Money and the ascent of Bitcoin

This post aims to answer the commonly asked question of whether bitcoin is money or not? To do so, we first provide a basic understanding of money: what money is, its importance, the process by which a good becomes money, the necessary characteristics for it to do so, and the main types of money that have historically existed.

Afterwards, we briefly describe Bitcoin and proceed to answer the core question of this post on whether it can be considered money or not.

Exchange and Money

Barter

Barter is the simplest form of exchange; it refers to the transfer of a good or service for another good or service. For this reason, it is typically considered direct exchange since no third object partakes of the transaction.

Barter requires cooperation between individuals and double coincidence of wants, i.e., that both parties have and are willing to exchange the good or service that the other party desires for the good or service that the other party possesses. Therefore, this form of exchange involves high transaction costs due to the opportunity cost incurred in finding an individual with whom to make the barter.

Indirect Exchange and money

These high transaction costs involved in the bartering process led to the emergence and prevalence of indirect exchange, i.e., a type of exchange in which a good or service is exchanged for a more widely acceptable item, which can be subsequently used to exchange for the goods or services desired. Therefore, for indirect exchange to occur, acquired goods must be more marketable than those surrendered. As the greater the marketability of a good, the more it will facilitate the final objective: the acquisition of the desired good or service.

In this way, in indirect exchange systems, the most marketable goods became a media of exchange, i.e., widely accepted. At the same time, as these goods became more widely accepted they further increased their marketability, bolstering their position as a medium of exchange. And, in turn, displaced those goods with lower marketability as means of exchange. Thus, leading to an inevitable scenario in which only a single good was universally employed as a medium of exchange: money.

Functions of money and their development

Therefore, we can define money as a generally accepted medium of exchange. Nonetheless, in several definitions of money, two secondary functions are attributed to it:

1. Store of value: It allows to transmit value through time and space.
2. Unit of account: It permits the valuation of goods and services.

Notwithstanding, for a good to become money, it is not necessary that it initially fulfills all the above functions. Indeed, goods are converted into money through a process by which they usually acquire some of these functions first, and then others are subsequently developed. In addition, the acquisition of new functions establishes synergies with the previous ones, reinforcing and consolidating their position.

For example, as the practice of using a good as a medium of exchange becomes widespread, people begin to hold it in preference to others, thus developing its function as a store of value and reinforcing its function as a medium of exchange. As a result, acceptability becomes more widespread leading economic agents to set prices using this good as a reference, thereby becoming a unit of account.

On the other hand, for a good whose value is relatively stable, there will be economic agents interested in buying it not to satisfy their most direct needs, but to maintain their future purchasing power. In this way, it will be accepted by a growing number of agents and, therefore, become a medium of exchange. And, thus, economic agents begin to treat it as a unit of account.

Properties of money

Nevertheless, for money to fulfill the above functions, it must meet various characteristic requirements:

1. Portability: It must be possible to transport or accumulate a large amount of value in a small amount of space, thereby facilitating transferability and hoarding.
2. Divisibility: Money should be divisible into different units to enable precise pricing and facilitate transactions.
3. Uniformity: It must be easy to identify units of money having the same value, enabling the counterparty receiving the money to promptly discern its value. Thus, facilitating its transferability.
4. Durability: It must remain intact over time without physically degrading or disappearing, therefore favoring its hoarding.

Types of Money

This subsection is merely for informational purposes and is not relevant for the understanding of the later sections of the post. Readers who wish to do so may omit it by jumping to Cryptography as a means of privacy and the emergence of Bitcoin section.

Throughout history, money has taken many forms. Although today fiat money is the norm, commodity money characterized much of earlier history.

Commodity money

Commodity money refers to real units of a specific commodity universally accepted as a counterpart for goods and services. Accordingly, commodity money has intrinsic value. Historically, a myriad of commodities has served at one time or another as a medium of exchange: animal skins, salt, barley, tea, gold, silver, tobacco, etc.

As economies became more complex, increasing the number of payments, commodity money became cumbersome. The quality of the metals was continually tested to ensure that they had not been tampered with or that they were not of a lower grade than assumed. On the other hand, agricultural products were relatively difficult to transport compared to metals because of their lower unit value. For this reason, two alternatives emerged that sought to solve these problems: coinage and representative money.

Coinage was a revolutionary invention that changed people's way of thought. Coinage seems to have first occurred in the Kingdom of Lydia around 600 BC when the first electrum coins were minted, a natural alloy of gold and silver. (recent findings suggest that coinage may have originated in China a few years earlier, near Guanzhuang in Henan province). Consequently, metallic coins are a type of commodity money, which is highly transportable and divisible. Moreover, minted coins contained a mark that guaranteed their weight and purity, i.e., their value, thus solving the uniformity problem that untreated metals faced.

Representative money

Representative money is money whose value does not derive from the value of the material it is made of, but from what it represents, since each monetary unit is supposed to represent a fixed quantity of something that has real value.

Some scholars have suggested that this form of money pre-dates coinage. In the ancient empires of Babylon, Egypt, China, and India temples, and palaces were considered inviolable, the former due to religious reasons and the latter due to the heavy protection they possessed. Therefore, they became safe places to store precious goods. Depositors received a certificate attesting deposits, which was a claim to the deposited goods. These certificates have been associated with multiple objects which were used in international trade, such as glazed scarabs in Egypt and cylindrical seals in Babylon and India. For this reason, these certificates are believed to have been used as a means of payment. Furthermore, due to the implementation of the gold standard, representative money occupied a central role during the 20th century.

Fiat money

Fiat money refers to money that has no intrinsic value and does not represent anything of intrinsic value. Public trust in both the issuer and the money itself is what drives its value. Such trust can be attributed, in most cases, to the confidence in the future stability of money's purchasing power.

Some authors have defined state-issued fiat money more critically as credit reimbursable for the payment of future tax obligations. And, therefore, associating fiat money as a way of using a government's liabilities as a store of value.

In 1971, following the end of the Bretton Woods agreement, we find the emergence of modern fiat money. Nevertheless, in the fifth century B.C in Carthage, we already find one of the earliest known forms of widespread use of fiat money. This money was a small piece of leather sealed by the state, which enveloped a mysterious substance that nobody knew its composition except the maker. Only by breaking the seal, its composition could be known. However, in the presence of this event, this money was considered worthless.

Recent studies have speculated that the mysterious substance was, in fact, tin or a compound of copper and tin and that the wrapping of this compound was not leather, but parchment.

Cryptography as a means of privacy and the emergence of Bitcoin

In the early '90s, a movement called cypherpunk emerged. It was a libertarian-minded group that wanted to promote cryptography as a means of consolidating and increasing freedom. Cypherpunks published two documents setting forth their goals and ideals: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. In them, they promoted cryptography to increase privacy and anonymity and decentralized software to make their censorship more difficult.

In 1998 Nick Szabo and Wei Dai independently envisioned how these ideas could be applied to money, referring to them as b-money and Bit gold, respectively. For this purpose, they both envisioned a scheme in which balances were stored in a distributed database, and the creation of money was done through the solution of a problem, whose solution is easy to verify.

In 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. In this paper, Nakamoto combined several previous inventions to create a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash.

At the beginning of 2009, Nakamoto started the peer-to-peer network. Moreover, he released the Bitcoin source code and compiled binaries on Sourceforge.

A concise overview of how bitcoin works

Each time a transaction occurs, the network records the Bitcoin address of the receiver and sender together with the amount transferred. This information is entered into the end of a ledger, called the blockchain. The blockchain is updated about every 10 minutes, and it is sent to every full node (computers connected to the Bitcoin network that verify all of the rules of Bitcoin).

Every transaction is encrypted with public-key cryptography and is verified by miners, computers connected to the Bitcoin network that secure the blockchain. The main objective of the miners is to fix the transaction history and prevent transaction fraud. This is done by solving a computer-intensive process by which individuals involved are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins.

Moreover, rewards given to miners are not always the same, yet they decline geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks. This pattern was established because it approximates the rate at which gold is extracted.

Is Bitcoin money?

Bitcoin meets all the necessary characteristics required to fulfill the functions that we previously stated that money must accomplish. As a digital asset, it is extensively portable, being its transferability and accumulation easy. In addition, it is deeply divisible: one bitcoin can be divided into 100 million units, commonly known as satoshis. Likewise, the digital nature of bitcoins makes them uniform and durable.

However, the fact that it meets the necessary characteristics to fulfill the functions of money does not imply that it fulfills them. Consequently, before we can say whether bitcoin is money or not, we must first analyze whether it fulfills these functions: (1) generally accepted medium of exchange, (2) store of value, and (3) unit of account.

1. Generally accepted medium of exchange: As of today, Bitcoin is not a generalized medium of exchange. We cannot go to the bakery next to our house and buy bread with it, nor can we go to a car dealership and buy a car with it.
2. Store of value: Bitcoin has historically had severe price volatility, which is not favoring its function as a store of value.
3. Unit of account: The limited adoption of bitcoin as a means of payment and its price volatility do not foster its use as a unit of account.

Thus, we can say that bitcoin currently cannot be considered money. Notwithstanding this, given the attractive properties of bitcoin, we might ask ourselves a slightly more complex question: is bitcoin in the process of becoming money?

Is bitcoin in the process of becoming money?

In the beginning, Bitcoin had a highly volatile price, as it was a new, virtually unknown asset that very few people owned. Nevertheless, Bitcoin was an asset with quite appealing monetary properties, coupled with a decentralized scheme and a finite money supply.

These properties led more and more economic agents to believe that bitcoin could become a future store of value and, thus, decided to acquire and hold bitcoin. Likewise, the growing demand for bitcoin led to an increase in its popularity, which drove more economic agents to reach this reasoning, thereby generating a virtuous circle.

This process led to a decrease in the downside volatility of Bitcoin, as can be seen in Figure 1, rendering Bitcoin more attractive as a future store of value. And, thus, attracted new investors such as Tesla, which announced a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase in the 10K, issued on February 8, 2021.

Figure 1. Bitcoin Downside Risk

Consequently, the adoption of Bitcoin as a store of value is becoming more and more widespread. Once a store of value is well established enough, i.e., many agents understand that this asset is a good store of value, they can start to demand it against the sale of their goods.

Despite this, not many companies do offer their goods or services in exchange for Bitcoin. However, if the popularity and the trend towards increased Bitcoin price stability are not affected mid-term, an increasing number of agents will accept Bitcoin as a means of payment.

Finally, if Bitcoin's function as a medium of exchange were to develop, it would increase its popularity and at the same time solidify its position as a store of value. Enabling future economic agents to start accounting with bitcoin, i.e., opening the possibility of development to the function of unit of account.

Therefore, we cannot say that bitcoin is in the process of becoming money, but we can say that Bitcoin is currently in the process of becoming a store of value. That said, whether such a function is widely recognized depends on the maintenance of the trend in which it is now present: further decrease in its downward volatility without giving up its current popularity. Moreover, the development of other functions as a generalized medium of exchange and unit of account is still a long way off and is conditional on the soundness of the development of the store of value function. In addition, even if at some point the store of value function is fully developed, the development of other functions will still remain highly uncertain.

Figure 2 summarizes the process by which Bitcoin could obtain the functions of money and thus become money. Take into account that this figure is an abstraction and does not consider various factors that could influence this process, such as external shocks that could have adverse effects and the time that each transition could take.

Figure 2. Bitcoin Monetization Process

Recently, Taleb has argued that Bitcoin can never be a store of value, since its fundamental value is 0. In the next subsection we address this criticism.

Against Taleb's argument of Bitcoin's impossibility to become a store of value

In the summer of 2021, Nassim Taleb published a short article entitled Bitcoin, currencies, and fragility, in which one of his arguments is that the value of Bitcoin is exactly 0 and, therefore, Bitcoin cannot be a store of value.

To argue this, Taleb relies on the premise that the fundamental value of any asset is equal to the sum of the present value of its expected future cash flows together with the terminal value that the asset will have.

Therefore, as bitcoin does not generate cash flows, i.e., the mere fact of owning bitcoin as such does not result in monetary payments, meaning that the value of bitcoin only depends on its terminal value.

Additionally, according to Taleb, Bitcoin is a technology. Therefore, Bitcoin, like any other technology, will eventually be replaced by another. As a result, its terminal value will be 0. Consequently, Taleb argues that since its fundamental value is 0, Bitcoin will not become money.

Nevertheless, in this argument, Taleb avoids two important points: (1) humans are not completely rational, and (2) Bitcoin is in the process of becoming a store of value as we saw in the previous subsection. Taleb may be right, bitcoin may not yet be a store of value as such. But, this does not imply that it cannot become one, as we have seen in the previous subsection.

The reason behind this is irrationality in the early stages of Bitcoin, at that time it could be valid to say that Bitcoin had a value of 0. Nevertheless, multiple economic agents were attracted by it, which, as we have seen in the previous section, led to the start of the development of Bitcoin's store of value function. As a result, many economic agents already consider Bitcoin as a store of value, while others expect it to become one in the near future.

Such a fact is critical since assets that act as a store of value provide the holder with a service: the transfer of value in space and time. Consequently, as Bitcoin is in the process of developing its store-of-value function, this implies that the expected flows of bitcoin are no longer zero, but the implicit value of this service. Therefore, Bitcoin's fundamental value should be greater than 0.

Therefore, in the case of Bitcoin, we face an instance in which a collective irrationality has endowed this asset with a value that a priori it should not have. Nevertheless, as part of this process, the store of value property has begun to develop, which justifies that this asset has value, and, at the same time, this value allows it to act as a store of value.

Key Takeaways

• Money can be defined as a generally accepted medium of exchange.
• Ideally, money should also act as a store of value and a unit of account.
• Thus money has three main functions: (1) generally accepted medium of exchange, (2) store of value, (3) unit of account.
• A good becomes money through a process by which it usually acquires some of these functions first, and then others are subsequently developed.
• Not all goods can become money. They must meet specific characteristics to fulfill these functions: (1) Portability, (2) Divisibility, (3) Uniformity, and (4) Durability.
• Bitcoin was born in 2008 as a revolutionary means of payment since it was decentralized and pseudo-anonymous.
• Bitcoin has a known and finite monetary supply. Furthermore, it meets all the specific characteristics that money should fulfill: it is portable, divisible, uniform, and durable.
• Bitcoin does not currently serve any of the functions that money should have: it is not used as a general means of payment, price volatility does not favor it as a store of value, and because of the preceding points, it is not used as a unit of account.
• Therefore, Bitcoin cannot currently be considered money.
• Despite this, Bitcoin is in the process of becoming a store of value, due to a downward trend in its volatility that has led more and more economic agents to believe that its conversion to a store of value is possible in the near future and, in turn, has solidified its position.
• The beginning of the development of Bitcoin as a store of value arises from an irrationality of origin.
• If the current trend is not affected by external shocks, Bitcoin is likely to become a store of value in the near future.
• This would lead more economic agents to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment and thus open the way for the development of its function as a generalized means of payment.

Malaysia Blockchain Month (MBM2021) recap videos for WEEK 1 to 3

Malaysia Blockchain Month (MBM2021)

Discord Server [https://discord.gg/GgWFfj4Mcb]

#recap #mbm2021

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WEEK 1 RECAP - MALAYSIA BLOCKCHAIN WEEK

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23 Aug 2021 MONDAY

LUNO MALAYSIA + SINEGY + TOKENIZE MALAYSIA

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4607895179244963

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24 Aug 2021 TUESDAY

FENNEL CAPITAL + WETOKENIZE

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/posts/4611011718933309/

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25 Aug 2021 WEDNESDAY

TORUM

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4613764841991330/

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26 Aug 2021 THURSDAY

IIB VENTURES + BLOCKLIME

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4616884338346047/

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27 Aug 2021 FRIDAY

MIGHT + FINTECH ASSOCIATION OF MALAYSIA (FAOM) + ACCESS BLOCKCHAIN ASSOCIATION MALAYSIA (ABAM)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4619599354741212/

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WEEK 2 RECAP - DEFI WEEK

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30 Aug 2021 MONDAY

AAVE

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4620598064641341/

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31 Aug 2021 TUESDAY

QiDAO

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4629690740398740/

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1 SEPT 2021, WEDNESDAY

Impossible Finance

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4634748669892947/

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2 SEPT 2021, THURSDAY

Jason from Bitcoin Malaysia Events (BME)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4638320496202431/

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3 SEPT 2021, FRIDAY

Zapper.fi

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4641532242547923/

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WEEK 3 RECAP - NFT WEEK

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6 SEPT 2021, MONDAY

Red Hongyi

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4650558074978673/

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7 SEPT 2021, TUESDAY

Aavegotchi

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4651569308210883/

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8 SEPT 2021, WEDNESDAY

Ramon Govea, Creative Director @ Myth Division

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4654618231239324/

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9 SEPT 2021, THURSDAY

Benjamin Rameau, Jenny DAO

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4657633704271110/

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10 SEPT 2021, FRIDAY

Imperium Universe - [https://imperiumuniverse.xyz]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BitcoinMalaysia/permalink/4661338077234006/

We built something, crankspark.io, #NixonOnCrypto

Hey all,

We are happy to announce the launch of crankspark.io . We are a small group of developers who are enthusiastic about crypto and Solana. Our experience is primarily in the mobile space and AI and we want to bring our passions to the blockchain.

Most projects seem to pump a community before they have anything to offer, but we decided to take the opposite approach for better or worse.

We have already created our first 10k blind mint NFT. It is live right now on our site for 0.5 SOL per mint.

​

#NixonOnCrypto

The 50 year anniversary of Nixon moving us off the gold standard seemed like an appropriate NFT to launch a new crypto dev shop. Its a satirical look back on the multitude of important events that took place during Nixon's administration coupled with Solana and Bitcoin themes.

​

#NixonOnCrypto

You will find Nixon is Bullish AF on Solana and the future of crypto. So are we! Thanks.

List of Today's and Tomorrow's Upcoming Events

I will be bringing you upcoming events/announcements every day. If you want improvements to this post, please mention /u/houseme in the comments. We will make improvements based on your feedback.

 

https://kryptocal.com | /r/kryptocal | Android | iOS | Telegram Interactive Bot (add cryptocalapp_bot) | Telegram Channel @kryptocal

 

ADD AN EVENT

If you like an event to be added, click Submit Event, and we will do the rest.

 

NEXT DAY UPCOMING EVENTS

---

 

General

Nexus(NXS)	Nexus Core v5.0.4 Release	September 10, 2021
aelf(ELF)	Turkish AMA	September 10, 2021
Stox(STX)	Demo Day: NFTs & Web3	September 10, 2021
Stox(STX)	WazirX Giveaway	September 10, 2021
Stox(STX)	PoX Deep Dive	September 10, 2021
Stox(STX)	Stacks Turkey Competition	September 10, 2021
Donationcoin(DON)	Automated Farmer Onboard	September 10, 2021
General Event(CRYPTO)	Bitcoin Day Omaha	September 10, 2021
Sparkpoint(SRK)	New Staking Pools	September 10, 2021
FIO Protocol(FIO)	Telegram AMA w/Gate.io	September 10, 2021
API3(API3)	AMA	September 10, 2021
Bitcicoin(BITCI)	List RC Celta de Vigo	September 10, 2021
Alien Worlds(TLM)	TKO AMA with TLM	September 10, 2021
Melalie(MEL)	Telegram AMA	September 10, 2021
Less Network(LESS)	LessPad Polygon Chain	September 10, 2021
Less Network(LESS)	LessPad Binance SmarChain	September 10, 2021
Pitbull(PIT)	PitLottery Launch	September 10, 2021
Bull Run Finance(BR)	BR on Five Farms	September 10, 2021
Yield Guild Games(YGG)	AMA with Influence	September 10, 2021
Fanadise(FAN)	Community Burning	September 10, 2021
BlackHat Coin(BLKC)	Telegram AMA	September 10, 2021
hi Dollar(HI)	AMA	September 10, 2021
Minimals(MMS)	50B Token Burn	September 10, 2021
CoPuppy(CP)	Telegram AMA	September 10, 2021
Star Atlas(ATLAS)	Town Hall & AMA	September 10, 2021
Binance Smart Chain Girl(BSCGIRL)	NFT Marketplace Release	September 10, 2021
Bitcicoin(BITCI)	List MotoGP Fan Token	September 11, 2021
Oddz(ODDZ)	AMA with Founder	September 11, 2021

 

Software/Platforms

PIVX(PIVX)	Wallet Upgrade Deadline	September 10, 2021
Bimp Finance(BIMP)	Stream DApp Beta Release	September 10, 2021

 

Exchanges

Pillar(PLR)	BitGlobal Listing	September 10, 2021
iExec RLC(RLC)	KuCoin Listing	September 10, 2021
Dvision Network(DVI)	Gate.io Listing	September 10, 2021
DBX(DBX)	BitMart Listing	September 10, 2021
Privapp Network(BPRIVA)	LBank Listing	September 10, 2021
EQIFi(EQX)	KuCoin Listing	September 10, 2021
BUMooN(BUMN)	LBank Listing	September 10, 2021
Trava Finance(TRAVA)	BitMart Listing	September 10, 2021

 

Partnerships

Sovereign Hero(HERO)	New Official Partner	September 10, 2021

 

 

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was the first leader to take the decision: "Adopt Bitcoin as an official Currency". +5 National Unrest from an ensuing event.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/el-salvador-officially-adopts-bitcoin-as-legal-tender/

[WTS] Low Premium, Prototypes, General Stock

Verification

Details below, please let me know if you see any errors. If the price seems too good to be true, it’s a mistake and if it seems too high let me know.

I'm looking for feedback from people. I'm starting to hear "I really liked that piece" for some things that I didn't think people enjoyed. Sometimes its hard to gauge. So if you want to see more of something let me know.

***Shipping alert for new buyers - I ship orders once a week. I do this for many reasons, most importantly to ensure I have adequate time to pack all orders safely. Proper packing is the only real insurance we have. Anyone that has received a package from would attest to the thoroughness of my packaging.

Graphite/Milled Bars - Videos are just an example, All pieces are going to be unique in some way. I will not and cannot take the time to take and list individual videos for the low premium bars. My goal is to give you all a cooler option for stacking than regular old generic rounds.

25 gram Textured Round - https://imgur.com/HEeY282 - $25 each

250 g Bar - $225 each - https://imgur.com/FqiIFKQ

100 g Bar - $95 each - https://imgur.com/7LH8ZLK

2 ozt Round - $59 each - https://imgur.com/7YzbP8d

2 ozt Textured Round - $59 each https://imgur.com/cMzXPDB - https://imgur.com/DTcnjLI

5 ozt Bar - $140 each - https://imgur.com/3XtDDjX

-Prototypes

Ryuk Bar - 2.1 ozt - $85 each

Phoenix Bar - 1.8 ozt - $75 each

Cobra Kai (Fits in, and comes with ATB Capsule) - 5.1 ozt - $210 each

Cog Tag (Fits in, and comes with ATB Capsule) - 3.9 ozt - $170 each

-General Stock Cast Items

Mythosaur Beskar Bar - 2 ozt - $85 each

Mythosaur Beskar Round - 1.1 ozt - $50 each

Jedi Beskar - 1 ozt - $50 each

Imperial Beskar - 1 ozt - $50 each

-JSB Fractional

(10) JSB Cast Gram - $2.50 each

(9) JSB Honeycomb Cast Gram - $2.50 each

Other Items

(12) JSB Display Stand - $3 each (seen in verification pics)

Shipments on this sale will be USPS first class for $5 or priority for $8.

Payment by PPFF, Zelle, Venmo, Bitcoin, and ETH

Prices are subject to change at any time due to market fluctuations and in the event of a listing error or update.

Feedback – The easiest way to get feedback is to post a link to your comment on this WTS once received. This allows me to easily navigate there while on mobile

Cryptocurrency and the gaming industry, in my opinion, are a perfect combination.

Bitcoins are digital currencies, allowing gamers to conduct transactions using digital currencies. There is no doubt that every gamer and game developer loves the digital world.

In addition, platforms like OkLetsPlay, which allows esport events and mobile, PC, and browser games and will reward online gamers with cryptocurrency, are crucial in combining the two.

It's amazing to see how defi and gamefi are working together to expand their respective businesses.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Rollercoin is an online bitcoin mining simulator in which you can mine real bitcoins for free without paying for electricity - get a 1000 satoshi now!

Rollercoin is a game that you compete with your friends, who will have a bigger farm to mine bitcoin, ethereum or dogecoin. Аll you have to do is register and customize your avatar, then you're ready to start the race.

The best part is that this game does not require depositing money to grow your farm, it is enough to play games, raise enough money and buy your first miner.

Once you have collected the sufficient minimum amount (about 4-6$) you can withdraw your money to your personal wallet. You can take 1000 satoshi which will help for the development of your farm. They are equal to 0.00001 BTC.

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

It is now possible to progress faster with the new in the game "Event Pass", if you do not want to give real money, there are also free prizes such as, acceleration of production by 1 Ph / s for 1 day and 3 days, as well as 2 Ph / s for 7 days and other gifts.

If you wish, you can develop your mining farm with real money, this is optional!

1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

There are also daily offers that offer a limited series of miners, as well as discounts for miners up to 60%.

Hint:

At Rollercoin you will never mine at a loss because you will not pay for electricity! The game is made you always mine to profit!

If you decide to invest the money you earn in miners, you will start earning more.

The cheapest miner costs only 2.6 RLT which is 2.6$.

Notes on using Rollercoin

• All purchases from the site require RLT, which is Rollercoin's own cryptocurrency. There are currently no means of purchasing RLT with real cash (this also applies to other cryptos!). You either must mine them from your "PC" or exchange them via funds from your Rollercoin wallet.

• You may withdraw your crypto from the site once it reaches the required quota, or deposit them to a different currency. You cannot, however, deposit any crypto from outside Rollercoin.

• The cooldown timer after playing the game will pause at any point you opened a tab or another browser to view, and will resume once you click on the site.

• You can only split power from mining crypto once every 12 hours.

• You must win at least one game per day to maintain the current level of your "PC", otherwise it will go back to the lowest level and with it your mining power.

• The more games you win, the more difficult it is, and the longer the cooldown. On the flipside, you get a bigger score which adds to your mining power.

• You can bring down the difficulty of any game by simply not playing them for awhile. Use this to diversify the games you play and earn as much mining power as possible.

• The higher your mining power, the more crypto you can get from each completed block.

• When starting off, switch all mining power to RLT ASAP and win 150 games. This lets you complete most of the Weekly Event quests and have power to gain enough RLT to purchase a miner within a few days (cheapest one as of this writing is 2.6 RLT).

• The last part of the Event Quest get additional XP requires you invite one person to sign up to Rollercoin. That person gets 1000 Satoshi free upon sign-up. 1000 FREE SATOSHI HERE

• Cryptonoid provides the highest score (thus the biggest mining power gain), followed by Dr. Hamster, and Token Blaster. Coin Flip gives the lowest score followed by Coin Click and Coin Match.

Cardano will allow us to be bankless

The narrative of crypto can be summarized by the following statement: Unbank the banked and bank the unbanked. Well, let’s have a realistic look at the topic.

Power goes hand in hand with controlling money

Historically, governments have the biggest power in their countries. Countries usually have central banks and a lot of commercial banks. Central banks are responsible for monetary policy while commercial banks serve people and businesses. Governments and banks should be to some extent independent. There are always people in leadership positions of institutions and they naturally strive to have power. Within the last few decades, new influential players slowly appeared. Due to the internet and many technological advancements, big IT companies have become very strong international entities. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Alibaba, and many others are international and have more information about people than governments have. How did it happen? Well, the fact that the internet is a global network allowed locally successful companies to become global players quite fast. While the decision power of governments is mostly limited to their countries, big IT companies have begun to control literally the whole world. As you could probably hear, information is the gold of the new era. These companies know well how to commercialize information. Now, we are in a situation when social media are accused of influencing the election of the US president, they can legally censor tweets of politicians, or even try to create their own global currencies. Facebook still works on the Libra project and it is possible that we will see it in some form. We can observe a quiet struggle for power between governments, banks, and big IT companies.

The most important message from the previous paragraph is that technological advancement can blunt the power of governments and give advantages to owners of technologies. Cryptocurrencies can be perceived as a technological invention that stepped in into the struggle for power. In contrast to governments, banks, and big IT companies, cryptocurrencies are naturally decentralized. We stated in the beginning, that power goes hand in hand with controlling money. Does it mean that when we begin to use decentralized money then nobody will have power? No. Some people and entities will always struggle to usurp power. Thus, when they want to usurp power, they will need to somehow control cryptocurrencies. Banks are definitely entities that will struggle to control money regardless of whether it is fiat money, Central bank digital currency (CBDC), or cryptocurrencies.

Are currently commercial banks really threatened by cryptocurrencies?

Let’s have a look at the current situation. The most adopted cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. Commercial banks decided to resell Bitcoin to big investors. It means that they have created cryptocurrency custody services. For banks, Bitcoin is just a new business and also investment opportunity. Is it good or bad? Both. It is great that big companies buy bitcoins as a hedge against printing money. The narrative about a new digital gold slowly becomes the reality and it can be expected that others will join the club. There is one negative aspect of that, though. Rich players buy bitcoins to ensure that they will stay rich. A very small group of early adopters that holds bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies now can maybe become rich as well. The negative aspect is that bitcoins will become very expensive for the majority of people on the planet if they are not expensive already. Thus, the majority will have basically no reason to join the club. People generally do not care about hedging. They do not buy gold since many of them do not understand the mechanics behind scarcity and demand in turbulent times. By some research, approximately only 15 % of the population in the USA holds gold. Gold is not a currency and it is not even used to back fiat currencies. In the case that Bitcoin will become a new publicly accepted digital gold, it can remain a digital hedge forever without the ability to become a stable global currency. It is actually difficult if not impossible to have a scarce resource and currency in one single asset. Let’s have a look into the past. The U.S. effectively abandoned the gold standard in 1933 as the Great Depression hit. Faced with mounting unemployment and spiraling deflation, the U.S. government found that it is unable to stimulate the economy. To deter people from cashing in deposits and depleting the gold supply, the U.S. and other governments had to keep interest rates high, but that made it too expensive for people and businesses to borrow. So in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt cut the dollar’s ties with gold, allowing the government to pump money into the economy and lower interest rates. The United States followed the gold standard until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the government would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value. Thus the gold standard was completely abandoned. Some events require radical solutions and the U.S. was not probably has a better chance to solve it differently. Currency needs to be stable and it is hard to predict whether the volatility of Bitcoin will be similarly stable as current currencies. We are rather skeptical for a variety of reasons. It is difficult to predict the future but one thing is certain. Cryptocurrencies will bring changes in society and it is already visible. Attempts to create CBDC are just a first step in searching for solutions to the current situation. Anyway, if you believe in the collapse of fiat currencies then you need to realize that the economies of many countries will be collapsing as well and all cryptocurrencies can be extremely volatile for a long time. Bitcoin, together with all other cryptocurrencies, is not able to solve the global economic collapse that would come within let’s say within 5 years. It is great to see that people and even big investors perceive Bitcoin as a hedge in bad times. On the other hand, there will come good times when it is smart to sell gold or bitcoins and invest money at the beginning of a new cycle. If you have a look at the past you will find that gold is volatile and respects economic cycles. It is very probable that Bitcoin will behave similarly in the future.

Commercial banks are not threatened by the existence of gold so we can conclude that they are not threatened by Bitcoin as well. It is not going to change until the majority of people will start using alternatives to fiat currencies. Such an alternative must be stable. The business of commercial banks is about the currency that is used by the majority. A commercial bank can offer you many services like opening a standard or business account, opening a savings account, taking different types of loans (short-term, long-term, or business loans), you can insure yourself or your property. Cryptocurrency must be able to disrupt these services to compete with banks. The stability of currencies is simply the most important attribute of the current fiat currencies from the point of people. Other important attributes are the settlement time and transaction fees. People are used to paying by payment cards. It is fast and cheap. Moreover, paying by card provides higher privacy than Bitcoin. Merchants are not able to see how much payees have on their accounts. Currently, some people use payment cards that allow them to pay by crypto. In reality, however, fiat currencies are used. Card providers just offer a kind of custody service for users’ cryptocurrencies. Users basically pay by fiat currencies and the provider charges them later via slow crypto transactions. This, again, does not threaten banks. It is probable that they will offer similar crypto payment cards to people if it goes mainstream. So it is rather a new business opportunity for them. The advantage would be that it would be nice protection against printing money. On the other hand, decentralization would suffer a lot regarding the censorship-resistance ability and as we said, the major problem is the volatility. Cryptocurrencies will never succeed in competing with commercial banks if the same or better abilities like current currencies are not delivered. It would be nice to have money that does not suffer from inflation but it is a secondary requirement for the majority of people. Usage in the real-life will always be in the first place.

How can commercial banks be substituted realistically?

The reality is that commercial banks can only be threatened by the decisions of people. People must decide to close their accounts and do not use bank services. The change is not actually about banks but about people. It is necessary to have alternatives that would be able to substitute fiat currencies and bank services. Moreover, there must be significant and visible advantages that persuade people to use it. The only possible way is to create stable coins, scalable decentralized networks, global service for identity management, and allow people to make a contract.

Bitcoin can be understood as a global central bank since the strongest feature is the fixed and unchangeable monetary policy. The Bitcoin transaction network is not able to compete with traditional payment solutions and even if it was the case then it would be a competitor only to these payment networks but not to banks. Luckily, the ability to create a monetary system with predefined features and attributes is not a privilege of Bitcoin. Cardano can have it as well as other projects. It does not matter whether we have 21M bitcoins or 45B ADA coins. Technologically, they are just numbers and we do not even know whether it is smart to have forever capped the maximum coins that will be emitted. It would be another topic for another article. What really matters, is the building of alternatives that will be attractive to users. Only higher adoption can cause a major change in society. Cryptocurrencies in the hands of minorities or big investors are nice but with low transformative power.

To compete with traditional banks, we need to surround the digital monetary policy systems with the abilities of payment systems and commercial banks. In other words, we need to surround Bitcoin and/or Cardano with abilities like fast and cheap transaction systems, the stability of the means of exchange, systems for identity management, loaning, insurance, ‘reading’ the real world (Oracles), etc. We need innovations in all these areas. The Conservative approach to innovations, as we can see in the case of Bitcoin development, is premature. As we said, it is a great and unique monetary system but unfortunately nothing else. Without a decentralized infrastructure, it can be easily surrounded by traditional banks and it is what we actually see. The real economy needs transactions and bank services. Cardano is better positioned to provide these abilities than Bitcoin. The team behind Cardano is big, experienced, and strong. They will innovate and build the infrastructure until the ultimate goal is delivered. It is exactly what we needed. We are not at the point that we could say that we have done it. The opposite is true. We will always need to innovate and maintain a high level of decentralization.

To put it simply, only the combination of stable coins and smart contracts can actually compete with traditional commercial banks. We will need more services like Oracles to interconnect the digital and physical worlds and a system for identity management. The most important thing is actually a stable currency. We can already observe that USDT (Tether) is a very successful project. We need something like that but without the need to collateralize it by physical US dollars. We rather need something like an algorithmic digital currency that is collateralized by other digital assets. As we have already mentioned, Facebook works on the Libra project. Libra should be collateralized by a basket of global currencies and maybe other assets like stocks or bonds. Thus, stability could be achieved even during money printing. It would be really nice to create a digital stable currency that would be collateralized only by digital assets like BTC or ADA. Maybe other tokenized assets could be used. There are basically two questions regarding stable coins. Which assets to use as collateral and what to use to stabilize the currency. Cryptocurrencies are fully digitalized assets so they are great candidates for collateralization. They are volatile and priced by fiat currencies. Thus, they cannot be used directly 1:1. It is necessary to involve some stabilization mechanism. Should it be a basket of stable global currencies as in the case of Libra? Should it rather be some value deduced from the ability to buy the same amount of goods over time? Or, can it be a combination of more inputs? These are tough questions and we will probably see many attempts in the future.

Once we have a stable digital currency the rest will be much easier. It will be relatively easy to create modern bank services via Cardano smart contracts. Bank services are basically about conditions between a bank and people that are written and signed in a paper contract. Replacing the paper contract with a digital smart contract is a relatively easy task. Loaning and insurance industries can be easily disrupted. Cardano will be connected with Atala Prism which is a system developed by IOG for working with digital identity. People can have a global decentralized digital identity. Oracles try to resolve connections between the real world and the digital world. Information about the world is nowadays mostly in databases anyway so the connection between Cardano and databases, or replacing traditional databases with private/public blockchain solutions, is a simple task.

The digitalization of the world is a continuous process. Some people are skeptical of the idea that it is possible to connect these two worlds. In our view, we need to continue with innovations if we want to use digital currencies. The only reason why gold is not able to provide the same service as it could in the past is the fact that the world is more globalized and digitized. Gold is still scarce and you can buy it to hedge against economic turbulences. Gold has not changed and it is the same for thousands of years. What has actually changed are the needs of humans and the ability to create digital scarcity. The advantage of cryptocurrencies is the fact that it is more suitable for usage in the digital world. That is the only reason why gold can possibly be less relevant in the future. Digital scarcity can be easily replicated. Why is the digital scarcity of Bitcoin more relevant than the scarcity of Cardano? It is just about adoption and the adoption is about real usage within the digital world. If Cardano is able to substitute commercial banks then the ADA scarcity will be naturally relevant. Can we digitize a paper agreement between a bank and a people? If yes then we will improve the abilities of the digital world and at the same time, make paper agreements obsolete. In other words, we will improve digitalization.

Conclusion

The fastest way to disrupt banks would be to connect the effort of all teams in the crypto space. The goal is the same for all projects. We want to decentralize the monetary system, bank services, and also other digital services. It is a pity that we can see toxicity and rivalry between crypto projects. The joined effort would make more sense. Bitcoin as a monetary system, with other PoS networks like Cardano providing necessary functionalities and services that would increase usability, would be a big win. Anyway, Cardano can provide abilities for the substitution of both central and commercial banks. It does not mean that traditional banks will disappear. People will have to choose what they want and we all know that their opinion is shaped by governments and social media. The existence of a better alternative does not mean that the alternative is adopted by the majority. Banks already know that the change is coming and CBDC can be perceived as the reaction of central banks to cryptocurrencies. It means that cryptocurrencies have already succeeded and their influence will just rise. Many crypto projects are already too big to fail. Now, it is not about one single winner that will take all. There will definitely be more winners and we can just guess which functionalities and services will be required by people. In our view, Cardano has the best prerequisites to allow us to be bankless.

Three countries to join the crypto community

Lately we have been following the events in El Salvador. Now it has officially legalized bitcoin. Probably this country showed the most straightforward way in dealing with bitcoin and cryptocurrency. However, this is not the only one that has made some moves recently. Panama introduced a bill "Crypto Law: Making Panama Compatible with the digital economy, blockchain, crypto assets, and the internet". And Ukraine adopted a draft law which legalizes and regulates cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. It is now legal to exchange and store crypto, but payments are not allowed.
The representatives of these countries are speaking about the fact that adopting crypto at least on some levels attracts business and money to the country. Moreover, there is another opinion that suggests that having crypto makes the country less dependent on the U.S. dollar.
What else can motivate countries to join? Will this motivation conquer the fear of losing control over the financial sector?

Three countries to join the crypto community

Lately we have been following the events in El Salvador. Now it has officially legalized bitcoin. Probably this country showed the most straightforward way in dealing with bitcoin and cryptocurrency. However, this is not the only one that has made some moves recently. Panama introduced a bill "Crypto Law: Making Panama Compatible with the digital economy, blockchain, crypto assets, and the internet". And Ukraine adopted a draft law which legalizes and regulates cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. It is now legal to exchange and store crypto, but payments are not allowed.
The representatives of these countries are speaking about the fact that adopting crypto at least on some levels attracts business and money to the country. Moreover, there is another opinion that suggests that having crypto makes the country less dependent on the U.S. dollar.
What else can motivate countries to join? Will this motivation conquer the fear of losing control over the financial sector?

Three countries to join the crypto community

Lately we have been following the events in El Salvador. Now it has officially legalized bitcoin. Probably this country showed the most straightforward way in dealing with bitcoin and cryptocurrency. However, this is not the only one that has made some moves recently. Panama introduced a bill "Crypto Law: Making Panama Compatible with the digital economy, blockchain, crypto assets, and the internet". And Ukraine adopted a draft law which legalizes and regulates cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. It is now legal to exchange and store crypto, but payments are not allowed.
The representatives of these countries are speaking about the fact that adopting crypto at least on some levels attracts business and money to the country. Moreover, there is another opinion that suggests that having crypto makes the country less dependent on the U.S. dollar.
What else can motivate countries to join? Will this motivation conquer the fear of losing control over the financial sector?

Why Bitcoin?

A couple of weeks ago, I started studying at the 3D graphics course from the Isaev Workshop - Motion Design V3. 0.The purpose of this course is to go through all the stages of creating a motion-style commercial and make a full-fledged work for my portfolio.

At the first stage, I received a technical task — to create a cool motion video on the topic I chose. I took "Bitcoin"as the topic. Why Bitcoin? I'll tell you more now…

​

My symbol of freedom

A little background

Most recently, I worked for hire 2/2 at a job that has nothing to do with design. And in my free time, I studied motion design using tutorials from YouTube, made small orders from Yandex. design services — but all this brought only pennies.

One fine evening, a friend calls me, whom I haven't seen for a long time... We met and she told me about a project where you can get passive income. This project is connected with investing in cryptocurrency, she spoke about the opportunities that it gives and outlined the development prospects in colors. At that moment, I immediately cut off this idea, referring to the fact that I now have absolutely no free money to invest.

But this idea stuck in my head, as it echoed my thoughts about investing — I understood that this was the only way to get out of this squirrel wheel in which I was. I started looking for relevant information about this project in particular. I reviewed a lot of different videos on this topic and most of all I liked how Vladimir Ruzanov talks about ways to get passive income, I felt confidence in him personally, as he talked about everything without "rose-colored glasses", talked about all the pros and cons, about risks and new opportunities.

I found a detailed analysis of many projects on his channel and chose a couple of them for myself. I began to buy cryptocurrency a little every month and invest. He talked about new opportunities to colleagues, friends and relatives. Many listened with disbelief, someone was interested, and someone began to do the same as me — in particular, my family members, to whom I told the most about the new (for me) world of cryptocurrencies.

In general, I left my hired job and now I can only do what my heart is for-I study motion design, because I can just live on the interest from investments. For me, Bitcoin is a symbol of new opportunities and financial freedom that investing in cryptocurrency gives.

I'm making a fan video on the topic "Bitcoin"

The creation of the video begins art direction to work out the idea and style of the future video. Then there is previsualization and blocking, so that you can roughly understand how good the idea is in dynamics. And then the content, the implementation of the style and modeling. Then materials, lighting, effects, compositing.

Working through the idea, I associatively chose the key images for the video series:

1. the actual coin (as bitcoin is often symbolically depicted)
2. a bull + a bear (in stock exchange slang, traders trying to make money on the growth of the market are "bulls" and on the fall — "bears")
3. rocket (often used as an illustration of the rise in the price of an asset)
4. mask Anonymous (anonymity of crypto transactions)
5. cubes in motion (blockchain and everything related to it)
6. a statue of Elon Musk that will break (why is he? - this is a reference to market manipulators - Ilon's tweets first influenced the growth of the BTC price, and then its sharp collapse by 60% - May 19, 2021 )

Preliminary visualization of one of the scenes

Previsualization or blocking

At this stage, it was important to make all the scenes from primitives and animate them and the camera movement in each scene in order to understand and see the future dynamics in the video. Special attention had to be paid to the movement of objects and the camera in the frame, to work out the composition.

To make everything look good, it was important not to allow pauses in the movement of objects and the camera, so that there was no drawdown in dynamics. Also, think about transitions from one scene to another, this is done by moving objects, adjusting the speed of movement. It is important to follow the viewer's gaze-to direct it so that one scene seamlessly connects with another. To achieve this effect, the editing transition is made at the peak of the object's speed in the frame, if this movement is at the end of the frame, the object should continue moving with the same acceleration in the next frame.

The dynamics of movement in the frame should correspond to the music track, the change of scenes occurs mainly under the beats in the music, it is good when the speed of movement of objects changes with a change in the tempo of the music.

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Working with on

Working with assets

An asset is a set of resources that you can use in your project, in this case, 3d models.

The current stage of work on the project consists in introducing 3d models into scenes instead of previously animated primitives, simulations are also being worked out, if they are in the project.

In the process of searching for suitable assets, we had to work hard to find high-quality models that will be combined with each other, forming a stylistic unity. For example, I have been looking for a bear model for a long time, which would be combined in style with a bull.

When working on animation, there were difficulties in working out, I set up graphs of the speed of movement of objects for a long time, I did not like a lot of things as it turns out. Of course, when the blocks from the primitives were replaced, it became much more interesting for me myself, as everything began to come to life and approach the final form. I applied the selected color scheme to the objects so that the overall color and how everything fits together were visible.

In the video, in addition to 3d graphics, there will also be fragments of the footage integrated into the scenes. When cutting out objects from the video, we had to manually modify the sections at the edges so that they would not "shake", since automatic tools were not ideal, the option with neural network processing showed even worse results.

At the next stage, I will already work with textures and set the light in the scenes, adjust the visualization. Work on the video continues, I will keep you informed of events.

Cardano and Bitcoin can coexist and support each other

Cryptocurrencies are a very competitive environment and the question is which projects will exist in the next 10 years. This will be decided mainly by the users who adopt the projects and start using them in real life. Let’s take a look at how Cardano and Bitcoin compete and how they can complement each other.

The battle for the best cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies came into the world with the idea of becoming state-independent money. Bitcoin was the first successful cryptocurrency, and many other similar projects followed. For example, Litecoin, which is a typical Bitcoin clone with slightly altered characteristics. You could say that the projects fought among themselves to see which one was the better currency. However, this battle never really happened in a big way. In practice, we can even see Litecoin being used more than Bitcoin, as it has cheaper and faster transactions. So is Litecoin a better cryptocurrency than Bitcoin? It’s impossible to say. In terms of adoption, Bitcoin clearly leads despite having the slowest and most expensive transactions in the entire cryptocurrency space. The battle for the best cryptocurrency is not decided by people and real-world usage daily, but by institutional investors and companies that invest in individual projects. We see a battle there at the market capitalization level. In other words, the competition is to find the best long-term investment.

To some extent, the influence of institutions can be seen as distorting the competition for the best cryptocurrency. Indeed, once speculation on future appreciation is made, the need to use cryptocurrencies for payments goes by the wayside. Most people buy and sell cryptocurrencies rather than pay with them. So it doesn’t really matter what technological features each project has. Litecoin is better suited for payments because it has faster and cheaper transactions. However, because it has lost the battle on the market capitalization level, interest in this project is slowly waning.

Litecoin and other Bitcoin clones have fallen out of the top 10 and are slowly being replaced by smart contract platforms using PoS consensus. How can we interpret this? As well as institutional investors, users are choosing to invest in projects that are not Bitcoin clones and offer something more than just increased scalability. This is why smart contract platforms and projects that use a different consensus than PoW are coming to the fore. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) offers possibilities that Bitcoin cannot. Smart Contract platforms enable the creation of stable coins and decentralized applications. In addition, tokens can be issued on them. Everything is naturally instantly available worldwide. Nothing like this existed before. Smart contract platforms, such as Cardano, represent a global independent infrastructure with completely different characteristics than traditional IT giants. The potential of a public blockchain is huge, because if two people on different ends of the planet want to send each other a tokenized dollar or an algorithmic stable-coin, they can do so at the weekend, at midnight, for a low fee, and most importantly, without a middleman. The transaction is completed in seconds. If other traditional financial products can be tokenized, the same can be done with, for example, shares. Two people can exchange two assets with each other via a smart contract in a completely decentralized yet trustworthy way.

Note that Cardano and Bitcoin are two completely different things. ADA and BTC coins are used as rewards in a network consensus, and networks decentralize around these coins. BTC is mainly an investment asset at the moment with the potential to become a sort of digital equivalent of gold. Cardano wants to become primarily a social and financial operating system. But let’s not forget that ADA is still essentially a cryptocurrency that can be used for payments in the same way as with BTC coins. As we said, BTC coins are not used for payment now, and it is the same in the case of ADA. In both cases, the main motivation for holding cryptocurrencies is speculation on future appreciation. Potential, narratives, and technology play a more significant role than usage. So the question begs, can ADA coins store value in a similar way to BTC coins? Of course, they can. Corporate stocks can also be considered a store of value and a hedge against fiat currency inflation. It’s basically up to people what they choose as a store of value and, as we have pointed out, the views of retail investors will be influenced by large institutional investors. Grayscale now holds a larger position in one of the funds in ADA than in LTC. This makes it clear where Grayscale sees more potential and it will be interesting to see how this develops further.

Thus, the competition for the best cryptocurrency in terms of the medium of exchange is essentially not taking place. Cryptocurrencies are seen more as the store of value, which is also one of the characteristics of money. It will therefore depend mainly on what future potential investors see in the projects in question. The battle will be fought on the technological level and capabilities of the projects. The winner will be decided by the network effect and adoption. Bitcoin has been around for over 10 years and has a big head start. Cardano is basically a newcomer, but it has one big advantage. The Bitcoin team decided not to fundamentally change the original code and to keep the existing functionality. Thus, Bitcoin will never become a smart contract platform in the true sense of the word. Cardano is quite the opposite and the team will always strive to improve the technology, make it more efficient and add new functionality. The Cardano you know today is different from the one around in 5 or 10 years. There will be a big difference and as the capabilities grow, so will the adoption of each functionality. Bitcoin can, of course, compete on the same field on the other layers to some extent, but so far no solution has been able to take hold.

What will be the medium of exchange?

Due to their volatility, Bitcoin and Cardano do not compete as a means of exchange and unit of account, but rather as stores of value or speculative assets. This raises the question of what will be used to pay in a decentralized world. In the case of Bitcoin, the narrative is straightforward. For a period of high volatility, BTC coins will not be used for payment and everything will change once the price becomes more stable in the distant future. When exactly that will be, and if at all, no one can predict. I guess that we won’t see any major change in the next 20 years and volatile ADA and BTC coins will be mainly stores of value, not the currency in the true sense of the word. There are three main obstacles to the direct use of cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange. The first obstacle is technological. Until cryptocurrency transactions are fast and cheap, people will continue to prefer to use fiat currencies. The second obstacle is the aforementioned volatility and the third is merchant adoption. It is possible to pay with cryptocurrency in such a way that the payee receives the fiat currency and does not even notice what the sender paid with. This mostly requires centralized third-party services at this point, but we have a solution. Until all three hurdles are satisfactorily addressed, we will not see cryptocurrency payments. But how do we solve the volatility hurdle? This is more of an economic problem than a technical one.

The solution already exists and you’ve all heard about it. They are stable coins. Stable coins are not speculative in nature and their value is more or less stable. However, this is exactly what people expect from a medium of exchange and a unit of account. You can keep stable coins in your wallet and if you can afford to buy a phone today, that will be true in a month or two. By holding stable coins, you don’t run the risk of the price crashing 50% in a short period of time and you wouldn’t be able to buy the phone while waiting for the market sentiment to change. When it comes to the means of payment, Bitcoin and Cardano will compete directly. Will it be sooner to pay with volatile cryptocurrencies or stable coins? For stable coins, the task is much easier. DeFi is built on the success of stable coins, and long-term loans cannot do without stability. Thus, with the increased adoption of DeFi services, the popularity of stable coins is also growing. Especially in countries where there is high volatility or where people do not have a bank account, this solution will be very convenient to use.

You can find two stable coin projects in the top 10: USDT and USDC. That’s saying something. Both projects use USD as the underlying asset. This is a straightforward and relatively easy solution, but trust in a third party plays a big role. A much better solution is algorithmic stable coins, where volatile cryptocurrencies can be used as the underlying asset. ADA, but also BTC coins, can be used as an underlying asset. The more stable coins are used, the more the value of the underlying asset will naturally increase. Algorithmic stable coins will be backed by a basket of selected commodities and currencies that are stable over the long term. Eventually, an algorithmic stable coin may be more stable than, say, the USD.

In the case of Cardano, the straightforward solution is to use ADA coins as the underlying asset. All functionality will be built on top of the Cardano infrastructure. However, BTC coins can be tokenized, so they can theoretically be used as well. At this point, the two projects can complement each other beautifully. The infrastructure and technology of Cardano will be used and at the same time BTC coins, which have a high market value. The solution as a whole will solve the volatility problem and the winners will be happy users of stable coins and, at the same time, investors in volatile cryptocurrencies.

Could algorithmic stable coins be created solely on Bitcoin infrastructure without a smart contract platform? Probably not, or at the cost of increased centralization. Creating a reliable and decentralized Oracle infrastructure, including all the economic incentives, is quite a task and employs a high number of developers. The data consumer must be a reliable algorithm that must also be decentralized, and smart contract platforms are essential here. Maintaining stable coins will require high scalability and fast network consensus to be able to react quickly to market fluctuations.

How best to use blockchain

Blockchain can make history immutable and that is one of its biggest advantages. Blockchain can thus serve as an amazing global ledger. In practice, we see that transparency is an advantage, but also a disadvantage at the same time. There are cases where people call for more privacy and are bothered by the fact that it is relatively easy to trace the wealth of individual users. For the use of BTC coins as a store of value, a transparent blockchain is not at all suitable and is rather detrimental. Conversely, transparency, or conditional transparency, can be an advantage in some cases. Especially when the blockchain is used for transparent or trustworthy accounting. Accounting is predominantly about records of economic activity and here the stability of value plays an absolutely crucial role. Accounting based on volatile assets does not make much sense. Respectively, it is certainly good to make records of movements of volatile assets like stocks or cryptocurrencies, but sales are mostly recorded at a stable value. Accounting built on a blockchain that uses stable coins is the ideal solution.

In practice, we could see, for example, factories tokenizing all inputs and outputs for accounting records. The advantage is that tokenized outputs can be sold directly to another factory and recorded as an input within the accounting. The sale of tokens for stable coins will forever be part of the accounting records. This will make the financial flows very easy to track and also to audit. Issuing tokens is also something Cardano is more suited to than Bitcoin. Respectively, if we’re talking about the use case of blockchain as an accounting ledger, Cardano is definitely a better choice than Bitcoin. It can’t be said that the two projects are in direct competition here. Cardano’s use case is much broader than that of Bitcoin. Cardano seeks to omit centralized intermediaries in economic and social processes in which intermediaries abuse their position and disadvantage end users. A typical example is the lending sector or cross-border transactions. If peer-to-peer lending is to work reliably, we must rely on a decentralized infrastructure. Smart contracts and immutable records in the blockchain is exactly what Cardano is best suited for. Bitcoin doesn’t target this use case, and its limited scalability, expensive and slow transactions at the first layer make it unsuitable for it.

Let’s not forget that second layers often don’t have their own blockchain. Their goal is to make transactions cheaper and faster without global consensus and thus without a ledger entry. To a limited extent, this may be sufficient and a final record of a series of transactions between two participants may be sufficient for accounting. The key will always be the first layer record, as only that can ensure immutability. Once centralized third parties are used for transactions, we can forget most of the benefits offered by first-layer blockchain protocols.

Global consensus and blockchain records also have another meaning, which is of course to ensure that there is no double-spend and that the number of coins in circulation has not increased. Again, it should be noted that this is what the first layers of the Cardano and Bitcoin protocols will always do best. If BTC coins are going to be held by institutions like PayPal, in essence, that company must be trusted to hold an adequate number of BTC coins. Global consensus on the first layer has huge advantages over second-layer solutions. This is where Bitcoin and Cardano compete, as Cardano strives for greater scalability and stability in transaction fees. Reducing the cost of global consensus and enabling use by a wider population is certainly a valid use case of blockchain technology. PoS is definitely more suited to this than PoW. Most of the economic activity in the case of Bitcoin will likely take place elsewhere than the first layer in near future. In the case of Cardano, the blockchain record will be more accessible to people. With higher adoption, there will be more emphasis on ensuring that the number of coins is not intentionally inflated. Cardano will have an advantage here as it will be able to look after more transactions. In the case of Bitcoin, the problem is also solvable to some extent through transaction aggregation, but the question is what the blockchain record will look like and how easy it will be to verify.

Eventually, it may prove advantageous to tokenize BTC coins and use Cardano as a second layer. It may turn out that in some cases it will be better to use Cardano rather than Lightning Network, as there will be a blockchain record in the case of Cardano. Transactions will be cheap and still orders of magnitude faster than on the first layer of Bitcoin. Cardano will offer advantages of the blockchain that the second layer will never have. Moreover, with the ability to use smart contracts. This is where the technologies can complement each other nicely. Cardano can be seen more as competition for the Lightning Network and other second layers above Bitcoin than for Bitcoin itself. However, both will find a use.

It is often argued that only PoW can provide a high level of security. What is forgotten is that any other blockchain can essentially piggyback on Bitcoin’s PoW and exploit its security. For example, merge mining between Dogecoin and Litecoin works in practice. Dogecoin thus exploits the security of Litecoin. If a solution requires the security of the PoW, it is no problem to use Bitcoin. Here too, the protocols can complement each other perfectly. Moreover, the Cardano consensus does not necessarily rely only on Ouroboros PoS and it is possible to build security on top of another consensus. Thus, the security of the Cardano network can be provided by the PoS and the actual PoW consensus can run alongside. If the community decides to go this route, the team will implement such a solution.

Tokens make a difference

Generally speaking, another big advantage of blockchain technology is the ability to own and freely handle digital assets without a third party and on a global level. Cardano can offer this in the same way as Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin only offers this for its native BTC coins. Cardano will allow you to do this with anything you can think of. So as the technology becomes more pervasive in our society and regulators finish their work, it will be possible to tokenize stocks, bonds, debts, access rights, voting rights, and many other things. NFTs are successful mainly because there is a digital infrastructure for them that wasn’t there before. Once there is the real value behind NFTs that is legally enforceable and authenticity is easily verifiable, the whole space will take on a whole new dimension. And not only in terms of use for accounting but also in terms of ownership.

Currently, you can own ADA and BTC coins via private keys. It’s a question of when and to what extent tokens will become mainstream, but that they will is probably inevitable. If bitcoin succeeds, it will be mainly due to decentralization and the benefits it brings. It is naive to think that these benefits cannot be applied elsewhere. It makes sense to buy Tesla stock in paper form from centralized authority and pay with BTC coins. But it makes much more sense to buy a tokenized share on a decentralized exchange, actually own it, and be able to sell it in an instant to anyone in the world or use it as collateral for a loan. This is not a technological problem at the moment, but mainly a regulatory problem. Technology is ahead of the regulators at the moment, as it always is, and it is only a matter of time before everything becomes clear and the exact rules of the game are set.

Cardano and ATALA Prism allow you to own your digital identity, including all associated data. Through your private key, you can own your education, health records, social media history, and much more. This expands the capabilities of blockchain and has a greater reach into the physical world. The history and immutability of records will make it harder to cheat. If an institution issues you a certificate and is still in the role of the one who ensures the authenticity of that certificate, it will be hard to forge that certificate. For example, an individual will not be able to create a fake version of a college diploma, which is now mostly issued in paper form. In a digital world, digital proof that the diploma is genuine will be required, and this will be virtually impossible to forge. If an institution issues a certificate illegally, there will be a record of it somewhere forever and it will be easy to find the culprit if the system is set up well. Do we need to have a plastic card issued by the state to be a citizen, or do we want to have a digital identity and be a citizen of the world? If we are to have non-state money, it makes no sense to have citizenship.

We do not believe in any revolutionary disintegration of states. States are here to stay in some form. We can talk about whether states will allow us to have more freedom and control over our data. The state will always need to have some control over its citizens. Issuing a digital identity instead of a plastic card is not a big change, but in a digital world, a digital identity can have many advantages. Many people in the world do not have an identity, for example, because the state has not created the necessary infrastructure. Cardano is available wherever there is the internet. So developing countries can just make sure the internet is available and everything else will be ready. People can have their digital identity and can easily install wallets and thus start sending transactions or taking loans. Greater digitization can be the path to freedom.

The use of tokens will of course place higher demands on scalability, and this cannot be done without second layers. Cardano will have a second layer called Hydra that can handle a high volume of transactions and can even perform smart contracts. The interaction between Cardano and Hydra will be seamless and very fast and reliable. Any identity verification or exchange of two digital assets in a decentralized way will be very user-friendly. It wouldn’t make sense to build this kind of functionality on top of Bitcoin. It’s not just a technology problem, it’s a community problem. Most Bitcoin proponents want to keep the first layer simple and ideally with minimal changes. No one expects Bitcoin to ever be a smart contract platform. On the contrary, for Cardano, that’s the mission.

We can see examples in practice. Ethiopia adopted Cardano to build national infrastructure. El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as the second national currency after the USD. In state-level adoption, we can already see differences in the perception of Cardano and Bitcoin. There is no objective reason why El Salvador should not adopt Cardano for the purpose of building its national infrastructure, or even for the purpose of issuing its own national currency that could have similar characteristics to Bitcoin. Both projects can find a use in the same country and work side by side.

The future is about fees

Cardano is a platform, and unless the ADA becomes a medium of exchange, it will still make sense to hold ADA coins as a means of owning part of the Cardano network and having decision rights. For BTC coins, the use is clear. It will likely be a store of value with the potential to become a medium of exchange. If the non-state money narrative doesn’t come to fruition, and it certainly won’t in the next 10 or 20 years, it will at least be a store of value. ADA coins generate a passive income that will come not only from monetary expansion but also from fees collected for use of the network. Thus, as the network succeeds, the attractiveness of ADA coins will grow in terms of speculating on price appreciation. The higher the network effect and the number of users, the more will be collected in fees received by ADA coin holders.

Any decentralized network must have a workable economic model to ensure its long-term survival. The network must generate income to pay for its maintenance, security, and decentralization to the people who look after it. This is true not only for the first layer of the Cardano and Bitcoin protocols but also for all second layers. If the second layer is not profitable enough, it will face economic extinction or centralization. Economic sustainability will certainly be an easier task for Cardano than for Bitcoin. The main reason is the higher scalability and higher demand for transactions and the use of smart contracts. In addition to native ADA coins, Cardano will also send tokens, stable coins, and use contracts. This will generate a much larger number of transactions than sending ADA coins. It is entirely possible that only a smaller percentage of the population will own ADA coins, but tens of percent will own stable coins issued on the Cardano network.

In a couple of decades, networks will be living mainly on transaction fees, as monetary expansion will be heading towards zero in the case of Cardano and Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s security is based on consuming electricity, and if the network doesn’t make enough money from transaction fees, the network will cease to be secure. Cardano’s network is built on cryptography, so most of the fees collected can be used for rewards.

It has to be said that in terms of transaction fees, all the networks are essentially in direct competition with each other. Without the fees collected, the economic viability of the networks is reduced. The competition is not only between Cardano and Bitcoin but also between Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Every fee that does not go to PoW miners will one day be missing from the security budget. So the networks are essentially competing with each other regarding adoption. If BTC coins get tokenized and start being used in the Cardano ecosystem, that’s a problem for Bitcoin, as it starts to increase the network effect of the Cardano network, not the Bitcoin network. Transaction fees will be received by ADA coin holders, not PoW miners. This is perhaps one reason why there is such a high degree of maximalism in the cryptocurrency world. However, there is no easy way out here. People will always desire to pay low fees. Moreover, if cryptocurrencies are to compete with fiat currencies, the functionality needs to be better, not worse. In the case of fiat currencies when you pay with a credit card, you pay for goods in seconds. Until cryptocurrencies can do this, let’s not expect a decentralized revolution. The first layer of Bitcoin will never be a fast and scalable payment protocol. Second layers and other networks like Cardano will be the networks that deliver the functionality needed for real cryptocurrency usage beyond the speculative aspect. How this will affect the economic models of the projects in question we can only guess. However, users will always prefer cheap and fast transactions, which at the moment plays in Cardano’s favor.

Cryptocurrencies offer us freedom

Purely hypothetically, if the only Bitcoin existed, the success of the network would be assured because it would be the only alternative to the central world order. However, competition is the nature of how humanity functions, and where there is no competition, there is some form of centralization and abuse of power. If the only Bitcoin existed, people who accumulate Bitcoin in time could become the new leaders of the world without the possibility of being deposed. Who would that be? Basically, exactly the people who are powerful now and have enough money to buy BTC coins. We cannot arrive at the decentralization of society only through decentralized money, but through decentralization at the level of projects that enable decentralization at the level of centralized institutions. People must remain free to choose the store of value, the means of exchange, and the services. Some people in the crypto community are very toxic and I cannot imagine a new elite emerging from them. The saying “Have fun staying poor” is a very arrogant way to establish freedom. Freedom is not about one possible path you are forced to take or you will remain doomed. Freedom is about choosing your path. Once one path proves unacceptable to the majority of the population, there must be an alternative. Cardano and Bitcoin are competing on the level of adoption, but that’s a good thing because it gives us the freedom to find a truly free solution for all. Ideally, projects should be looking for ways to interconnect and leverage each other’s strengths.

People are unlikely to ever agree on one solution because there will always be someone more advantaged than others. In the case of cryptocurrency adoption, it is an economic advantage. Early adopters get rich by having newcomers come in and buy coins. Adoption always gets to the point where it is more economically advantageous to bet on a different horse than the one everyone else is riding. This will be true until a project establishes itself as a medium of exchange at least in a particular territory. That may never come in the case of volatile cryptocurrencies. Investment in cryptocurrencies should remain free and people should do it for either rational or social reasons. In other industries, we don’t see, for example, Tesla fans bad-mouthing other car companies and discouraging people from buying competitors’ cars. In the world of cryptocurrencies, however, this is folklore. There will always be people that like cars that run on gasoline, diesel, gas, or electricity. It’s naive to think that one solution can be pushed through. However, this is exactly what is happening in the cryptocurrency world. People are trying to convince other people to buy the money of the future with the argument that there will be no competition. We are already seeing that part of the population prefers the PoS solution purely because it is an environmentally friendly solution. Institutional investors are also seeing this. Why should anyone tell them that they are making a mistake in their choice? Do people not have the right to choose their own path? Promoting one solution by force or by slandering the competition will never lead to freedom because the form of adoption itself is not free. People promote their own interests in an unfair and often despicable way, and this has no chance of success. Let’s give Bitcoin a chance to become a store of value and Cardano a chance to become a smart contract platform.

Are fiat currencies and countries Bitcoin’s biggest competitor, as some people claim? Let’s give it a chance and see if Bitcoin has a chance to weaken the role of states and fiat currencies. Cardano aims to help the weakest among us and to some extent has a similar goal, only the means to achieve the goal are different. Instead of displacing fiat currencies, he wants to create his own stable currency and replace centralized institutions with decentralized versions. Both goals are ambitious, and if either project succeeds, it will be a big change for society. Why should we lower our chances because of a silly play on competition between projects? Isn’t it better to increase our chances just by having more projects trying to achieve a similar goal? In practice, collaboration is usually a more profitable arrangement than the direct competition and trying to completely annihilate the adversary.

Cardano will not disappear from the world just because a part of the Bitcoin community wants it to, and vice versa. If you think about it more, both projects target different uses and different target groups. Bitcoin at the moment is more for wealthy Western speculators who may see it as a way to protect their wealth. People from developing countries don’t need bitcoin because they have no wealth and can’t even afford to pay the expensive fees on the first tier. Often not even the first one that would take them to the second layers. Rather, these people need a financial infrastructure that allows them to interact economically with the outside world. It does not pay for banks to expand into African countries. Cardano is already there and anyone can use it for cross-border transactions, for example.

Let’s give people the choice and do not laugh at someone for staying poor if they don’t use one particular solution. Many people are poor and the way to wealth is through expanding their options rather than buying a store of value. Let us respect the needs of all those around us and not impose our views on them only through our own selfish interests, which we hide with the pleasing words of freedom.

One project cannot cover all user needs

One project will never cover all the needs of users. For example, if you insist that we need PoW for security, don’t expect the first layer of Bitcoin to become a good transaction network or smart contract platform. If you think we don’t need tokenization, decentralized digital identity, stable coins, decentralized exchanges, or banks, don’t use them. There are people who see the point and want to build decentralized finance. Cardano and Bitcoin are fundamentally different in what the community expects from them. The Bitcoin community doesn’t want Bitcoin to be a smart contract platform and doesn’t want the first layer of the protocol, including PoW, to fundamentally change. The Cardano community is large and it is possible that at the time of writing Cardano has the third largest community in the cryptocurrency world. The Cardano community is an advocate for change, innovation, and improving the capabilities of the protocol. Both projects have a right to exist. We don’t know at this point which has a better chance of adoption. Even though Bitcoin historically has the edge, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically the clear winner in terms of adoption in the next decade. The number of active addresses is growing rapidly, and as more decentralized applications emerge, the user base will essentially only grow. Until another decade passes, we won’t know which concept is better or more viable. In the history of the Internet, we can find many examples where legacy protocols have died out and successors have taken over. Does anyone remember MySpace, for example? No, because the dominant role today is played by Facebook. Would you rather use Google or Yahoo? Most people use the younger Google. However, Google is not the only search engine in the world and it has its strong competitors.

From the perspective of users, i.e. all of us who want to build decentralized networks, competition is beneficial, and trying out different concepts is a necessity. Let’s not forget that decentralization is all about technology, and technology will always improve. Technological progress is essentially impossible to prevent. Bitcoin and Cardano will each improve at their own pace. Alongside these protocols, other projects will emerge that will offer different functionalities. This is a natural progression and evolution. In a world of evolution, no one knows in advance what will survive and what will not. People who claim to know the future are basically deliberately lying or afraid of competition. But they can’t beat evolution with their arguments. The beauty of our world is that nothing is certain and we cannot predict the future. Rather, we are in a mode of reacting to specific events or states of affairs that we are trying to change.

The world is too diverse and cryptocurrencies too young to see what has a chance to succeed. No one knows and we can only infer from history. Blockchain is a fundamental technology that has the potential to turn the world upside down. To say that only Bitcoin, or only Cardano, can do this is naive and foolish. We will be smarter in another 10 years. Until then, everything is speculation and often purely self-serving arguments. Both Cardano and Bitcoin have clear missions. Let the teams build and try to achieve their goal. That’s the best we can do. People will be the ones who choose the solutions that will be available. The obvious economic or social benefits will be what decides. And because the needs of people in different parts of the world differ, it is more than likely that multiple projects that exist side by side will succeed.

Conclusion

As you can see, we found many cases in which Cardano and Bitcoin compete, but also many cases in which they can complement each other. We can’t predict the future and it is possible things will play out differently than we think. We don’t have a crystal ball. Our team wishes Cardano and Bitcoin success. We wish people from different communities would not be so hostile towards each other and try to find ways to coexist rather than slander each other. We’ll see if the situation improves in the coming years. Those who sincerely seek freedom should consider the consequences of their behavior. Keep in mind that most of the population has only heard of cryptocurrencies but has not yet adopted any project. We cannot discourage newcomers with a hostile atmosphere between groups. Let people use individual protocols and be free to find their own way. Let’s influence their opinions without bias and objectively. Let us work together to find the best solution for all of us.