Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin News, Articles and Expert Insights by IAN REIS
The opportunity to reach one’s full potential
As the nobility of European society increasingly accrued more of the wealth of their nations, they gave rise to a new type of subject … the colonist. Still subject to the king’s laws, these pioneers put up the only capital most had to risk, their lives, with hopes of owning the one thing that was out of reach for so many in Europe … land.
Once you start down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, you eventually come to internalize the concept of “low time preference.” What could be more “low time preference” than sailing for weeks across an ocean, to a sometimes unknown destination, to start over from scratch? With the possibility to own land within sight, many took the risk to ensure a better future for themselves and their descendants.
Let’s not kid ourselves though, not every colonist who came over on any of those early expeditions became wealthy. Most of them died. The key words there being “most of them” … not all of them. And for the colonists who survived and thrived it was that thriving that attracted more colonists. So much so that by 1776, “… a third of all British commercial shipping vessels had been built in New England.”
