How Decentralized Finance in Cryptocurrency Can Help Your Medical Practice with John Bush

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by a pseudonymous programmer (or group of programmers) called Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a currency issued in a decentralized fashion using a complex mathematical equation on a block chain. Bitcoin then launched in 2009 and was adopted by very few people but it held out a promise to usher in a new way we can look at money and preserving value of our time and labor without a central bank debasing it. Bitcoin has since gone from a value of well under one penny to about $40,000 per coin in 12 years.

What's Decentralized Finance?

The first question to ask is what is centralized finance? Basically, this is traditional finance like using banks to acquire loans. This means that you go to a business and offer some collateral and receive your loan. Now, the advent of cryptocurrency allows for finance through a smart contract. This allows for people all over the world who has cryptocurrency access to capital no matter who they are. This is a powerful tool that can be used in areas of the world without much capital infrastructure and by businesses in the developed world too.

What's a block Chain?

The block chain is maybe best thought of as a sheet of paper that has every transaction of every coin on it. And with each new creation of a block, the transactions are updated, new coins are added as rewards, and all the decentralized nodes work to verify and agree with the transactions that are on the block. Then a new block is added to the previous as the process is continued forever.

One can see the utility of this technology not only in verifying that the funds used to buy something were real and in someone's possession but also in other contracts or information. I spoke to Dr. Huston way back in episode 018 where she described her plan on using block chains to protect the integrity of physicians' credentials. This means they would control the information and not some health system and would keep it far more secure. You could also use the block chains for other personal information like your health which is what my guest, Brendan Hodge, in episode 014 proposed with Citizen Health.

How Do You Get Started iN Cryptocurrency?

As with everything, getting started is the hardest part of process. Buying, trading, and investing take a little experimentation. But if you have any technological saavy, it isn't too hard to figure out. You merely have to decide what cryptocurrency to buy (there are 8 thousand choices and counting) and then whether or not you want to be in charge of the coin itself or have someone else hold it for you. The exchanges will hold the key to the coins you purchase and allow you to take possession, hold them in their vault, or trade them with other currencies.

Most of the exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, or others allow you to convert your fiat (US Dollars) and purchase the new currencies for a fee using either your bank account or credit card. Trading and exchanging always cost some fee which varies depending on the types of coins being purchased and exchanged anywhere from a few dollars to fractions of a penny.