This thought suddenly hit me after watching tens of videos regarding the fork. Things like governance, scalability, monopolization, decentralization, fees, speed, network stability, development, mining...
But lets go back to basics. The fundamentals.
WHAT IS A BITCOIN?
A bitcoin is nothing but a bearer right to stamp information into a very persistent, widely available and tamper-proof database.
I am not religious but I thought about a religious metaphor:
God struck lightning on stone tablets and wrote the Ten Commandments. How much value would that have, assuming that there is one God and the laws are sacred, and everybody in the world knows the ten commandments, you cannot change what God wrote in those tablets.
WHERE DOES IT VALUE COME FROM?
It may come from its inherent functions (as described above), the network from it where its created from and operates within, or plain old speculation and subjective theory of value, things have value because people are the ones who ascribe value to them.
So if someone believe something has value, then presto, it is valuable because someone will want to possess it for him/herself or would exchange it for something else, provide a service or even use force or fraud in order to get it.
WHAT IS MONEY ?
Requirements for true money: (Source: GoldMoney.com)
-Medium of exchange
-Unit of account
-Portable
-Divisible
-Durable
-Fungible
-Store of value
All of these attributes are true to Gold, the most persistant money for thousands of years, formally stamped into coins 2700 years ago- even though essaying for purity and was/is tricky and is a form of friction for transactions.
In order to get more "bang for your buck", Gold coins were clipped, and even debased with other metals like Silver and Copper but the people caught on.
And yes, gold is NOT GOVERNED by anyone. Governments and/or Mining operations may affect the supply side yet informal miners can pop up almost everywhere and with small equipment at least get a few speckles/dust. There is no consortium that can affect the atomic composition of Gold.
So, regarding CURRENCY, all of these attributes are true except for the last one: it is not a store of value. Currency depreciates as time passes, things like soft commodities (cocoa/soy beans/other crops), Debt-based currency like Government issued currencies because of Sovereign inflation, etc.
I think its important for bitcoin -the coin and the system- to stay as original as the true form of what its creator intended- a form of "Digital Gold". So, in essence, Digital MONEY and NOT Digital Currency.
Bitcoin's main candidate to take the lead position from are: Gold, Government Registries and Notary Certifications.
First, since it has an ever reducing, limited and fixed supply (something not even Gold has), it makes for a perfect store of value through space and time.
Because people would like to register things for eternity when it comes to property rights. And when you register things with the Government, that also gives them the right to dispose of that asset in case they or someone else has some type of unfavorable judgement against you. It also gives them the right to tax it, because in some way they know about the asset and maintain the registry.
So people that buy bitcoin should do it in order to:
- Register assets, Contracts or Important things in the Blockchain and/or
- Use it as a long term store of value
Bitcoins shouldn't be so easily traded, transacted and/or given away. We all know the story of the Bitcoin Pizza Guy. Do you want to be the next Bitcoin Pizza/Weed/Amazon Card/VPN/Tipper guy?
For all other things like transactions, smart contracts, advanced functionalities and mass user adoption of networked non-sovereign currency should be done with Altcoins!
In the Feudal/Medieval age, those who held the land, had power. Then came the Industrial age, those that had the factories and the machines had the power. Now comes the Information Age. Those who have the DATA have the power.
By this I mean that BIG DATA and/or user data should be the new currency. Like when you post something on steem, you get steemit.
Internet of things Devices, Mobile phones and Social Networks know more about ourselves than sometimes even ourselves in our minds, because with artificial intelligence they can detect patterns and know how we behave, what we may or might not like, and all of that user generated data should be properly compensated to the users. In this ownership-less world we are owning less things and pay rather for access to something rather than owning it.
Becoming a networked species has empowered us as individuals but all is in vain unless we control and/or get compensated by the data we produce.
We have private corporations that have heavily invested in state of the art mining facilities in remote, inaccessible places. Others, where energy is cheap and plentiful and hardware and operation costs are the lowest. And some others offer cold storage solutions with the most paranoid physical and digital security systems in the safest jurisdictions.
Do we want to throw that away by merely converting bitcoin into an altcoin?
And still if all of this fails or you don't want/don't need to use it, you are still eligible run your own node, mine some satoshis to write on the blockchain, and hold your private keys, multisig with someone else, etc. These private companies are not taking away the inherent functionalities of bitcoin.
Fees are sky high! Transactions too slow! - my answer to that is that it is irrelevant, for what they provide and the underlying potential is more important than that. And if Miners cartelize fees they know its game over because a) Bitcoin is Open Source / b) The Lightning Network will be soon available - even if it takes 2 or 3 years to write on the chain, it will be a certain fact that a transaction will be written on a block eventually, even if it is passed through an off-chain channel, with the proper smart contract setup.
So, I insist that everybody involved in bitcoin should focus more on respecting and strengthen its true nature- a Digital Gold that lets you write something in an indestructible and tamper proof database. Its inherent scarcity, lack of availability and most importantly protocol stability/security will cement its place as a store of value hopefully for at least the next 3000 years.
Bitcoin should be the ultimate (semi) autonomous organization available. Leave governance out, stick to the principles, vision and mission, like the constitution. Let the Lightning Network and/or Altcoins do the rest of the jobs (massive user adoption/day-to-day transactions, currencies) and specialize in their own virtues.
Consider using the standard definitions and try to be sharp with them because others in the space will be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency
I like to define ideal money by stability of value whereas all the other points you listed can fall under that (ie without durability the value won't be stable).
Money is a measurement device and so what good is an unreliable measuring tool?
Stability of value is nonsense and non-e xistant. stability is an illusory practice by currency fixers like central banks. British pound fell 20% after Brexit. If you want to "stabilize value" you either form a basket of assets (diversify) or use derivatives (futures/options) to hedge. Value fluctuates always because people transact in an economy and create/destroy value.
Bitcoin is pretty much durable, the blockchain is very persistent.
If you want to see how reliable gold and Silver are in measuring value across 3000 years check pricedingold.com. Many goods and services that were offered in the past like a suit are still the same price in gold ounces/grams.
Bitcoin is very accurate in measuring value, up to 8 decimals.
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