After 15 years of operation, many experts are wondering whether Bitcoin today accurately reflects the vision of founder Satoshi Nakamoto presented in the Whitepaper?
Overall, the cryptocurrency king still has key correlations. For example, Bitcoin is a PoW blockchain that relies on consensus between nodes to function properly.
However, the narrative presented in the 2008 Whitepaper – Bitcoin as a form of digital currency – is evolving and expanding over time. Some people now view BTC as a reserve asset, or in other words, a form of digital gold.
But, the focus of Nakamoto’s original proposal was a framework for a digital currency, without the need for trust in intermediaries or central governance:
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof rather than trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Computationally irreversible transactions protect sellers from fraud, and conventional escrow mechanisms can easily be implemented to protect buyers,” Nakamoto wrote in the Whitepaper.
But what Bitcoin will eventually become and how its users and investors view it has begun to take shape in the first years since the Whitepaper was published.
Mining
pools and hardware
The introduction of mining pools is arguably one of the first notable departures from the blueprint laid out in the Whitepaper.
Satoshi originally intended for individuals to be able to use regular computers to mine Bitcoin. This is still technically true, but over time, Bitcoin mining gradually evolved to focus on one defining principle: scale.
Satoshi’s original concept ensured anyone could participate in authenticating and securing the network without the need for specialized equipment, thus making the ecosystem more inclusive and resistant to censorship. central control. The development of mining pools and advanced mining hardware has changed the dynamic, leading to increased centralization.
“PoW also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision-making. If the majority is based on a one-IP-address vote, it can be overthrown by anyone with the ability to allocate multiple IPs. PoW is essentially one CPU one vote,” Nakamoto wrote.
The first mining pool was initially named bitcoin.cz and later renamed Slush Pool, created by Marek “Slush” Palatinus in 2010 to address the fact that people started using GPUs instead of CPUs for mining. BTC waterfall. Mining pools are supposed to help solo miners find blocks, even if they don’t have high-powered gaming computers.
GPU mining continued to grow throughout the early 2010s until Canaan Creative released the world’s first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for BTC mining.
ASICs have become more and more efficient over the years, pushing the cost of these specialized devices into the tens of thousands of dollars. Plus, powering them requires large amounts of electricity. This effectively makes mining completely unprofitable for miners working independently from home.
Now, large corporations dominate the goods manufacturing industry despite being completely digital.
Bitcoin
Improvement Proposals
Completely different mining incentives aside, the very mechanics of the Bitcoin network have also changed over the past 10 years or so.
In 2012, the Bitcoin network introduced Pay to Script Hash (P2SH) through BIP 16 to simplify multi-signature transactions. Before P2SH, multi-signature transactions were complex and risk-prone, requiring the entire redemption script defining the spending conditions to be disclosed in advance.
With P2SH, users send funds to a standardized Bitcoin address that represents the hash of the exchange script, masking its complexity. Only when coins are spent is the full script revealed and conditions met, streamlining transactions, enhancing user-friendliness, and improving scalability.
Segregated Witness (also known as SegWit) is another important Bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP) that took effect in 2017. It addresses transaction portability and effectively raises the block size limit from Initial 1 MB to 4 MB.
SegWit has opened the door for a 2021 proposal called Taproot. Taproot makes transactions more efficient and private, while allowing users to engage in more complex types of transactions.
Exchanges
, ETFs and traditional instruments
The Bitcoin trading market has also become much more complex over the years, as companies offer a wide variety of products.
The possibility of large institutions offering Bitcoin-related financial products is not mentioned in the Whitepaper. Nakamoto’s intention was for Bitcoin to function as an alternative, decentralized method of exchange, which may not be a means for traditional investors to make money.
Not to mention, the concept of buying something like a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) inherently means that users are giving custody of their money to major financial institutions rather than holding the BTC themselves.
Nakamoto’s loss of confidence in banking is made clear through the first two sentences of the Whitepaper.
“Internet commerce relies almost exclusively on financial institutions acting as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust-based model,” Nakamoto wrote.
Last week’s Bitcoin ETF spot speculation is said to be evidence that, despite Satoshi’s apparent intentions to the contrary, segments of the crypto ecosystem are wanting some connection to that trust model . Bitcoin price increased sharply due to speculation that a Bitcoin ETF was about to be approved.
While a spot Bitcoin ETF is not yet authorized in the US at this time, the first ETF launched in Europe in August 2023.
Bitcoin futures ETFs have been authorized by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) becoming the first to go live in October 2021.
DeFi, Ordinals
and others
Entering DeFi with Bitcoin Ordinals is an attempt to merge “ancient” blockchain with the Ethereum-like demand for digital collectibles or NFTs.
Even so, it’s impossible to discuss Ordinals without mentioning its predecessor, Counterparty. The protocol launched in 2014 on Bitcoin and allowed people to exchange rare digital collectibles long before NFTs exploded in 2021. Rare Pepe, a meme-inspired collection of NFTs Pepe the Frog, originally from Counterparty.
Of course, NFTs weren’t around when Bitcoin was first born. However, the 2021 Taproot upgrade that allows for much faster verification of multi-signature transactions has opened the door to recording text, images, SVG and HTML on the smallest denomination of bitcoin, called satoshis ( Sat).
Ordinals has achieved remarkable success. On May 1 this year, Ordinals contributed to the largest number of Bitcoin transactions in a single day to date.
This record of more than 682,000 transactions was broken in September 2023 with more than 703,000 transactions on September 15, 2023, with Ordinals simultaneously reaching new peaks.
When Bitcoin was in its infancy in 2009 and 2010, an average of less than 1,000 transactions were processed per day. By 2011 and 2012, transactions were often in the single-digit thousands.
Source:
https://tradecoind2.com/looking-back-at-15-years-of-bitcoins-life/