In The Strange Defeat, written in 1940 in the midst of the French debacle, historian March Bloch castigates the myopia of the elites and French society and their inability to understand the political and technological changes of their time. Today, are we better able to understand a phenomenon as confusing and unexpected as Bitcoin?
In the face of the world's elites, Bitcoin is winning its bet . The fact that it has been functioning perfectly for eleven years when we announce its imminent end every day is in itself remarkable and should be enough to alert us. But not content with surviving, Bitcoin is expanding massively.
Several tens of millions of people hold bitcoins around the world and the number of addresses visible on the network is growing exponentially.
The price of bitcoin remains volatile, but this is hardly surprising: it is an asset of a totally new nature, and therefore still difficult to value. And it remains relatively marginal in global finance, therefore subject to the influence of major market players.
But this situation is undoubtedly transitory. Over several years, it plays its role of store of value well, an essential step before gradually becoming a more commonly accepted medium of exchange.
Its disinflationary issuance regime offers a stark contrast to the quantitative easing of central banks which threatens to destroy confidence in state currencies.
This is why it is being closely studied - and even adopted - by a growing number of traditional players in the financial markets and the economy in general.
Its technology and ecosystem are advancing at high speed. Its open source algorithm is subject to multiple improvements to strengthen its reliability and technical performance.
An additional computer protocol, called the Lightning Network , now makes instant micropayments possible, at minimal cost, with a high level of security and confidentiality and without additional energy consumption. It has been in operation since 2018 and its development continues, notably thanks to the French startup Acinq supported by BPI France.
In addition to this “scaling up”, many other innovations are underway. In particular, they improve the programmable nature of transactions and pave the way for new functionalities and new uses of the Bitcoin protocol as the founding layer of a new Internet of value. The pace and sophistication of these advances are increasingly difficult to keep up.
It now seems too late for states to stop Bitcoin. They can do little more than slow its growth through regulations and fiscal constraints.
The current situation shows that this boom continues despite these brakes. Its network is too decentralized; the actors involved in its development and operation are too numerous and too committed; the global computing power that secures its blockchain is reaching unprecedented levels, difficult for the human mind to grasp.
And the broadcasting of transactions by satellite and radio waves is becoming possible, which could in the future make it possible to bypass possible political cuts of the Internet.
Libra , Facebook's "cryptocurrency" sitting on a basket of state currencies, and hints of " central bank digital currencies " (MDBC) confirm that the payments industry and monetary systems are on the cusp of profound change.
But these projects are much less innovative than Bitcoin. They remain centralized and therefore technically vulnerable, politically manipulable and subject to the vagaries of arbitrary monetary policies.
Despite still considerable uncertainties and technical challenges and intense competition in the cryptocurrency universe, Bitcoin is asserting itself as a tangible and lasting reality in a world where nothing seems solid anymore.
The probability is increasing that bitcoin will gradually establish itself as a form of decentralized, depoliticized, denationalized, disinflationary digital cash, allowing instant, incensurable, anonymous and programmable transactions. With potentially endless financial and industrial applications and unsuspected political consequences.
I can agree with your conclusions and some point in my life, sometimes I try to make the situation a worst-case scenario for bitcoin. This is why Bitcoin must not lose its hegemony. If it is down all will be down. As if the economy of the U.S.A goes down we all go down. Now why the world believes in the U.S.A it's because of history. Same goes for Bitcoin.
This is only my opinion. It may be different from you...