Digging Deeper
Inspiration Friday #1
Welcome to the first edition of Inspiration Fridays. Just like yesterday, I’m not sure what the final format of these posts will be. My goal is for Friday posts to be less about words I wrote and more about other people's words. Hopefully one day I can help highlight new authors through their blog posts or articles. For today, I am planning to just share some quotes from the books I’m currently reading.
Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond
By: Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar
Blockchain and bitcoin are definitely buzzwords right now, but what are they and will they stick around for the long term? Those are the questions I wanted to be answered when I picked this book up.
First, here are a few quotes I thought were fun facts about bitcoin and paint a cool picture of the time of innovation we live in.
“If at that time an investor had tracked down one of the few bitcoin miners in the world and offered $100 for the 130,900 bitcoin implied by that exchange rate, by now that investor would have amassed over $100 million.”
In other words, if you’d invested $100 when bitcoin first came out in 2009 it would have been worth $100 million in 2017! In today’s bitcoin value, that $100 would be worth $4.3 Billion!
“Between AD 900 and 1900, a new general purpose technology was invented roughly every 100 years, with notable examples including the steam engine, automobile, and electricity...In the twentieth century, a new general purpose technology came into existence every 15 years, with familiar examples like computers, the Internet, and biotechnology. In the twenty-first century, general purpose technologies have come into existence every 4 years, with autonomous robotics and blockchain technology as two of the more recent examples.”
I just thought it was crazy to see how fast innovation is actually happening. I often think we’ve slowed down, but it’s just the contrary.
Now, if you are like me before picking this book up, you might be thinking, what even is bitcoin? Why is it useful and why is it gaining value? Here are a few quotes that have helped me.
“Over time, next to zero bitcoin will be issued, but the aim is for the network to be so big by then that all contributors get paid a sufficient amount via transaction fees, just like Visa or MasterCard.”
“Cryptoassets have two drivers of their basis of value: utility and speculative.”
“Utility value refers to what the underlying blockchain is used for, and therefore what the demand is for its asset. For example, Bitcoin’s blockchain is used to transact bitcoin and therefore much of the value is driven by demand to use bitcoin as a means of exchange.”
“Utility value refers to the use of the cryptoasset to gain access to the digital resource its architecture provisions and is dictated by supply and demand characteristics. For bitcoin, its utility is that it can safely, quickly, and efficiently transfer value to anyone, anywhere in the world.”
To sum up the use case for Bitcoin alone, it aims to disrupt sending money between two parties by cutting out the middleman. Instead of swiping a card that uses a centralized company like Visa’s network to process the transaction, Bitcoin uses a decentralized network to process it.
Another analogy is to think of Bitcoin as the Airbnb of processing power. Instead of paying a hotel (company) to stay the night, we pay another person to stay the night. Bitcoin is the same thing. Instead of paying a company to process a transaction, we are paying another human.
Well, that doesn’t sound secure, though, right? We are ok with Visa collecting fees because they guarantee security, right? Well, here are a few quotes on why Bitcoin is secure.
“For proof-of-work based systems, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and many more, security is a function of the number of miners and their combined compute (or hashing) power.”
“The only way attackers can process invalid transactions is if they own over half of the compute power of the network, so it’s critical that no single entity ever exceeds 50 percent ownership.”
“For perspective, the combined compute power of Bitcoin’s network is over 100,000 times faster than the top 500 supercomputers in the world combined.”
Did you catch that? The power of Bitcoin’s secure network is over 100,000 times more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers combined!
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers
By: Dane Ortlund
The next section of quotes comes from another book I’m reading for a church group. It aims to seek what the Bible says and describes is Jesus’ heart. We often talk and learn about what Jesus did for us, but we don’t talk as often about the heart behind those actions.
“Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe.”
“This specific word lowly is generally translated ‘humble’ in the New Testament, such as in James 4:6: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ But typically throughout the New Testament this Greek word refers not to humility as a virtue but to humility in the sense of destitution or being thrust downward by life circumstance.”
“This is not who he is to everyone, indiscriminately. This is who he is for those who come to him, who take his yoke upon them, who cry to him for help.”
“The word translated ‘easy’ in his statement, ‘My yoke is easy,’ needs to be carefully understood. Jesus is not saying life is free of pain or hardship. This is the same word elsewhere translated ‘kind’...A yoke is the heavy crossbar laid on oxen to force them to drag farming equipment through the field. Jesus is using a kind of irony, saying that the yoke laid on his disciples is a nonyoke. For it is a yoke of kindness. Who could resist this? It’s like telling a drowning man that he must put on the burden of a life preserver only to hear him shout back, sputtering, ‘No way! Not me! This is hard enough, drowning here in these stormy waters. The last thing I need is the added burden of a life preserver around my body!’ That’s what we are all like, confessing Christ with our lips but generally avoiding deep fellowship with him, out of a muted understanding of his heart.”
I’m only one chapter into the book, but it is already such a great reminder of how accessible Jesus is. We get to run to him for our rest and salvation, and he doesn’t accept us begrudgingly, but with wide open arms.
So those are my main quotes for today. In the future, I would like to post links to other articles that are interesting or insightful, but this week is just a bunch of quotes. Hope you enjoyed it! If you are looking for a link to click, you can check out this week’s Biblit, a Biblical-based newsletter I run as well!
I thought your comment about the life jacket was funny
Running into His open arms for me when I’ve been crying out in despair and need, has truly been a yoke that has helped carry my burden. I love running to the place He provides where I can receive restoration and healing.