Your money is already just numbers in somebody's computer, the only question you have to ask yourself, whosе computer?

A lot of people struggle to understand bitcoin, because it's "digital", without recognizing the simple fact that nearly all money today is digital. Virtually all of our money today is just numbers stored in a database on someone else's computer.

However, there are important distinctions between having your money represented on a computer owned by a bank or stored on a tens of thousands of computers worldwide in a cryptographically secured peer-to-peer network.

Your digital money at a bank can be frozen, stolen, blocked, hacked, and devalued. You cannot do anything with your digital money stored at a bank without permission from the bank that controls it and under the scrutiny and whim of the state. Your funds can be blocked, confiscated and, most certainly, tracked and reported to the government.

Your digital funds on the blockchain suffer from none of these issues, with the only legitimate concern being that the value can fluctuate substantially on a daily basis.

This works out to a simple cost/benefit calculation for your personal risk tolerance.

Savings in bitcoin are likely, on average, to increase in value over time. Savings in fiat are 100℅ guaranteed by design to be worth less over time.

I just thought I would share this as a gentle reminder any time someone claims bitcoin isn't "real" because it's just numbers on a computer.

People which not use bitcoin don't avoid it because it's digital, we all know this - they're already using digital money all the time. They avoid it because they don't trust it, and they trust banks. Who can blame them, really - they've never had a problem with their bank, they have no idea how bitcoin works and the only evidence they can understand to show that it's not a complete scam, is that it hasn't collapsed in 7 years.

These people also believe that the money in their bank account is their property. It's not. The bank owes you the money. If they refuse to give it to you, they're not technically stealing, they're just in debt.

Also, money are form of debt. You exchange something of value for a token. Later you exchange the token for something if value. The token is a debt owed to you, by the community that has agreed to use the token. There is an implicit or explicit promise to honor the token debt and their is an accompanying possibility of default. This applies to all kinds of money, including bitcoin.