A Guide to Buying Movies with Bitcoin

Nakamoto 2025-10-13 11:07 49551人围观 BTC

Why are virtual currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) valuable and have monetary value? Can I exchange it for RMB or US dollars and use it for shopping?

This seems to be a basic issue, but actually touches the core issue of the virtual currency value system.

Virtual currencies have grown from one dollar to hundreds to thousands of dollars, and now Bitcoin has exceeded 10,000 dollars... After Weiwuism published the article "Blocks and Nude Photos", there were many strange questions in the background, which essentially pointed to this question:

Why does a bunch of broken programs have monetary value?

Let us use a sexy story to answer this question.

1. The original trading era

Xiaobei, Atu and Dacheng are movie lovers.

Xiaobei wants to watch "Teacher Cang.avi" recently, and he has "Songdao.avi" in his hand.”；

Ah Tu wants to watch "Hata.avi" recently, and he has "Ao-sensei.avi" in his hand.”；

Dacheng wants to watch "Matsushima.avi" recently, and he has "Hatto.avi" in his hand”；

They can only meet their needs through transactions.

Xiaobei met Atu first, so Atu gave Xiaobei "Teacher Cang.avi". Xiaobei's needs were met. He promised to give it to Atu once he found "Hatto.avi" - in economics, this system is called "credit".

Of course, Xiaobei can also pay for A Tu's "Teacher Cang.avi" first, and A Tu can then use the money earned from selling movies to buy Dacheng's "Hado.avi". Dacheng also made money selling movies, and bought "Songdao.avi" from Xiaobei, and everyone was happy in the end - in economics, this system is called "cash".

Now two systems have emerged: "credit" and "cash".

Because these two systems allow three people to meet their needs without having to trade at the same time and place.

“Economists have been debating whether "credit" or "cash" appeared earlier in human history, so we won't go into details for now.

2. The era of centralized A-coin

Later, Xiaobei, Atu and Dacheng discovered the benefits of the transaction and decided to set up a "movie club", elected Xiaobei as the first CEO, and issued "A coins".

As long as you use "A coins", you can buy movies in the "Movie Club", one A coin per movie. The first batch of 500 was released, and they had 300 on hand. People who have a movie can apply for membership, and the club will reward them with an A coin after joining.

Later, more and more movie-watching enthusiasts joined the "movie-watching club", and they found that they could trade their favorite movies by holding "A coins". As the CEO of the club, Xiaobei stipulates that every time a member donates a film to the club committee, he or she can receive an "A coin." “"A Coin" is used to purchase various pieces in the hands of other members of the club, as well as pieces in the club committee's resource pool.

Naturally, some people in the black market use the cash in their hands to buy "A coins", because "A coins" represent the ability to obtain good-looking movies. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes the price is low. Some people are buying and hoarding "A coins". When the market is tight, they sell "A coins" at high prices to make profits.

Because three people with Pian'er resources recognized that "A Coin" could be exchanged for Pian'er, more people also recognized "A Coin", and eventually "A Coin" became a relatively widely traded token.

This is the fundamental connotation of human social economy - trust. From three people trusting each other to a group of people trusting each other.

However, this trust system controlled by a few people and unsupervised is fragile and fragile.

A year later, a scandal broke out about Xiaobei. He secretly printed and distributed a large number of A coins to his relatives and friends, and sold the A coins on the black market to make a profit. This harmed the interests of the entire "movie club" members. They worked hard to bring the movies to the "movie club" in exchange for A coins, which constituted the value of the club. However, Xiaobei sought personal gain and plundered the wool of the club members.

3. Decentralized Bitcoin Era

In the end, the "Movie Club" committee impeached Xiaobei and elected Ah Tu as the second club CEO. Atu knew that the club's trust system was on the verge of collapse, and finally turned the tide and decided to use Bitcoin (btc) as the currency for transaction of films, stipulating that 0.1 bitcoin can be exchanged for one film.

Eventually, Bitcoin inherited the function of "A coin" and became the club's recognized transaction currency.

Ah Tu can no longer over-issue currency or create prices like Xiaobei, because Bitcoin is recorded using a blockchain distributed ledger, which is decentralized and cannot be copied or counterfeited. Although Bitcoin is often hyped up and down, it is more reassuring than Coin A, whose control is in the hands of a few people.

4. ICO issues its own currency

Dacheng, the third club CEO who took over, decided that the "Movie Club" will issue its own virtual currency!

They developed a token called "B coin" based on the open source Ethereum (eth).

Because of Ethereum’s open source blockchain underlying technology, “B Coin” inherits Bitcoin’s decentralized and non-replicable features. At the same time, combined with Ethereum’s open source features, the club also built a smart contract that meets its own needs.

They wrote a white paper "Movie Club Blockchain White Paper" to conduct ICO (Initial Coin Offering). The white paper explains the status of the movie industry. The "Movie Club" has the value of movie sources and future development prospects, and announces that "B coins" will become the currency that can be used to purchase club movies at will.

Dacheng decided to set the number of B coins to 1 million, and the overall valuation is equal to 100,000 Ethereum (eth). Now one Ethereum currency is traded for about 8,000 yuan, and the overall B coin ICO valuation is 800 million yuan (because of the magical rise and fall speed of virtual currencies, the current price as I write this article has no reference value at all...).

The club council itself holds 200,000 coins, and the rest will be publicly crowdfunded for valuation. People participating in ICO need to first use legal currency (currency issued by countries such as RMB and US dollars) to go to a currency exchange or individual currency holder to purchase Ethereum, and then use Ethereum to exchange for B coins in the ICO.

Theoretically, everyone participating in the ICO has established a trust system around B-coin, and B-coin is equivalent to the club's resources as a whole. However, those who participate in ICOs may also be cut off, because the "movie club" may have been emptied out of the library, or the films may be of little value because they are too old and low in resolution.

Because there is a lack of supervision on ICOs in the current market, there are a lot of people cutting leeks. Nowadays, if a currency exchange undertakes an ICO of a currency, the fees range from a few million to tens of millions. It is really no cheaper than an IPO of a company.

write at the end

In the book "A Brief History of the Future", Yuval discovered that the progress of human society comes from collaboration, and good collaboration in society is based on trust in "mutual subjects". For example, everyone trusts a country, a culture, a law, and a currency.

Virtual currency is a trust system based on machine execution in history. Of course, you can choose to join (trust) or not join (distrust) this system.

In the past, we believed in the trust system established by central organizations with power, wisdom and legal supervision, and believed that they would maintain this system as they said. Now, the blockchain is someone/organization announcing a trust system, which is executed by machines, so we have to understand whether there is real value behind a certain trust system announced by someone/organization, instead of simply trusting brands and authorities like before.

I don’t know what the future holds, but virtual currency and blockchain are indeed options for social collaboration. The future is already here.

Weiwuism, new business observation: blockchain, middle-class consumption, sharing economy, industrial Internet.

*The article is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Huxiu.com

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