Jameson Lopp Compares Bitcoin to a New Form of Life, Relates BTC to the Human Body

In a recent Tweet, Jameson Lopp, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Casa, made a comparison between Bitcoin with a new form of life.

If Bitcoin is a new form of life:* Electricity is its food* The Internet is its circulatory system* Miners are its hearts* Blocks are the heartbeats* Full nodes are the white blood cells* Human participants are the brain cells

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) February 4, 2019

He mentioned that Bitcoin is an ecosystem formed by different components such as electricity, internet, miners, blocks, full nodes and humans. All of them are necessary for the correct functioning of the Bitcoin network.

The first thing he said is that “electricity is its food.” Crypto miners consume large amounts of energy in order to process Bitcoin transactions. The second thing that he mentioned is that the Internet is the circulatory system of Bitcoin. Clearly, without internet Bitcoin cannot work. However, there are some ways to be connected to the whole Bitcoin network using a satellite.

He went on saying that miners are “its hearts.” Miners allow transactions to be confirmed and keep the network secure. The larger the hashing power in the network, the more secure it becomes. Thus, making a comparison with a human heart, the more trained it is, the stronger it becomes. This is something similar to what happens in the Bitcoin network with the miners.

This also links us to the next thing Lopp mentioned. He said that Blocks are the “heartbeats.” Every single block contains over 1 MB of transactions in the Bitcoin network. Miners confirm these transactions and receive 12.5 BTC each time they find a block.

Lopp wrote that full nodes are white blood cells. These nodes confirm that all the transactions that were processed by the network are correct. They store the whole Bitcoin ledger and allows it to be securely stored.

Finally, “human participants are the brain cells.” Humans are those that determine how the network evolves, what Bitcoin does to keep growing, and more. Thus, we are a very important part of the whole Bitcoin network, helping it to grow in many different ways.