What is the biggest risk of Bitcoin?

Source: Vernacular Blockchain

For many years, there has been a saying in the crypto field: "The biggest risk of Bitcoin is that you can't hold it." In essence, "not being able to hold it" is a problem of cognition and information gap. Since the birth of the Bitcoin Genesis Block, 16 years have passed, and many people still feel that Bitcoin is "illusory" and are worried. Rather than discussing "what is the biggest risk of Bitcoin", it is better to discuss whether people's biggest concerns about the existence of Bitcoin are redundant...

01 The "virtual" attribute of crypto assets

Bitcoin and other crypto assets have always had a classification that the crypto community considers to be negative: "virtual" assets. When people mention the word "virtual", they naturally have a feeling of "elusiveness" and it doesn't sound like something "formal" or "serious". Therefore, opponents have a point of view: virtual assets have no credit endorsement, currency must be based on credit and physical exchange, and virtual assets are ultimately a dream.

The reason why the above view is deeply rooted in people's hearts is indeed reasonable, because according to common sense, whether it is the US dollar or the Japanese yen, it is backed by the national credit of the United States and Japan and has stable purchasing power. Crypto assets whose origin is unknown naturally do not have these guarantees, so how can they be trusted?

In fact, this view ignores the technical value behind crypto assets and does not understand what "consensus" is. For example, concepts such as blockchain technology, Web3, and decentralized finance have already reflected the value of actual application in the fields of global payment and clearing. More importantly, the value "consensus" behind crypto assets and the consensus generated by credit endorsement are essentially the same thing.

The reason why currency needs credit endorsement is that the structure of human society is complex, and a unified and powerful centralized organization is needed to act as a credit intermediary to provide a consensus basis. For decentralized things, just like natural resources such as gold and stones in the river, the physical properties are their natural consensus. Even without national credit endorsement, everyone agrees that stones are hard and gold is always shiny, rust-free and valuable. This is also the basic principle of why ancient human society was able to use shell coins, stone coins, and gold as currency.

In short, what determines whether something is valuable is not whether it has credit endorsement, but because it has consensus.

02 America's harvesting tool?

In recent years, as a global financial center, the United States has become more and more vocal in crypto assets. Not only are crypto assets priced in US dollars, but crypto asset spot ETFs listed on the US stock market have also attracted hundreds of billions of funds. A large number of US-listed companies and financial institutions hold Bitcoin, and now the new president who is about to take office is also "bound to win" the US's crypto asset advantages.

While the United States is increasingly regulating and controlling crypto assets such as Bitcoin and the upstream and downstream of the market industry, people are beginning to worry and even think that this will become a tool for the United States to harvest the world like the US dollar.

This worry is indeed not unreasonable. The greater the voice, the more it can influence the crypto market, and then it is only a matter of time for global retail investors to be "harvested". Referring to the previous logic of the US harvest, the United States has attracted global funds to the virtual currency market through financial innovation and US dollar hegemony. If the price of crypto assets plummets, it may eventually lead to capital reflux to US dollar assets, which is indeed in line with the logic of "dollar harvesting" to some extent. Of course, this concern also has its limitations, because crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are not actually initiated and dominated by the United States, but are more driven by the bottom-up "transformation" of private forces through technological innovation. Capital such as Wall Street in the United States has also been deployed after crypto assets such as Bitcoin matured, so this is not a "conspiracy" planned in advance by the United States, but a field born from the development of technology and market demand. In addition, public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are unlikely to be controlled technically. Even if some mining pools and service agencies are deployed in the United States, their distributed nodes are widely spread all over the world. Even if the relevant US authorities can restrict local nodes from reviewing transactions through supervision or regulations, overseas nodes can still submit and publish transactions. It is like gold mines all over the world. Local departments can order local gold mines to stop working, but they cannot order or control the operation of gold mines in other regions.

Furthermore, the reason why the United States reaps the world through the hegemony of the US dollar is because of its absolute control over the US dollar, but can the United States control Bitcoin like it controls the US dollar? No, but the United States can dominate Bitcoin like it dominates the world's mainstream assets such as gold and oil and modern technology.

On the contrary, the United States can also marginalize Bitcoin to a certain extent within a specific range, but it cannot kill it (if it could, it would have died hundreds of times). Of course, considering the binding of interest relations, the United States is unlikely to go the other way and sacrifice the interests of Wall Street capital, at least not before it breaks away from the interests of the United States itself.

03 Financial inequality and unlimited issuance?

Some people say that relative to early participants, it is unfair to ordinary people now? That is, financial inequality in many people's mouths. In fact, the Bitcoin network and community information are open and fair. As a public blockchain, it lies there like a public resource. Anyone can check the information and submit transactions to its network. It's just that some people don't want to understand and accept new things and don't want to take a step forward.

Some people also say that the upper limit of Bitcoin, 21 million, does not exist because its smallest unit is Satoshi, so it is almost unlimited.

This is a bit strange. The change in unit has nothing to do with the total amount. 1L of water is enough for one person to drink. It can't be said that if it has 1000ML, it can be divided into 1000 people.The unit has changed, but the total amount will never change.

04 Summary

In general, most people's "opposition" to Bitcoin is more due to misunderstanding. The "virtual" era has become a thing of the past. From a "small role" to a mainstream asset, the consensus and status of Bitcoin in the past 16 years have become more and more solid, and it has the strength to compete with gold. The strong intervention of the United States is not a bad thing at present, but there are still many uncertainties and we need to be wary of large fluctuations. I still believe that encryption and AI will jointly lead the reshaping of the future of the digital age.