Bitcoin, the Zombie of Currencies

**If you read anything about bitcoin, you’ll see the very same things that they said about the internet in the early '90s. It is a haven for pedophiles, terrorists, drug dealers, and criminals. How many of you in this room have bitcoin? How many of you in this room are terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers or criminals?**  You see the thing about bitcoin is while they push this story, every now and then someone who has never heard of bitcoin notices two important things. One, it’s still not dead, which is always surprising because every two or three months there is an article that says it’s dead. That’s great marketing. Because every time someone hears it’s dead and three months later they hear it’s still not dead, they think, "Huh, this thing really tends to survive." I call bitcoin “the internet of money,” but perhaps we should call it “the zombie of currencies.” It is the currency that is the undead. The issue here is that we’re now creating a system that is threatening the largest industry in the world, and that is finance. They are going to object. They are going to push back, and they’re going to use the most common and effective emotional tactic there is, which is fear. They will treat you in such a way as if you are idiots and try to persuade you that this is something to fear. When people hear that message, maybe the next day they come to one of these meetups and they meet a dentist who owns bitcoin, an architect who owns bitcoin, a taxi driver who uses bitcoin to send money back to their family—normal people who use bitcoin to “give themselves financial power and financial freedom. Every time that message is broken by cognitive dissonance, bitcoin wins. All bitcoin really has to do is survive. So far, it’s doing pretty well.

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**Excerpt from Andreas Antonopoulos - The Internet Of Money**