The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous

The ability of any individual to run a bitcoin node and send his own money without permission from anyone, and without having to expose his identity, is a noteworthy difference between gold and bitcoin. Bitcoin does not have to be stored on a computer; the private key to a person's bitcoin hoard is a string of characters or a string of words the person remembers. It is far easier to move around with a bitcoin private key than with a hoard of gold, and far easier to send it across the world without having to risk it getting stolen or confiscated. Whereas governments confiscated people's gold savings and forced them to trade with money supposedly backed by that gold, people are able to keep the bulk of their bitcoin savings in storage away from government's hands and only use smaller amounts to transact through intermediaries. The very nature of the bitcoin technology puts governments at a severe disadvantage compared to all other forms of money and thus makes confiscation much harder.