Bitcoin: "Bitcoin is a Database" (Opinion)
*** My first time putting in all opinion
By BR
September 27, 2023
The greatest experts in Bitcoin are able to communicate clearly the deep and vast complexity of Bitcoin in few words. My persona is defined as a cancer patient advocate, Business Intelligence (BI) pro, but now at my my core I am a Bitcoin Advocate.
Bitcoin checks all my boxes. Professionally and Personally.
PROFESSIONAL
I spent (past tense) 35 years working with data with some of the top Fortune 500/50 companies. I know when companies got it right and then when they got it wrong. I have worked on 1000s of databases with 100,000s of thousands of tables and countless rows.
My biggest contribution to all my employers and expertise was the ability to Join all the disparate data inside the company no matter where it was in the 'Enterprise' into a consumable product for my internal customers. In the early days, it was on mainframe computers, data on disk or tape. My career ended by joining data on Oracle, DB2/2, MS SQL Server, any of the Big Data. IT DOESN'T MATTER where the data is/was, the good ones can get to it and get it to you in any format you want to work with.
Like it in Excel? Are you a person who passes off all BI Professional's hard work as your own giving no credit? I worked with 1000s of you people.
You did that to my coworkers and me for decades, we were the Behind the Scenes guys, seldom rewarded or acknowledged. Wait for the punchline, or should I say, Cock Punch line, on all this later on in this post....
Side note: I used a tool called FOCUS/WebFOCUS from Information Builders, now TIBCO, a competitor to MicroStrategy. It worked. It just worked in every scenario. Information Builders was founded by the late Gerald Cohen, I got to talk to him several times, he was an amazing guy and mentor. Saylor has filled that void for me, not only with Bitcoin but with his knowledge on Business Intelligence, read data.
PERSONAL -
Cancer Advocacy (Since 1997- volunteer):
When my wife was diagnosed at 31 with her incurable Stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma, I turned to what I knew best, the data. (Data is useless by itself unorganized, the formula is Data 2 Information 2 Knowledge 2 Power)
I went from not even knowing lymphoma was cancer to being able to go toe to toe with the best minds in the world on the disease. At the time, I started using a Mailing List Manager (MLM) called Majordomo, the exact one Satoshi used. It was a powerful way for me to get out the information other lymphoma patients and their families needed. I knew the importance of automatically archiving the emails on the web so people could go back and search all my posts. It started out as 'FindMail' then 'eGroups' then 'Yahoo Groups.' Regardless, it worked great, people who liked to get the emails in personal disconnected inboxes were happy and those who liked summaries or a great way to search everything on a website were happy.
This was before Google even, it was super hard for me to find pertinent, trusted lymphoma information, I used AltaVista and Hotbot and rarely AskJeeves. It was manual, I spent 1000s of unpaid hours compiling data into information. (Any doctors, this was when Ritxuan was IDEC-C2B8 and I knew widows whose husbands died taking Rituxan before they learned to give massive doses of Benadryl during infusion. Further, I got to shake Ron Levy's hand and I will never forget Thanksgiving Day 1997.) My wife is alive today because of that one man.
I took comfort hearing the experts say how informed their lymphoma patients were knowing I was running one of the largest Cancer, let alone lymphoma, 'email lists out there.'
Bitcoin Advocacy (as of 2020)
Today, I am a Bitcoin Advocate. With everything I know from BI to Cancer Patient Advocate, my values, my motivation, Bitcoin is incredible. Throw everything else aside, all the vast twists and turns, it comes down to the data.
Never in my career or advocacy has anything had a 'clean' database, there is so much noise, massive GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), I was so pissed off at my last employer (insurance) of 20 years (10 as a consultant and 10 as dreaded FTE) when I figured out, they really didn't care about the data quality I was complaining about. Thinking they would get a Chief Data Officer as they dangled it for years.
In reality, the C-suite didn't give a shit, they would tell us the ROI wasn't there to combine the legacy systems so the plan was to leave all those policy holders out there until they died off. It was very difficult to merge that data into the other systems that sucked too from a data standpoint.
There model was one of severe money manipulation all under the guise of their corporate values to do best for their customers. It was such bullshit, why? Because I did the reporting, showing how much money the 40,000+ non-employee agents were making on commissions, where they could get points and buy up to an airplane. Talk about Ponzi schemes in the companies they ran as they would walk around, all loud, stupid shirts, gold chains, pointing finger guns saying "there he is."
Further, I would do requests for Legal when Class Action lawsuits came around (frequently). The C-suite didn't care about the data, I told them it was questionable, so even with all I did, how could you prove 'Reasonable Doubt' when no one on the planet trusted the internal data let alone serving that dish externally to a Judge and Jury?
But the kicker? The Behind the Scenes data guy listening to the Behind the Scenes C-Suite cheering a verdict of "we only had to pay out $80 million in fines." I know math, when you make Billions, even after giving out Billions, you cheer for losing only a few hundred million.
So, what one thing got me into Bitcoin? THE DATA. The greatest one 'Excel Spreadsheet' of all time. The Ledger. I never imagined there could be a database that is perfect, total data quality, with copies worldwide.
See that Corporate America Zombies who steal others work and pass it off as your own? You can't with Bitcoin. Period. Hahahah..is that why many of you hate Bitcoin because you have no power to manipulate it for your company (or personal) gains?
Incredible.
Thanks Bitcoin. Thanks Saifedean Ammous for this one page (attached) in the 'Bitcoin Standard", so when my third shitty boss in a row tried to screw me over on my bonus, I told him I was done. My 'career' ended, a poster child of someone who pushed the envelope and stomped on the Status Quo every day. It never got me fired but seldom got me promoted. Thus another shoutout to the one page attached.
Do I have enough money to never go back to that Hamster Wheel from Hell? I have no idea. I am three months younger than Saylor and not nearly as wealthy but Bitcoin gives me hope. I have never been happier in my life.
Thanks Bitcoin regardless of if you 'catch on' or not, you are beautiful, from a data standpoint alone.
Note to the Experts:
I debated on using the word 'database', if you look at the complexity of Bitcoin from simply a data standpoint, its rows aren't overly complex, not wide, not deep, it really could be called a 'table.'
Indepth posts on Bitcoin (e.g. Digital Gold, Friction, AI ) found here (I want to move it to a NOSTR blog):
Bitcoinapolis (Minneapolis Minnesota)
Bitcoin Commodity Saylor Data
