Bitcoin is offering something that everyone needs – a stable true monetary form of value. Bitcoin’s method of being stable is to have an algorithmic increase in mining diminishing by half every four years, ultimately to reduce supply and demand at equilibrium no matter how much Bitcoin is adopted for use as money. Bitcoin has the killer advantage because it can be used as money on the internet where there are no other free-market competitors for international payment so Bitcoin doesn’t have any inherent disadvantages compared to fiat, only advantages. For further information, you can visit bitcoin-era.live/.
Features of Bitcoin
Bitcoin has all the other good features of money which are irreplaceable by anything but Bitcoin too: durable, divisible, portable, fungible, scarce/unforgeable, low carrying cost & high verifiability. Bitcoin is not just a one-trick pony. Bitcoin can’t be inflated by any type of government, unlike the USA Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing which has devalued the US dollar and risks hyperinflation in order to create wealth for big businesses at the expense of everyone else. Bitcoin makes possible direct cross-border transfer without having to trust anyone or anything – Bitcoin requires no central bank, company, exchange, or clearinghouse and Bitcoin is virtually free to transfer in comparison and you don’t need an ID number.
Bitcoin has greatly reduced transaction fees compared to credit cards, Paypal, or Western Union, and Bitcoin leads in this area by orders of magnitude because Bitcoin doesn’t have middlemen skimming off their percentage like all those other payment processors do which end up being so expensive. Bitcoin is global, decentralised, and easily exchanged around the world for anyone who wants it – Bitcoin’s censorship resistance makes Bitcoin the most international of all currencies. Bitcoin is mostly off-limits to tax authorities because Bitcoin isn’t just a way of making payments that avoid taxes, Bitcoin doesn’t require any personally-identifying information to use even for tax avoidance which makes Bitcoin “tax heaven” without having to move anywhere. Bitcoin offers many ways to make anonymous purchases if you wish with little or no fees compared to credit cards where you can only make cash transactions anonymously with great difficulty and/or greatly increased costs.
Bitcoin isn’t Perfect though but what could be?
Governments hate Bitcoin because they can’t control it like they do fiat currency but Bitcoin allows us to decentralise our wealth and Bitcoin’s decentralised nature is Bitcoin’s main strength. If Bitcoin were centralised, it would be no different than fiat currency – Bitcoin requires consensus between all users on the network before any changes are made which makes Bitcoin censorship-resistant. Bitcoin cannot be shut down by any one person or government because of its decentralised nature
Bitcoin has many advantages over fiat currencies but there are some problems left to solve. It takes about an hour for a new Bitcoin transaction to complete confirmation which can make Bitcoin impractical for point-of-sale purchases where you have to stand around waiting while your transaction confirms on the network. Another problem with Bitcoin is that while Bitcoin runs smoothly for most people, sometimes transactions aren’t even getting confirmed after days and Bitcoin doesn’t have a customer support line.
Bitcoin as a Currency
Bitcoin is great for currency but Bitcoin isn’t as practical as credit cards and Bitcoin has fees that can be high relative to credit card purchases, Bitcoin also lacks some flexibility like the ability to offer customer refunds on returns without losing too much money by refunding fiat currency instead of Bitcoin which is impractical with Bitcoin. Some exchanges have been known to shut down their operations without warning and with Bitcoin, there’s always a risk of loss from hackers or from sending Bitcoins to the wrong address – Bitcoin wallets are not immune from being hacked so it’s recommended you encrypt your wallet and keep only small sums of Bitcoins in hot storage for everyday spending.
Litecoin was created with transaction time faster than Bitcoin, Dogecoin was created with transaction time even faster than Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash was created because Bitcoin wasn’t scaling fast enough to keep up with demand. Bitcoin Gold is Bitcoin without the difficulty adjustment algorithm making Bitcoin easier for people with less powerful computers to mine in theory –
Conclusion
Bitcoin is decentralised but Bitcoin Gold still has some centralised aspects in its development process. Bitcoin Diamond was created to reduce storage demands with each new block containing 8 times as much data for each previous Bitcoin block which means that old nodes cannot verify the contents of newer blocks, Bitcoin Private was created with a larger block size relative to Bitcoin’s 1MB block size which reduces fees significantly while also increasing security by leveraging the use of zk-snarks allowing users to shield their transactions from public view.
