BTCC’s Bobby Lee: The essence of Bitcoin is that now information is money

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In the seven and a half years that Bobby Lee, a co-founder of BTCC, has been studying blockchain and cryptocurrencies, he’s learned that what happens in the industry is something that “no one has control over.” This keeps him from making predictions on the upcoming Bitcoin Cash (BCH) upgrade.

Lee noted that before the hard fork that led to Bitcoin’s rebirth in BCH in August 2017, “I was begging people not to fork it at the time. But it still forked. So that actually proves the fact that Bitcoin is quite decentralized, that no one can force it: no governments, not even people, regular people or miners, or there’s no decentralization in it to force it one way or the other.”

A self-proclaimed “Bitcoin maximalist,” Lee nonetheless concedes that both BCH and BTC can co-exist. “The best analogy is, it’s like religion. If you look at the world’s religions, there’s many, many religions. I don’t claim to be an expert here, but I think several of them trace back to the same roots.” He considers Bitcoin BCH and BTC as “legitimate children of Bitcoin.”

The primary value of cryptocurrencies, as he sees it, is that money is no longer about specific pieces of paper or lines of credit issued through a governing body. “Very few people realize that the essence of Bitcoin is that now information is money. So it’s not about something physically you hold, it’s not about having ownership under my title, under my name, for example, real estate. Even the car I buy, for example, is owned under my name, and the government enforces it. There’s a matching of my name and the asset—the real estate or the car… With Bitcoin, the ownership is actually proven not through physical means and not through title registration, by identity. But that should only be because you have information, you have the knowledge of the private key. So people don’t get that, and that’s fine because not everyone’s a computer scientist, not everyone’s an economist. So I hope to spread that message, that that’s the essence of Bitcoin, because now people can own Bitcoin by having that information.”

Blockchain’s part in history, according to Lee, “goes back to the fundamental rights as a human being, goes back to the word ‘freedom.’”

“Essentially, we’re not slaves, we’re not enslaved in society. Now how does slavery and freedom matter to Bitcoin? Well, if you think about it, the governments have enacted so much control over the money, essentially, people who have now made money are enslaved to the governments, because the spending restrictions, who they can transfer it to, how much they can receive, and also the value of the money, is also completely and arbitrarily controlled by the central banks through inflation, and so on and so forth,” he said.  “Right now, we’re seeing that the value is highly volatile, so there’s a downside to it right now, because we’re in the early days. We’re barely in the tenth year of Bitcoin, but give it another 10 years, give it 50 years. I think it will be very important to the people of the world.”

It may be just the beginning, but we could already see a big change from just five years ago. Lee said, “I remember distinctly in 2011, even as recently as 2013, saying the word ‘Bitcoin’ into a crowd, no one would understand what you’re talking about. The idea of a ‘bit’ coin, a digital coin, that was just unheard of. So now, through years of pushing it in the media, finally the world knows about Bitcoin. They also know about the word ‘blockchain,’ they also know about the word ‘tokens,’ and so on.”

If you’re interested in helping the growth of merchant adoption of Bitcoin BCH, join the bComm Association, an industry group that intends to be the focal point for miners, merchants, exchanges, developers and members of the BCH community. Developers and merchants of the Bitcoin BCH community will also be on hand for the first CoinGeek Week happening in London in November. Members of bComm Association can avail CoinGeek Week tickets at discounted prices. To purchase tickets or learn more about CoinGeek Week Conference, visit the official website here.