Why Is Bitcoin Called the 'Honey Badger of Money'

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The honey badger is well-known for its toughness and resilience. Here are six reasons why Bitcoin has that reputation.

If Bitcoin were a creature, it would be a honey badger. The honey badger is well-known for its toughness, resilience, and strength. On bad days, honey badgers have been known to aggressively intimidate lions and hyenas. A honey badger's skin is rarely penetrated by bee stings, snake bites, or porcupine quills.

Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin promoter, paid $1,500 per month to have a billboard with a honey badger Bitcoin ad along Santa Clara's Lawrence Expressway with the words "The Honey Badger of Money" displayed.

But what do honey badger tendencies have to do with bitcoin, a digital currency stored on the internet?

In the early days of Bitcoin, some miners attempted, but failed, to attack and take over the Bitcoin blockchain network using a 51 percent hash attack. Governments have outlawed it, and Wall Street investors such as Warren Buffet have labeled it rat poison. Yet, like a honey badger attacked by bees, snakes, or lions, Bitcoin remains unharmed despite the constant barrage of hack attempts to suppress its market capital.

In the world of cryptocurrency, bitcoin is analogous to the 35-pound mammal that is immune to almost everything thrown at it, including fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). It was dubbed "the honey badger of money." Bitcoin OGs are all too familiar with the honey badger memes and are certain that the coin supply and network are unchangeable and impenetrable.

This concept may still be perplexing to Bitcoiners who are new to the space. So, here are six compelling reasons why the honey badger is Bitcoin's spirit animal.

1. Fearless Money

Bitcoin, among other things, offers a new technical solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem. Bitcoin is a game-changing technology. The Bitcoin network and supporters are unafraid of making bitcoin the world's most valuable currency.

Bitcoin, like the honey badger, is bold in taking on central banks and traditional wealth assets used as store of value, such as gold and equity stocks. Bitcoin will not back down in the face of any threat to its distribution, including governments. In the future, this will lead to a stalemate in currency regulation or outright dematerialization of banks that do not peg their treasury to bitcoin.

2. Globally Distributed

Bitcoin, like the internet, was created to provide the world with a web of information. It allows millions, and soon billions, to be their own banks and ultimately control their wealth. Bitcoin has a global reach that is distributed throughout the world, rather than being centralized in one location. Because Bitcoin users can self-post their funds, decentralized nodes secure transactions, making banks obsolete.

3. Transactions are extremely quick.

Bitcoin transactions typically take between 10 and 60 minutes to settle. When it comes to moving large sums of money across the globe, those time constraints are considered extremely short.

Bitcoin skeptics or altcoin supporters will argue that Bitcoin is too slow, and that a new sleek cryptocurrency will eventually outpace it in transaction times. When you zoom out and look at how long it takes for transfers to occur under the traditional banking system, the idea that Bitcoin is slow has no merit in my opinion. Slow and steady wins the race for Bitcoin. It's all about efficiency, and with innovation comes speed.

"International wire transfers may take 1–5 days," according to Divvy Pay, a well-known corporate credit card provider. It takes 2–3 days for ACH transfers and other types of money transfers."

Minutes and hours can be critical in an emergency. Meanwhile, depending on network speed, Bitcoin can send millions of dollars of value anywhere in the world in about five to ten minutes with low fees. The Lightning Network, Bitcoin's most established second layer for faster transactions, is fast — very fast.

Lightning has a maximum throughput of 25 million transactions per second at the moment (compared with on-chain throughput of seven transactions per second). This speed is expected to increase rapidly as the network grows in conjunction with Taproot.

4. Ignorance of Borders

Bitcoin enables people to live and work wherever they want. As a result, money restriction by borders is the final throes of a decaying nation state. The internet allows people to cross national borders. Bitcoin has no regard for borders and freely moves from peer to peer. These boundaries go all the way to the edges of the universe. Yes, if Bitcoin and space travel are successful, they will become a reality in the future.

Because nodes can be run anywhere, including off-planet colonies, Bitcoin's hash center can be used beyond Earth and into the universe. Dhruv Bansal, cofounder of Unchained Capital, wrote a brilliant piece in the "Bitcoin Astronomy" series on quantitative hash rate mining on other planets.

The concepts range from a Bitcoin hash war between Mars and Earth to hybrid blockchains known as timechains and Earth's future convergence into a hyperbitcoinized world. I'm guessing the honey badger will soon be in space. That's some interesting stuff to think about for sci-fi fans.

5. Secure Encryption: Bitcoin Is Unstoppable

Gold is money that cannot be printed, and Bitcoin is money that cannot be corrupted. On the blockchain, all transactions are public, but the encryption process is highly secure.

Bitcoin Core is a software application built on the Bitcoin blockchain rails. The Bitcoin core underpinning encrypts its wallet using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). This is the same encryption algorithm that the NSA employs for its classified data. AES is thought to be extremely secure. Nothing can stop Bitcoin because its fundamental encryption principles are secure and immutable.

6. Bitcoin Isn't Giving A Bit!

Bitcoin is being taxed by governments. Do you believe Bitcoin is concerned?

Any rational person who understands what a digital asset is would agree that it does not. Bitcoin is unconcerned because it does what it wants. The honey badger does pretty much whatever it wants in the animal kingdom as well. The parallels between the two are startling. Bitcoin, as a technology designed to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, lacks emotion, but those who believe in its potential do.

There is no Bitcoin CEO or Bitcoin headquarters to protest in front of, no one or nothing to blame if it works or not. If it fails, it means that we have all failed, because it is based on consensus. Bitcoin is moving at its own pace, dematerializing relic stores of value into the Bitcoin standard. It is completely free of the physical and social flaws that societies inflict. It is unconcerned. It simply is.

This is a guest post by Dawdu Amantanah. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.