2018-09-28 Author: ahr999
Storing wealth in a string of "illusory" private key strings is a major revolution in the way humans store value.
If you agree with the viewpoints in the previous four articles:
"Bitcoin and Idealism" - We are participating in a social experiment, which has the possibility of failure, but we have no regrets.
"Getting off Too Early Because of a Small Vision" - The goal of this experiment is huge, and if everything goes well, the price of Bitcoin may rise to 160 million RMB in 20 years.
"Hoarding Bitcoin: How Far Are You from Financial Freedom?" - We have no other abilities, so we can only rely on hoarding Bitcoin and patiently wait for our own financial freedom.
"Hoarding Bitcoin: Impulse, Loneliness, Boredom, and Contradiction" - Although we will experience impulses, loneliness, boredom, and contradictions, we are prepared to hoard coins.
Then, the next question you will encounter is: where should you store your Bitcoin?
If we hoard gold, we may have two options. One is to rent a safe deposit box at a bank and store the gold there; the other is to buy a safe deposit box at home and store the gold there. The answer may depend on the situation.
However, for hoarding Bitcoin, there is only one answer - hoard it in your own hands.
What does it mean to hoard it in your own hands? It means that you and only you have control over the private keys that can access these Bitcoins.
It needs to be specifically mentioned that:
This specifically refers to hoarding coins, and long-term hoarding at that. If you just want to speculate on coins, then you can store them on an exchange, after all, time is money for traders.
There are many so-called "wallets" on the market, but they are not strictly wallets because you do not have control over the private keys. They are easy to confuse with real wallets because their interfaces can be made to look exactly the same, or even better in terms of usability. I do not recommend using these types of "wallets" for hoarding coins. [Note: This does not mean that these types of "wallets" cannot be used, they have their uses, such as storing a small amount of coins for everyday expenses.]
There are also some "wallets" that offer interest, and you need to constantly consider the risks of P2P finance. If interested, you can also search for "Bitcoin piggy bank" on Baidu.
If you are unwilling to personally hold the Bitcoin private keys, there may be two reasons: fear of risk and fear of trouble.
The so-called risk is related to skills. For those who have mastered the methods of managing private keys, there is actually not much risk, but rather more risk in not having control over the private keys. There was once a guy who stored 900 coins in Mt.Gox, of course, at that time the coins were not worth much. Later, when the price of the coins rose to $1000, this guy discovered that Mt.Gox had been hacked and he couldn't withdraw his coins. What was originally a beautiful story ended tragically when Mt.Gox announced bankruptcy and this guy committed suicide.
The so-called trouble is related to significance. For meaningful things, we never feel troubled. As for how troublesome private key management is, we can discuss that later. The point of this article is to express that no matter how troublesome it is to control private keys, it is worth it. The reason you fear trouble is simply because you haven't realized how important this matter is.
Li Xiaolai once said:
"Bitcoin is the first time in human history that private property has been achieved through technological means."
I strongly agree with this statement, but it is not easy to understand, especially for those who have never dealt with Bitcoin private keys. My personal understanding is as follows:
"Bitcoin is the first time that we can store wealth in a string of 'illusory' private key strings. This is revolutionary, as it means a major innovation in one of the biggest needs of human society - the need to store wealth."
If you store wealth in cash, when you have a huge amount of wealth, your cash may fill up a room. In reality, you don't actually own this wealth because you can't take it with you. Your cash will slowly mold or one day be taken away by someone in a truck and burned along with dozens of cash counting machines.
If you store value in bank deposits, it is convenient to withdraw and transfer, but there is a risk of your account being frozen by the bank.
Even if you have a small amount of cash that you can carry with you and your deposits are not frozen, you still face the risk of your wealth being diluted by the issuance of more currency. How much purchasing power does a 10,000 RMB deposit from 20 years ago have today?
If you store value in gold, you still cannot take it with you, so you may end up like a certain securities tycoon who was caught smuggling 44 kilograms of gold at customs.
If you store value in real estate, it is not just a matter of not being able to take it with you, there is also the risk of forced demolition and requisition.
If you store value in stocks, you are also at risk, and you may even die unexpectedly and have your shares donated to charity.
Only Bitcoin perfectly solves the above problems.
Whether you hide the private key in a book or keep it in your memory, you can carry your wealth with you, unhindered globally. Moreover, this wealth truly belongs to you, as long as you don't reveal it, no one can take it from you, and no one even knows that you have this wealth.
As the saying goes, money is something external to oneself. This saying actually only applied before 2009. After the birth of Bitcoin, money is no longer something external to oneself. Although you cannot bring it with you while alive, you can take it with you when you die.
If you don't want to pass on Bitcoin to future generations, you just need to destroy the private key, which is equivalent to donating it, because all Bitcoin holders in the world are beneficiaries.
Therefore, if there is one thing in this world that truly belongs to you, it is Bitcoin. Of course, there is one prerequisite - you must personally hold the private key.
If you don't hold the private key, you cannot enjoy this revolutionary way of storing value.
If you don't hold the private key, you cannot truly understand the significance of this social experiment.
If you don't hold the private key, you have never truly owned Bitcoin, let alone hoarded it for the long term.
If you don't hold the private key, you cannot experience the pleasure of knowing that "you can't do anything to me anymore."
Of course, freedom comes at a price, and holding the private key also comes with consequences that you are responsible for. It may sound scary, but it's actually not as serious as you imagine. I have never lost any coins.
If you are unable to take care of yourself in life, then letting go and taking care of yourself may indeed be risky. But when you learn to take care of yourself, letting go becomes less risky.
Now the question is, do you want to live your whole life unable to take care of yourself, always relying on others, or do you want to learn to take care of yourself as soon as possible, so that you can fly freely and enjoy true freedom?
A few years ago, the scene of me creating a cold wallet for the first time is still vivid in my mind. As a novice, I used the most cumbersome method at the time - reinstalling the system on an old laptop, downloading the Core wallet (then called QT), installing the wallet offline, generating a new address, backing up the wallet to two formatted USB drives, and then sending coins to the wallet address. From then on, I had a cold wallet, I held the private key, and I had two backups. I was excited, skeptical, and a little uneasy at the time, and the memory is still fresh.
It wasn't until much later that I finally understood hash functions, asymmetric encryption, and elliptic curves, and the doubts and uneasiness about security gradually disappeared. And as time went on, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, it remained secure, and my confidence in it grew stronger, and I gained more experience in private key management.
By holding the private key, you will gradually develop a whole new understanding of Bitcoin. You will involuntarily pay attention to the decentralization and security of Bitcoin, because these are the most important to you. Decentralization ensures that Bitcoin is not subject to inflation or freezing, and security ensures that Bitcoin cannot be cracked. All the other fancy attributes are secondary. You will also come to understand that the king of coins is the king of coins, and the majority of those other fancy coins are garbage created by people who missed out on Bitcoin.
You will open up a whole new world, where you truly own your wealth. You may even start to look at people in the old world with pity - they are busy, but still haven't realized that they don't truly own anything.
They still doubt the value of Bitcoin, perhaps because they have never experienced the pleasure of holding the private key.