For those long time purchasers of precious metals, understanding what is fundamentally money and the difference between it and currency, is easy. Why precious metals have been money throughout history is logical to all those that are willing to pull themselves out of the false paradigm of legal tender fiat currency printed by central banks at the interest of private holders. After all, there are no laws that need to be passed that require gold and silver to be taken as payment for goods and services, as the qualities of precious metals easily avail themselves to people that would accept them as payment. Their luster is desirable to all peoples throughout the world regardless of culture, education, or any other demographic that one can find. Precious metals are of course “precious” meaning that they are limited in their availability and the enormous time and resources required in order for one to be able to attain these metals. Bitcoin too is money because it contains all the aspects of money that precious metals do, just in the novel, complex and beautiful digital world of the present day.
The only thing that Bitcoin does not share with precious metals as far as being fundamentally money is history and that is quickly changing as the world moves into the digital age and embraces a form of money that works for this new stage in evolution. Bitcoin requires no centralized control nor laws for it to be accepted as payment, rather the free market gives it value as people decide for themselves if Bitcoin is acceptable to them for their goods and services.
Also, Bitcoin carries no risk to venders or buyers of obtaining a counterfeit coin, the mathematics behind it make counterfeiting impossible. Stories abound of government entities deciding that an individual is committing some form of crime and seizing their assets with out any form of due process. With Bitcoin steps can be taken to make sure that these seizures are virtually impossible.
“Credit cards were never designed for use on the internet” says Anthony Gallippi, CEO of BitPay. A truer statement would be that credit cards were never meant for use by anyone except financial institutions seeking to charge exorbitant fees for simple electronic transactions. Fees for exchanging Bitcoin are much more reasonable. For venders as well, the risk of having money taken from them even though they held up their end of a contract are not present. Like credit cards, Bitcoin can be used as instant payment for anything, anywhere in the world, via the World Wide Web.
Most notably for the potential that Bitcoin has to change the world is that it promotes itself. Bitcoin has no debt behind it meaning that people are not poorer and poorer every year trying to pay interest on something that needs more debt to be able to pay off. People, as they become familiar with what Bitcoin is, chose to accept it more and more as an alternative to fiat currency. There is no need for wars of aggression to be waged to maintain value in something that had no input value in the first place. As the fundamentals of Bitcoin become evident to more people everyday, the monopoly of power that has been held by a few powerful banking institutions will start to slip. This makes for a fundamentally freer and better world for all.