them. The use
of cryptocurrencies liberates individuals to be able to manage their
finances the way they see fit, without any prying eyes.
We have compiled our best articles on bitcoin and cryptocurrency
into this essential guide. Bitcoin is a difficult subject to grasp, no doubt,
but we hope that after reading this that you will have a more thorough
understanding of what bitcoin is, how it works, and why the technology
behind it will be the basis of the currency of the future.
Bitcoin for Beginners
Jeffrey A. Tucker
U
nderstanding Bitcoin requires that we understand the limits
of our ability to imagine the future that the market can create
for us.
Thirty years ago, for example, if someone had said that electronic
text — digits flying through the air and landing in personalized inboxes
owned by us all that we check at will at any time of the day or night
— would eventually displace first-class mail, you might have said it
was impossible.
After all, not even the Jetsons had email. Elroy brought notes home
from his teacher on pieces of paper. Still, email has largely displaced
first-class mail, just as texting, social networking, private messaging,
and even digital vmail via voice-over-Internet are replacing the
traditional telephone.
It turns out that the future is really hard to imagine, especially when
entrepreneurs specialize in surprising us with innovations. The markets
are always outsmarting even the most wild-eyed dreamers, and they are
certainly smarter than the intellectual who keeps saying: such and such
cannot happen.
It’s the same today. What if I suggested that digital money could
eventually come to replace government paper money? Heaven knows
we need a replacement.
Solving Problems a Byte at a Time
Money started in modern times as gold and silver, and it was controlled
by its owners and users. Then the politicians got hold of it — a controlling
interest in half of every transaction — and look what they did. Today
money is rooted in nothing at all and its value is subject to the whims

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