What would the world look like now if Bitcoin would have not been invented? Have you ever wondered about this scenario? Because I did, and let me tell you that despite it's infancy, Bitcoin already left a huge footprint in human society in just it's 7 years of it's existence, and some people could not imagine themselves living now without it, me included.

So let's explore this hypothetical scenario, what would the world look like now without Bitcoin?

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1) No Bitcoin Jobs / No Small Businesses

The amount of jobs Bitcoin has creates is probably more than any other tech industry sector. There are already tons of unemployed people, especially amongst the young. People who are young and experts in coding would probably be unemployed now, or be working in a restaurant. Bitcoin has created tons of computer jobs at various companies, or even freelancers. People like Vitalik Buterin can definitely thank their wealth to Bitcoin, because if there would have been no Bitcoin, there have been no Ethereum.

So we have the tons of job posts at Bitcoin companies like Coinbase, Circle, 21 Inc, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, you name it. Then you have all the other exchanges, all the mining companies, and their private contractors.

Source: https://duosear.ch

And you also have the freelancers, like programmers for hire, photographers, artists, etc that sell their stuff in Bitcoin. You can just check Openbazaar and see how many small vendors are there. It is probably more than 200,000 jobs and small businesses and merchants that can thank their existence to Bitcoin.

Just head over to Spendbitcoins and see the opportunities that Bitcoin has created: http://spendBitcoins.com

You can also see the merchants worldwide with this tool: https://coinmap.org

2) No Transparent Frictionless Gambling

Source: https://fortunejack.com

Most physical casinos have rigged machines, that is why they need to be regulated constantly because the casino owners take their customers for fools. Online gambling is much more comfortable and transparent. With casinos like Satoshidice, Fortunejack, Primedice and others, you can actually play in a fair game, that is guaranteed by cryptographic hashes.

I have seen people measuring roulette wheels and they found out that the numbers it gives is not random. This is not good, because if it's not random, then it's not fair play (although this is mostly bad for the casino not the player). You can read the scientific paper yourself here if you don't believe me. It is commonly known that physical wheels are not good random generators.

Besides people don't want their gambling habits to be recorded on their credit card transactions. It's just a basic privacy question. Using Bitcoin for gambling is much more convenient, secure and fun.

3) No Bitcoin Forum

Bitcointalk is home to 906,206 people, it has 16,904,113 posts and 626,164 topics. All this would not exist if not for Bitcoin. There are 3500 users online constantly talking about possibilities to improve Bitcoin. This forum also has a large commerce section where people trade stuff, so it generates more economic activity than you would imagine. Many people got rich over here, and people do make some money over there.

4) No Rich Investors & No Safe Haven

Many people got rich in the 2013 bubble, while some have bought on the top, I think it was not a bad decision, since in 2013 people have lost their money in the banking collapse of Cyprus, and if that would have spread globally, it would have been a lot worse. So at least those investors have prepared for the worst, well their timing was a little bit off.

Source: https://Bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160292.0

Bitcoin can save us from the banking system's collapse, and it's pretty much the only safe place that I consider putting my money in an apocalyptic scenario. I keep 80% of my assets in Bitcoin, and I fear that the banking collapse is now really on the horizon with news like these:

• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-17/french-pm-europe-danger-falling-apart
• http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-21/ecb-rejects-buying-stocks-draghi-drops-c-word-eu-parliament

So even if many people lost money in 2013 with Bitcoin, they have a high chance of recovering those losses, if the banking crisis aggravates.

5) No Altcoins / No Tech Industry

The total crypto market cap is $13,936,917,663 according to coinmarketcap, but it's extended with their financial derivatives and investment systems like GBTC. We also have all the ASIC manufacturers, and a whole tech industry from Silicon Valley to Israel to China, creating chips, and we have a whole tech industry, that is hard to quantify in size but definitely got a boost by Bitcoin.

Certain altcoins are better than others, but it's all a big testing lab. Things like ETH and LSK look for smart contracts applications, while we have things like Monero for privacy applications, things like Namecoin for decentralized DNS systems, things like NEM for financial applications, and more.

It has to be at least a 100 billion dollar exposure into the global economy, because the market caps are only the direct exposure, but we have indirect exposures too, by how much we affect other industries. We already see banks looking into "blockchains", so Bitcoin is already leaving a pretty big footprint in the global economy if we can get to the biggest sector: banking.

6) No Steemit

Last but not least. We would not have Steemit. Which means that you would not read this article now, and you would have no way of earning a good income just by blogging. You would have to grind for referrals, or build a blog yourself and promote it on other social media that is more censoring as the day goes by. So while the opportunity in classical social media platforms, is shrinking, the opportunities here are still here.

People on Steemit were earning 50,000$ easily, and that could come back once we go mainstream. We already have more than 110,000 users, and it's a growing ecosystem. And if not for Bitcoin, we would not have this right now.

It's very humbling to know how many great things depend on 1 single man: Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he/she is.

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The point is that Bitcoin is the grandfather of everything you see around you here. If Satoshi would have not published his paper in 2008, this would all not exist. I would not have my assets in Bitcoin, I would have probably lost a good chunk of my money due to inflation, and I would have not made all the money that I did with Bitcoin.

All this wealth that Bitcoin and their children have created would not be here. But it is, because thanks to Satoshi, we have all these wonderful things now, and it's impossible to express all the gratitude in words, but I'll try:

THANKS SO MUCH SATOSHI!

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