Thank you for purchasing or freely downloading this First Edition of my first book, Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank. I first became interested in bitcoin as an alternative to the legacy financial and monetary system, and my interest in the technology has only grown deeper and more nuanced since then. The first bitcoin meetup I ever attended was the monthly San Francisco Bitcoin Social in January 2013; there were around two dozen people in attendance. Each subsequent meetup doubled in size, almost the same rate at which the price of bitcoin itself was growing. I soon established an independent consulting business so I could teach others about bitcoin, and have been working with investors, businesses, and nonprofits to help them understand bitcoin and how to take advantage of the technology ever since.[^1]
Bitcoin is at once a specific piece of software, a protocol, and a type of value token referred to as a “cryptocurrency.” Historically, Bitcoin with a capital “B” has referred to the software and the underlying protocol which powers it, as well as the community of people using the software (“the Bitcoin community”), and bitcoin with a lower-case “b” has referred to bitcoin the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin the currency is also colloquially referred to as “BTC,” with some members of the bitcoin community and industry lobbying for “XBT” to be the official currency code for bitcoin.[^2] Despite these historical distinctions, as a matter of style and to avoid confusing the reader, this book will short-hand the currency as “BTC” and follow The Wall Street Journal's lead in referring to both the protocol and the currency as “bitcoin,” capitalizing “Bitcoin” only when referring to the name of a specific piece of software e.g. Bitcoin Core.[^3]
First described by Satoshi Nakamoto in a 2008 paper entitled, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” bitcoin is, at first glance, just that – a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.[^4] At the same time, it is so much more than that, and later sections in this book will briefly describe ways to use bitcoin as more than just a payment system. That said, given that the subtitle of this book is “Be Your Own Bank,” that is what the majority of this book will be about: using bitcoin to claim your financial sovereignty, take control of your money, and effectively “be your own bank.” While “Be Your Own Bank” is a catchy slogan, it's worth noting that being a bank can be difficult! Banks are charged with being responsible custodians of their customers' money, which includes securing the money in customer accounts and refraining from lending the money to borrowers with bad credit or investing the money in unprofitable enterprises. This book will teach you how to store the keys to your bitcoin vault in a way that is relatively secure compared to methods that the less fortunate have employed in the past. When you use bitcoin, you have all the power and responsibility of being your own bank – have fun, and stay safe!
[^1] www.bitcoinconsultant.me
[^2] Matonis, Jon. "Bitcoin Gaining Market-based Legitimacy as XBT - CoinDesk." CoinDesk.com. CoinDesk Ltd, 17 Sept. 2013. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-gaining-market-based-legitimacy-xbt/.
[^3] Vigna, Paul, and Michael Casey. "BitBeat: Is It Bitcoin, or Bitcoin? The Orthography of the Cryptography." MoneyBeat. The Wall Street Journal, 14 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/14/bitbeat-is-it-bitcoin-or-bitcoin-the-orthography-of-the-cryptography/.
[^4] Nakamoto, Satoshi. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. 2008.