Humans cannot intuitively realize Bitcoin scarcity
I was thinking that we, as human beings, are not able to really understand the scarcity of an "apparently" infinite set of coins.
Many people, when trying to understand Bitcoin, deal with the idea of infinite divisibility of Bitcoin, which are part of the initial confusion in this topic. Even when one tries to explain the problem with a pizza being divided, people rarely get the main idea behind that.
In physical world, nothing can be divided infinitely and still be easily countable... When we try to cut a pizza in 500 pieces, the human perception is that each one of the eaters will have zero pizzas to eat. So, if we sum all of zero we will have a huge pizza that is a sum of zero pieces. Weird? Yes...
Humans were projected to understand basic math, not advanced math concepts...
Bitcoin scarcity and its usefulness due to infinite divisibility are two of the most important concepts of Bitcoin universe. It can get even more complicated when we say that, at least 10% of bitcoins are lost forever and will never be recovered. At that point we add two new concepts that cannot be naturally grasped:
- The statistically impossibility to guess one random private key
- How we can lock something forever and never be able to recover
So, going through the rabbit hole is hard. Trying to understand Bitcoin things is a constant challenge and most of the people are not prepared to the journey.
Bitcoin was a huge discovery for humankind... Maybe the biggest one in last 15 years if we consider its usefulness for the next 1000 years.
Ala
npub1wu…rnlwc
2023-12-21 13:59:04
Author Public Key
npub1wucfg5uvzzsfectm7le2zexzwvdyds6vl8yqlfkzvrzulnd5h2mqmrnlwcPublished at
2023-12-21 13:59:04Event JSON
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"content": "Humans cannot intuitively realize Bitcoin scarcity\n\nI was thinking that we, as human beings, are not able to really understand the scarcity of an \"apparently\" infinite set of coins.\n\t \n\t Many people, when trying to understand Bitcoin, deal with the idea of infinite divisibility of Bitcoin, which are part of the initial confusion in this topic. Even when one tries to explain the problem with a pizza being divided, people rarely get the main idea behind that. \n\t \n\t In physical world, nothing can be divided infinitely and still be easily countable... When we try to cut a pizza in 500 pieces, the human perception is that each one of the eaters will have zero pizzas to eat. So, if we sum all of zero we will have a huge pizza that is a sum of zero pieces. Weird? Yes... \n\t \n\t Humans were projected to understand basic math, not advanced math concepts... \n\t \n\t Bitcoin scarcity and its usefulness due to infinite divisibility are two of the most important concepts of Bitcoin universe. It can get even more complicated when we say that, at least 10% of bitcoins are lost forever and will never be recovered. At that point we add two new concepts that cannot be naturally grasped: \n\t- The statistically impossibility to guess one random private key\n\t- How we can lock something forever and never be able to recover\n\t \n\t So, going through the rabbit hole is hard. Trying to understand Bitcoin things is a constant challenge and most of the people are not prepared to the journey. \n\n\t Bitcoin was a huge discovery for humankind... Maybe the biggest one in last 15 years if we consider its usefulness for the next 1000 years.",
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