Its the first way to have a trustless, digital cash system as opposed to a digital payment system. In a payment system, people essentially exchange IOU's. Like writing a "good for $x note" or cheque. Payments always incur counter party risk, and thus can only happen among users who trust each other - or they must rely on a trusted third party (bank, paypal, credit card company etc).
Bitcoin allows peer 2 peer cash settlements, where users do not need to trust each other, because there is no counter party risk since they exchange something of value. Think gold, or although that is somewhat confusing, paying with bank notes (bank notes really are IOUs, but issued by a bank or central bank, so when we use them, we consider them valuable because we trust the bank, not the person paying with them). With cash payments, you dont rely on a third party, you dont take on counter party risk, you exchange things that actually have value, that you have to be sure can not be forged. Sounds trivial, but its a really difficult thing to pull off. Even in the real world, its not easy, bank notes can be counterfeit, gold may be fake, etc. In the digital world, its even harder because you also have to make sure each coin can only be spent once (its trivial to copy data). Bitcoin was the first solution to this problem.
source: https://np.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6ufksx/am_i_...
What people confuse often that the Blockchain != Bitcoin. The concepts behind the Blockchain are certainly valuable, but to equate all that value to the value of Bitcoin itself is a logical fallacy.
Folks should learn to appreciate the Blockchain separately from any cryptocurrency. We can have a world where Blockchain is widely used, but we don't use any of 1500+ coins and tokens out on coinmarketcap.com.
> With cash payments, you dont rely on a third party, you dont take on counter party risk, you exchange things that actually have value, that you have to be sure can not be forged.
Funny. To me, practically only value bitcoin and gold have is based on the trust that you find a third party tomorrow who is willing to change it to something actually valuable (actually as in actually useful in your life). So you very much rely on third parties.
Price is dictated by third parties (the market) in any economy. What OP is referring to is the ability to own or trade the asset without reliance on any third party such as a bank or exchange.
"re-education through labour" is the literal translation of the Chinese words "laogai"(劳改), which is already in Oxford dictionary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laogai
Two most well-known Chinese liberals share the same name -Xiaobo, what a coincidence!
The other one is Wang Xiaobo, whose name is much more influencial in China.
If everything goes well, he won't have to teach you much at all. That's the exciting thing about the direction the iPad is bringing computing; it's very capable, but at the same time, there's not that much to learn.
I am from China, my advise for western Chinese learners is:don't learn it based on Pinyin which seems helpful at the beginning but leads you to nowhere at all. If you just want to be able to read CHinese books or novels you simply don't have to know how to speak it. Most of the European Chinese experts in the last century were like that. And if you just want to speak it fluently, find a Chinese gf/bf,in two years you can flirt with others in Chinese.
Bitcoin allows peer 2 peer cash settlements, where users do not need to trust each other, because there is no counter party risk since they exchange something of value. Think gold, or although that is somewhat confusing, paying with bank notes (bank notes really are IOUs, but issued by a bank or central bank, so when we use them, we consider them valuable because we trust the bank, not the person paying with them). With cash payments, you dont rely on a third party, you dont take on counter party risk, you exchange things that actually have value, that you have to be sure can not be forged. Sounds trivial, but its a really difficult thing to pull off. Even in the real world, its not easy, bank notes can be counterfeit, gold may be fake, etc. In the digital world, its even harder because you also have to make sure each coin can only be spent once (its trivial to copy data). Bitcoin was the first solution to this problem. source: https://np.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6ufksx/am_i_...