{"id":17331,"date":"2021-03-23T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027ecf3fe000275d"},"modified":"2025-10-01T13:29:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T18:29:52","slug":"bitcoins-hierarchy-of-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoins-hierarchy-of-needs","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin’s Hierarchy Of Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In order for Bitcoin to achieve hyperbitcoinization, it has to fulfill certain network and monetary needs. Without obtaining and, more importantly, maintaining these needs, Bitcoin can not succeed. If Bitcoin can obtain and maintain these needs, then there is nothing that can stop it.<\/p>\n

This article is a play off of Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs; the idea that people have to go through certain levels of life to eventually reach happiness and live to their full potential. This theory can be applied to Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

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This is the game plan; this is how Bitcoin achieves world reserve currency status. <\/p>\n

Network Needs:<\/h2>\n

Base Layer: Fair Launch<\/strong><\/p>\n

No currency has a shot at mass adoption or a chance at being the global reserve currency if it\u2019s been cheated from the start.<\/p>\n

One of the many things that separates bitcoin from the thousands of other cryptocurrencies was the fair launch on January 3rd, 2009, over two months after Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper on October 31, 2008. Not to mention the reason why Bitcoin was created in the first place, which was a direct result of the 2007 to 2008 financial crash, fiat currency and central banking. It was made as a solution to a problem. All other coins came after seeing bitcoin\u2019s success, tried to copy it, and failed.<\/p>\n

Satoshi didn\u2019t create Bitcoin in the hopes of scamming others, he did it to provide anyone an inclusive monetary system that was fair. Not only was there no premine, where a founder allocates a large portion of the coins to themselves, Satoshi also made sure to give potential participants advanced warning before launch. It appears that it was important to Satoshi for Bitcoin to be perceived as not having been created for any one individual’s gain at the expense of others.<\/p>\n

Satoshi programmed the first block to be locked in, resulting in the first block reward of 50 BTC being unattainable. Neither Satoshi, nor anyone else could grab those bitcoin, and now there are 50 fewer BTC out of the approximately 21 million total supply available. If the creator would have just taken the BTC, it would not have been fair. After that first block was in place, miners could then start hashing away and building the chain.<\/p>\n

Minting new currency onto the blockchain must be fair, with no one entity having an advantage over others. This system needs to be inclusive, where anyone has the ability to run the numbers and verify for themselves that everything is correct, honest participants are rewarded and bad actors face consequences. Whatever system is used to create more currency must absolutely come at a cost to protect against any monopolies arising from gaming the system. <\/p>\n

Bitcoin solved this with distributed proof of work (PoW).<\/p>\n

Second Layer: Distributed Network <\/strong><\/p>\n

Since Bitcoin was fairly launched with no malicious intent, we can be confident in building and expanding the network. If Bitcoin really is going to succeed, then it cannot be centralized like gold, fiat and altcoins.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin is robust because of two reasons. One, the creator vanished long ago, never to be seen again. There is no central authority to arrest or have them use their influence to destroy the project. Two, the global distribution of the developers, economic nodes and miners. These three sets of stakeholders provide a check and balance against each other so no single party has control.<\/p>\n

Der Gigi<\/a> makes a fantastic analogy when he says Bitcoin is like ants. You can step on ants and kill their hill in one area, but you\u2019ll never ever be able to kill all of the ants in the world, because of their massive numbers and distribution. <\/p>\n

Bitcoin developers are the ones who work day and night to advance Bitcoin forward. These developers must build things that are in demand by the users, or else no one will use their software. It is not in developers\u2019 best interests to attack the network because everything is out in the open; there is no way to sneakily attack Bitcoin because of how long the process takes. If a developer does try to attack Bitcoin, his or her reputation flies out the window and no one will use their software anymore. Their proposals to change the network are intensively reviewed by other devs during the process of submitting Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs). Anyone can become a Bitcoin developer, and there are developers spread all around the world.<\/p>\n

Neither the miners or nodes have complete control of the network. The miners slowly write transactions into the ledger and mint new currency. Nodes verify the transactions on the blockchain quickly and efficiently, but cannot issue new currency. Miners have to follow the rules that the nodes set forth which may only change if individual node operators choose to run new software.<\/p>\n

Network participants must prioritize keeping Bitcoin decentralized. The more distributed it is, the more censorship resistant it is. The more censorship resistant it is, the better it can defend itself from nation states and others from controlling the network. Good news for Bitcoin, the network is growing strong. In January of this year, the amount of full nodes hit a new all time high of 11,558 according to bitnodes.io<\/a>. <\/p>\n

To whoever\u2019s thinking \u201cBitcoin will fail when governments 51 percent attack the blockchain,\u201d I could write about this, but for the sake of both my time and yours, here\u2019s a quick two-minute video explaining it:<\/p>\n