POV: You explain to your coworker at lunch what Bitcoin is

Surely it’s happened to you that, halfway through lunch hour, some coworker comes up to ask you about something they heard in the news: “Hey, that Bitcoin… is it like the dollar but on the internet or what’s the deal?”. And of course, that’s when it all starts. Well, at least it happened to me that way.

I really had no idea either, but I told myself, okay, I’ll do a bit of research and next time I’ll explain it to him. I ran into him again, but there I already knew what Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were about.

I understood it wasn’t that my buddy didn’t know the topic, it was simply genuine curiosity. Anyone who’s had that conversation would see themselves reflected. So I decided to tell him what Bitcoin is in an easy way, without tech jargon that complicates the chat or Wall Street financier terms.

“Look, Bitcoin is basically…” (what is Bitcoin)

At that moment I decided to explain it to him. I said: look, imagine the peso works the same, but without the Banco de México in the middle. Bitcoin is, in essence, digital money that doesn’t depend on any bank or any government. I understand it shocks you, but nobody prints it, it exists only on the network. To make you understand it easily, it’s like if the points on your OXXO card had real value and you could use them to pay for whatever, but without the store being in the middle controlling everything.

I thought it’d be easier to explain it with familiar terms. In the end, bitcoin boils down to this: a form of value that lives on the internet and that you control yourself.

“And who invented it? Is there a Bitcoin boss somewhere?”

When he asked me that, I said: this is where things get interesting. Nobody really knows who it is. The creator, or creators, use the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and it’s a total mystery whether it’s one person, a group, or someone else. Imagine, it’s the best-kept secret on the internet.

The only real and verifiable thing is that this person published the whitepaper in 2008 (which is the document with the rules of the game), launched the network in 2009 and, after that, disappeared off the map. Nobody has seen or heard anything from them since then.

“And where does it come from? Does someone manufacture them?”

I clarified that it’s not like someone is printing them in a basement. There’s a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins, and that’s it—no more; it’s like if gold had a universal counter, and we knew that worldwide there’s exactly that amount of kilos, not one more.

That’s what gives it value: scarcity. Now, how do they appear if there’s no bank releasing them? Well, there are computers working full throttle validating transactions on the network, and as a reward for that effort, they receive new bitcoin; that’s called “mining”. And there you go, just like with anything else, if suddenly everyone wants to buy, but there are few available, the price moves. That is simple.

“Okay, and where do I store it? In a folder?”

My buddy threw that question at me right away, and truth be told, it’s the first thing anyone thinks because how do you store something you can’t touch. It’s not a file you save on your computer’s desktop. For that, there’s a “wallet” or digital wallet, which is basically the tool where you keep control of your balances.

So you don’t get confused, at B4bit the wallet is already integrated into the account, so you don’t have to set up anything weird at all. It’s like having access to your transactions without so much technical hassle, ready to use from the first moment.

“And if the internet goes down?”

It’s the classic doubt: what happens if something fails? I explained that the blockchain—that record where everything is stored—doesn’t depend on a single server that can shut down. If Netflix goes down, well you’re out of your show, but for Bitcoin to “go down,” the internet across the entire planet would have to disconnect at the same time.

And even then, as soon as the connection came back, everything would be exactly where you left it, because there’s no single point that can fail. Seeing my explanation, my buddy thought for a moment, and that’s the key: by having no owner or command center, it’s a network that simply keeps running.

“And how much do I invest? How long until I become a millionaire?”

That’s when I got serious face, because this is the part where you have to be really honest. That question is the most common, but also the most dangerous if someone tells you what you want to hear.

First, reality: Bitcoin is volatile, which means it can go way up and way down in little time. It’s not a savings account, so don’t even think of putting in money you need for next month’s rent. If you can’t sleep easy knowing your money dropped 30% in a day, then Bitcoin isn’t for you, and that’s fine.

Second, nobody has the crystal ball. Not even the sharpest expert knows what’s going to happen with the price tomorrow. If someone promises you guaranteed gains, run, because they’re telling you a fairy tale. What you can do, if what you’re looking for is to protect your pesos without these swings affecting you, is use a stablecoin like USDC, which is pegged to the dollar and much more stable.

In summary, I told my buddy: if you want to start, do it with what won’t hurt to lose and, above all, understand it first. Inform yourself well, that’s the best investment you can make.

“And how do you have it?”

After all that talk, he asked me what I did. I told him I opened my account at B4bit, deposited via SPEI and done, that simple I could start moving without so much technical complication. In the end, it’s about making it easy and transparent, nothing out of this world.

If you want, at the next lunch I’ll show you how to do it and we set it up right away, I told him. Needless to say, now my buddy has his cryptos and as I recommended, he created his account at B4bit.