BENGALURU: I have a lot of friends in investment banking, and in the last few years, I’ve overheard the word ‘bitcoin’ in a number of discussions.I ignored the word since I thought it was a world far, far away from the one I inhabited.Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency are too far away to grasp for me. I have a State Bank of India account - the one with the light blue passbook and ancient passbook-printing machines that are archeological remains from the Chola dynasty.
When I walked into my bank and asked for SMS Banking, the kind gentlemen in my branch thought I was talking about Samosas.
To activate my Netbanking and Phone Banking - for which I was asked to furnish my Passbook, Voter ID Card, Aadhar Card, PAN Card, 10th Class Certificate, Birth Certificate, and a letter from my father.
I walk into my branch once a year to update my passbook and hope and pray to god to ensure my netbanking never stops working, for that would entail going to the branch again.
And just when I got a grip of how to handle money, somebody invented this new form of money called Bitcoin. Since I had dismissed the idea of digital money vociferously among my friends, I cannot put forth my questions without them sniggering.
I have a number of questions pertaining to Bitcoin, but have no clue whom to ask.
Firstly, who bit the BitCoin? What does the ‘Bit’ in Bitcoin stand for? Also, whose face goes on a Bitcoin?
Is it the Queen of England, or Mahatma Gandhi? And does a Bitcoin have a heads and tails sides - can it be used for tossing before a cricket match?
I have no idea how the Sensex works, and by extension - the incredible rise and fall of Bitcoin makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I have one friend who had invested in BitCoin a few years ago and has apparently become a millionaire now.
I am told he had ‘mined’ some BitCoins and is contemplating shifting to Ooty.
I wonder if BitCoin is found deep in the earth’s crust and needs miners to extract it. I met him recently and asked him for a few coins, only to be met with an expression like I’d asked for two kidneys and a liver!
I wonder if there are passionate people collecting Bitcoins too.
I used to have a half-decent coin collection in school, my prized possession being a 1964 five-pice coin. I wonder how many BitCoins I can get if I swap my coin?
Every year at this time, I struggle to make resolutions for the next year. Last year for example, I had resolved not to murder anybody, and I passed my resolution with flying colours.
In 2018, I resolve to collect as many BitCoins as possible. I have no idea where to find them, and where they’re found. But I plan to mine some BitCoin for myself.
I did some research, and found that the Indian government has washed its hands off Bitcoin - refusing to acknowledge or legitimise its usage.
So on one hand, I could get immensely rich in a very short time - a childhood dream of mine. Or I could lose a chunk of my savings, only to be told that it was a bubble that had overstayed its burst.
I guess we could say that they are two sides of the BitCoin!