Why is the Bitcoin cryptocurrency so confusing?

For all the technical sophistication and intelligence gone into the masterminding and development of Bitcoin, it baffles the mind why the community continues to reinforce the use of bad synonyms and metaphors in the description of the operation and function of Bitcoin.

It’s the usage of these old, archaic and in many cases simply wrong terms that reinforce confusion among new users to cryptocurrency.

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Cryptocurrency is very unique in form, function, and impact on society and as such, this technology deserves it’s own terminology to reflect this.

Here’s why...

1. It’s a Virtual Currency, Not a Coin:

We’ve all seen photos of the illustrious Gold Coin Bitcoin, yet it does not exist.

What we actually see is an image of a gold plated collectible coin that resembled what we think a bitcoin would look like in real life.

Bitcoins are a virtual currency and do not exist in the physical world — these are only an artist's representation of what a physical bitcoin may look like if such a thing existed.

Offering a physical and highly realistic representation of what we may think a “Bitcoin” may look like does nothing but reinforce an incorrect narrative of the form and function of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole.

Understandably, the layperson upon hearing the word BitCoin would think there are coins involved. So, understandably a bitcoin would and should be interpreted as a coin — but this is plain wrong.

Coins are loosely defined as physical, flat, round pieces of metal with an official sovereign nation’s stamp.

2. It’s an Authentication Device, Not a Wallet

We have all heard, the safest place to store your cryptocurrency is in your hardware wallet. But is it even possible to store cryptocurrency in a wallet?

Let’s first look at the general understanding of the word wallet — we think of a pocket-sized, flat, often leather folding holder for money and plastic cards.

A wallet is a physical container to store your physical money.

But we are talking about a virtual currency…

Since cryptocurrency is virtual, there is no physical money and no need for a physical wallet either.

What are we really talking about?

A cryptocurrency wallet is simply a device to give access to an individual to authenticate transactions on the blockchain by providing access to the private key.

What a cryptocurrency wallet is, is a safe place to store your private key. It’s access to this private key that gives the holder access to transact on the account (blockchain).

Rather than calling it a wallet, it would have been much better to call it PrivateKeySafe or CryptoKeySafe.

Maybe it would have been better to have just called it an authentication device and that way we could have avoided the word wallet and the confusion the word wallet instills.

3. It’s a Computational Contest, Not Mining

Guilty are all those illustrators, webpage developers, and marketers that litter the internet with images of miners with pickaxes and hardhats depicting something akin to mining for gold.

It’s not fully understood where this analogy came from, but it’s can’t be further from the truth.

Bitcoin Mining

For the uninitiated, one would think Bitcoin Mining involves…well, something to do with mining, or at least it would seem that the marketplace would lead you to believe that.