A short story about a $600 billion brand

The Founders: In the late 90ies a community of developers were concerned about privacy in the internet. They worked with cryptographic technology to encrypt publicly accessible data. They called themselves Cypherpunks.

In 2008 the global, government controlled, banking system failed and created a really bad global financial crisis. In response the governments bailed out big banks and other financial institutions with taxpayers money and the Central Banks printed lots of "new money" which of course also goes at cost of the taxpayers in the long run.

In 2009 one of those developers released a 8 pages white-paper about a peer-to-peer cash system in the internet. This developer (he/she or they) later became known under the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" and disappeared. Despite several attempts nobody knows who or where Satoshi Nakamoto is.

12 years ago, on January 3rd, 2009, Satoshi created the genesis Block - the first record on the blockchain. In the record one can find the headline of The Times of that day reporting on more bailouts for the banks.

The Product: Money from the Internet. It is more inclusive than traditional money because everybody with an internet access can own it, trade it, invest with it. It does not lose value because there will never be more than 21 Million coins and there is no central bank associated that can issue more at will of bureaucrats. It is more secure because the rules are based on math (and not politicians) and all transactions are publicly available data validated every ~10 Minutes by consensus of a network of millions of nodes around the world.

Product / Market fit: Today it has reached PMF for digital gold, enabling investors, companies and private people to save their money in a hard asset. Compared to Gold it is still very early as it currently trades at around $600 Billion whereas the total market capitalisation of Gold is about 15-20x larger. There are other things that may become obsolete in the future: bonds, savings account, national currencies, mortgages... and the list could probably be continued.

CEO and Management: There is none. You cannot call the CEO if you are not happy. However you precisely know the rules and operating principles, they are cast in stone and you can verify its application anytime for yourself on the public blockchain where all the transactions are recorded from day 1.

Funds raised: Zero. There was no Financing Round, no IPO or ICO, nothing. It is 100% people funded. Many smart developers worldwide contribute to advance the technology every day.

Customer Acquisition Cost: Zero. This brand is worth >$600 Billion today with zero spending on Marketing or Sales. It is 100% driven by network effects which have become a huge unfair advantage by now. Anybody willing to copy it will have a very hard time. It's like trying to copy Facebook or Netflix today.

Whats next: Nobody knows (although of course many claim to be experts and have a theory). Currently the pace at which money flows into the space and subsequently the price rises is breathtaking. For example, it is now about at par with the Swiss Franc, which is the 13th largest currency worldwide. It also is larger than JP Morgan, Bank of China or Softbank today. However, this is still a very young project with only 12 year established history which probably is both, its biggest risk and biggest opportunity. It is still in its infancy and therefore very volatile and future price crashes are inevitable. But the opportunity is so large, that it is worth the risk many times over and it will be very exciting to continue watching this attempt to disrupt the traditional financial system.

Happy birthday Bitcoin!