Most people believe that value is a thing. For instance, most of them believe that the value of a gold bar is the gold bar, itself. They are distracted by the high price in money that a gold bar commands; and because of this, while the high price number commands great respect, the job of the gold bar in preserving and transmitting value is usually forgotten. However, if you are able to read this and if you are able to work your thoughts toward letting go of this distraction, not only will you will be better off for it, you will have an advantage.
Similar to a gold ingot, a value-based digital document holding information on a public ledger has a job to do. This unspent transaction output (UTXO) is the answer to most people’s questions about how a bitcoin is able to have any value at all. The UTXO is the record of fact. It is the UTXO that both embodies and retains critical information. The UTXO is valuable because the information it contains is valuable, along with the valuable energy it took to create it.
Like a gold bar, a bitcoin has the job of transmitting value across time and space. As the Internet is a protocol for information where data can be borrowed, augmented and transformed, Bitcoin is a value protocol where data of value cannot be corrupted. It is merely assigned and transferred.
The decentralized Bitcoin Network of computers and the value protocol have sovereign power, exercising dominion and control as it issues a new UTXO as a new batch of value, confirming new transactions and reconfirming UTXOs in older transactions every ten minutes.
Because you wish to purchase this digital asset as merchandise while holding your private keys in your hardware wallet, your bitcoin becomes your private property. Your UTXOs, tagged as being possessed by you, reside on the blockchain safely and securely until you decide to transfer the value contained in them to someone else.
The security benefits of cryptography and the Bitcoin Network contribute to the value of the UTXOs, as well. Because of an older and more secure form of programming was chosen for Bitcoin (stack-based programming), meddling with the Bitcoin protocol is that much more difficult.
Corruptible centralizing state and corporate authorities are threatened by growing awareness and knowledge of holding private property in this manner. Because they can’t control, commandeer or hijack this technology, they must attempt to neutralize it with negative news stories of criminal activity, threatening to ban Bitcoin while posing as defenders and keepers of the helpless.
So, as you appreciate these layers of security concerning records for value held within records of value, you come to see that your wealth, transformed into a digital asset, is private property after all. And incidentally, because bitcoin is better able to be transported over great distances in little time (intangible though it may be), this digital asset will become exponentially more valuable than its weight in gold.