Where I stand

I'm Yves Bennaïm, and I've been involved in Bitcoin since 2011. You should know that before you read anything else here, so here's the whole story.

I came from the web. I worked in online marketing, communication and web design from before the dot-com crash, and I watched the internet change business, then society. One piece was always missing: money native to the internet. Everything we used was a layer bolted on top of banks, and PayPal showed how much even a better layer could change. So in 2011, when I first heard about Bitcoin, I thought: maybe someone cracked it.

It made no sense at first. No company, no about page, a creator nobody knew. I saw it as a payment network. I didn't think of it as money, because, like almost everyone, I had no idea how money worked: what a central bank does, where money comes from.

Trying to understand Bitcoin forced me to learn how the current system works. And learning how it works meant seeing where it doesn't. Debt, inflation, interest rates: the things the news tries to explain in two minutes and can't, because nobody has the background.

Then it clicked. To build a new way to pay, Bitcoin had to be a new kind of money, with its rules written into it. And I saw something bigger: almost nobody understands money. We study to get a job, to get a salary, to have money. It's at the center of most people's lives, and nobody explains how it works.

That's the gap this site is for. Most people don't lose because they misunderstand the rules. They lose because nobody told them what the rules are. The rules aren't that hard. You just have to want to learn them, and accept that the way things work today isn't the only way, or the natural way.

For me, Bitcoin was the trigger. But I've realized you can only judge it once you understand how money works. So I've come to see it as the conclusion, not the beginning. Many people who like Bitcoin started somewhere else entirely: wanting to get rich, distrusting their government, curiosity about the technology. The ones who kept asking why tended to end up in the same place. For them, as for me, Bitcoin became an answer.

Not the answer to everything, though. The articles here explain the system as it is, with official sources, including where the data doesn't support my views. Nothing here tells you to buy Bitcoin. It's one topic among many, with an honest article on its downsides: crashes of 70% and more, scams, lost keys. If index funds, savings or a house are the right tool for you, I'll say so plainly.

You can disagree with me about Bitcoin and still get everything out of this site. That's the point.

I'm not a financial advisor. This is education I'm sharing, not advice.

Yves Bennaïm · @ZLOK