Most of the Bitcoin people thought they were owning did not even exist in the first place.
2022 revealed this long-standing open secret amidst the industry for everyone to see.
Very clearly and (far too often) very painfully.
They were “paper Bitcoin”. Claims on Bitcoin which more often than not were not backed by real Bitcoin*.
How did we end up here that people sent billions of dollars of their savings to “trusted third parties” to let them hold their money for it?
Satoshi – an ardent student of monetary history and its failures across the millenia – presciently foresaw these very same issues back in early 2009
The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
Human nature tells us very clearly that you can’t trust other humans with the cookie jar.
Over time the cookie jar will get emptied… and when you want to receive your cookie back which you deposited in, you might find out that it’s long gone and the cookie you thought you had ended up in somebody else’s tummy a long time ago.
You are left with a worthless “cookie deposit receipt”.
These lessons are neither groundbreaking nor new in any way and still a surprisingly(?) large number of people either out of complacency, bad discernment or a general lack of education ended up losing a significant amount of their life savings to various scheme operators.
And while the human basic condition will guarantee that these schemes will come and go again on a regular basis and take their victims life savings with it: There is something we can do to throw sand into the machinery of the paper Bitcoin peddlers.
The way out is increased self-custody.
Bitcoin was built for that very exact purpose.
As such, every client of BitcoinVNShop who purchased a new hardware wallet from the shop will be eligible for a free 1 hour consulting session to get started on their journey to self-custody.
One of the biggest challenges many newcomers face – who might know that self-custody is generally superior – is that they feel lost on where and how to get started.
Which information is legitimate? Which wallet is the right one for me? What basic CyberSec and OpSec precautions should I take?
Our team has done all this work in-depth over the past decade and is able to provide our clients with a condensed knowledge base to find the right solution for their personal needs.
The war on the paper Bitcoin peddlers is on – and we’re aiming to contribute our part to bring an increasing amount into self-custody and away from the preying hands who aim to convince you to trust them with your money.
And if you have not yet started your self-custody journey yet, our shop team serves as official reseller of Trezor and Ledger in Vietnam and delivers countrywide.
Let’s break the Bitcoin banks.
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*If you are looking for a more detailed starter explainer on how the mechanics work, check out the recent essay by Jaffer Ali – “Paper Bitcoin” – a time-proven attack by the masters of money on Bitcoin”
