Short and sharp from South African bitcoin enthusiast and founder of SA crypto exchange Luno (formerly BitX) Simon Dingle. He covers most of the major concepts surrounding bitcoin, without delving into great detail, making “In Maths we Trust” a useful read for newbies. It’s always good to run through the basics and pinpoint areas where I need to dive deeper down the rabbit hole. I’d really like to meet Simon in person and learn from his vast experience. There aren’t many areas where we diverge but I think the concept of money as a belief system is a worthy of debate. I appreciate the belief mechanism but my research suggests there is simultaneous value in gold and bitcoin due to their monetary characteristics, rather than merely belief that they are money. Simon also made mention of the idea that we might be near the end of the store-of-value phase for bitcoin adoption, which I’m a little sceptical of. I sense there is a lot further to run in this phase of the adoption cycle. Many experienced investors don’t understand the store of value concept. I love the way that bitcoin is teaching people about store of value but I reckon there is still a large learning curve ahead. I’d also like to reconcile his tech-centric background, vision for the broader use-cases of digital payments in each aspect of our lives, yet bitcoin maximalist conclusions (i.e. not much interest in the rest of the crypto assets/tokens). I’m aligned with the bitcoin bias but I’d like to understand how he envisions the transition towards broader digital finance use-cases. So many people with tech-centric backgrounds appear to gravitate towards ethereum due to the ability of developers to generate broader use-cases quicker than bitcoin. Overall, a good contribution to much-needed bitcoin education. I expect bitcoin will change the course of finance and improve the lives of millions. More people need to know about its core principles rather than get excited by phenomenal price appreciation.
Sound Money 