Hello, my friend @luzcypher, I find your article here quite interesting, but I feel a need to "weigh in" with you and express a couple of minor differences of opinion... No offense intended, whatsoever! I am in complete agreement with your title and premise! But, as they often say, the devil is in the details! You said:

"What is remarkable about Bitcoin is that it allows us to do a transaction with anyone else on the planet, even if you don't know them, in real-time, for free, without any third party and without any added trust."

This is certainly remarkable, and almost true... however, "without any third party" is true if you understand that there actually are thousands of third parties, all of them requiring internet connections. And, "without any added trust" is true if you understand that you are trusting that the Chinese will not pull the power plug on the majority of miners who make blockchain transactions possible. This is a risk that @dantheman pointed out recently in this article.

Finally, the promise of transactions "in real-time, for free" is presently not exactly the case, unless one is willing to amp up the transaction fee they are willing to pay. This is a problem inherent in the design of the bitcoin blockchain and algorithms, and it will only grow unless there is some fundamental re-working done - i.e. a universally agreed upon "hard-fork" of some kind.

FYI, I both hold (as much as possible, due to Gresham's Law!) and transact with Bitcoin (as needed) because of its quite wonderful properties that you have described.

Now for a disclaimer; I am not nor do I profess to be any kind of "expert" on Bitcoin; but I simply wanted to mention these issues for folk who read your valuable article so that they have a little balance in their understanding.

Thank you for your fine article!😄😇😄😇