The Idiot’s Guide to Bitcoin by Gustaf van Wyk

PART 1

What the Heck is Money,
And Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About it
During a Zombie Apocalypse?
(Chapter 1)

From the minute we’re born until the
minute we die, one thing is always
principal on our mind – money. Without
it we can’t have a roof over our head. We
can’t put food in our mouths. We can’t move from point A to point B. We
are driven through formal education from grade school to high school to
college to corporate training and beyond so that we may find a suitable
career in life in order to trade our time and services in exchange for
money. When we’re not busy making money or complaining about the
job we hate, we’re out spending money and complaining about how
broke we are – well at least around 97% of us are.

Money has become nothing more than numbers on a screen or pieces
of paper in our pockets. It’s not so much what the money is or what
gives it value that matters to us, only how much of it we have versus the
amount various institutions are trying to take away from us (utility bills,
debts, taxes). The value of money is a no brainer for us because it’s
always been there in the same exact form since we were born. Most of
us understand that the value of our money can waver through inflation
and market trends, and that costs of things can rise, but still we go on
accepting that this money we use is the only way to pay for things. So,
we go on without questioning really where it comes from or of what
value it really is.
If you really stop to look at money, it’s kind of terrifying in a really interesting
way. You see, that money you spend – that you base your entire life
around, that you literally cannot live without – is backed by absolutely
nothing except your faith in it. That’s right – the money you have really
is just pieces of paper (often times not worth the paper it’s printed on)
and it really isn’t anything more than numbers on your screen. It’s even
more terrifying when you realize that a small, private group of individuals
control the value of your money and how much of it is in circulation.
In effect, all of the world’s currency and how we place value on things
is completely made up, and the reason it was made up in the first place
was to replace the annoyance and inconveniences of bartering (we’ll
get into that in a minute).
Essentially, if the zombie apocalypse breaks out tomorrow and a bunch
of undead, flesh-eating shells of former human beings were hobbling
around empty-eyed bent on consuming your brains, and you were the
world’s richest human being with billions of dollars in your digital bank
account, and you offered someone with a zombie-proof bunker stocked
with enough food to last at least 20 years all of that money to let you in,
they wouldn’t care. Why? Because your money is valueless at that point.
It’s the zombie apocalypse for cryin’ out loud, what value does money
have?
That is essentially how money of any form works – it’s only worth the
amount of faith that people have in it. During the zombie apocalypse,