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Square, the payment processing
company led by Twitter CEO jack

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Dorsey, generated more than $3
billion in Bitcoin revenue from

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its cash app in 2020. I know
what you're probably thinking,

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Bitcoin? Didn't the world move
past that? Well, not so fast.

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I'm Allyson Berger and in this
episode, I'm going to be giving

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you a brief history of Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin was invented in 2009 by
an unknown person under the

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alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Since
that time, dozens of people have

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come forward claiming to be him,
but no one has been able to

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prove it. So you might be
thinking, wait, I know all this

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already. Bitcoin became popular,
and then it crashed, right?

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Well, there is a little bit more
to that story.

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A lot of people when they think
about Bitcoin, or cryptocurrency

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in general, they think about
whether or not they can get rich

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off of it, or whether or not
they got rich off of it, and it

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ends there. Or they say, I like
Bitcoin because it's anonymous.

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But it's not actually anonymous.
The whole foundation of Bitcoin

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is the blockchain. And the
blockchain is this open ledger,

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that everyone can see. It's the
opposite of anonymous. Bitcoin

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at its roots is about the
freedom over your money. The

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Federal Reserve doesn't control
it, no one can take it away from

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you, so long as you have
possession of your private key,

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and you can also send it to
whomever you want, and nobody

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can stop you. That's what
Bitcoin is. These

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characteristics don't appeal to
everyone, I get that, but they

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do to millions of people around
the world. And that's why

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Bitcoin is still around.

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A lot of bitcoin early adopters
got their start right here at

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the Bitcoin Center in New York
City. It used to be downtown

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next to the New York Stock
Exchange, but has since moved up

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to the Upper West Side. Yes,
that's right, there is a place

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you can go to, to learn about
Bitcoin.

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So I first went to the Bitcoin
Center in 2014 and it was right

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off of Wall Street. It had
everything, it was like a scene

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out of a movie, it had tech
people, traitors, smart people,

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anarchists, and people that were
like, downright crazy. It was a

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scene totally out of a movie

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By 2017, Bitcoin became widely
recognized around the world

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because its value kept going up,
up, up and away, hitting a

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market cap of $334 billion in
December of that year.

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Bitcoin was worth around $20,000
in 2017, and then the price

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crashed after that. Now, if you
bought in at a high price and

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you lost money, I can understand
why you'd have negative feelings

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about it. Yes, the price is
coming back up, but it's really

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all about the utility of it.
Imagine thinking for example,

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that you wouldn't use a debit
card or credit card, because you

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couldn't get rich off of using
them or because cash handles the

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job just fine. It's the same
situation. Bitcoin has a

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utilitarian purpose to it to
just about getting rich for

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hoping it goes up in value,
Bitcoin would have gone away a

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long time ago.

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In November, Jack Dorsey, the
CEO of Square and Twitter said

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that he believed that Bitcoin
would become the native currency

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of the internet, while at the
same time revealing that Square

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had acquired $50 million worth
of it to hold on to its balance

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sheet. The news gave the world
pause, which I'm still in right

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now. I really thought the world
would have moved past this

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Bitcoin craze by now, but on the
contrary, it's really just

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getting started. Thanks for
watching. So until next time,

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I'm Allyson Berger.