Happy Lunar New Year! In Bitcoin, be like the Ox

Happy Chinese New Year from CoinGeek! May this year of the Ox bring you joy, prosperity and much success.

The Ox is the second creature in the 12-year Chinese “zodiac” cycle, and follow’s 2020’s Year of the Rat (according to a legend that explains the origin of this, the ox was actually fastest in a long race but the rat cheated by riding on the ox’s back… make of that what you will). If you were born in 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, or 2009, this is your year. All the best!

It would be hard to find an animal that represents “proof of work” better than an Ox. They are also gentle, diligent, reliable, patient, stubborn, and (for some reason) materialistic. How or whether these apply to your approach to Bitcoin work, your place in the Bitcoin society, or how you associate them with others around is up to you. A fun game is to say each word aloud, and see whose face pops up in your mind first.

But the best analogy is probably the one that says: it’s time to knuckle down, do the hard work of foundation-building, and deliver results. The ox is the opposite of a HODLer (that’s probably more like the rat in this story), and knows that no-one can collect the reward if someone reliable doesn’t do the hard work first.

There’s no point sitting back, buying a stack of BSV and then taking to social media to complain when the price doesn’t rise as much as you thought it would. That number doesn’t just go up by itself, and no-one will respect you for insisting it should. It’s gambling and not investing—and gambling is fine too, as long as you don’t blame the house when you didn’t win.

That all said, it’s a lot more enjoyable and potentially profitable to build on Bitcoin BSV than any other blockchain. BSV actually scales to global proportions, for starters. The protocol has been restored to its original design with a unchangeable rule set so whatever model or code you build will still operate far into the future. Look around and you’ll see most of the interesting and novel apps are appearing on BSV. Bitcoin is innovating and looking to the years ahead, while others sit on their piles of digital gold and hope for easy gains (that is, if they can actually afford the fees to send their coins to an exchange).

It’s also important to remember what Dr. Craig Wright said: ideally, Bitcoin should eventually disappear. That means that it should “become plumbing”; fade into the background and do its job, while making the world better on the surface side. So it’s not our job to convince billions of people to “use Bitcoin” (say, instead of fiat cash). Think of beneficial systems that use Bitcoin’s massive data processing power, its ability to digitally tokenize more commonly-used items, its programmability, and speed.

We’ve probably labored the Ox analogy enough here for now. So go out there, and be like the ox whether it’s your year or not. 2021 can be Bitcoin’s year if everything’s done right.

From all of us at CoinGeek.com, Happy Chinese New Year!