Mucho más que moneda común
Bitcoin tiene la posibilidad no sólo de ser dinero, sino de ser una nueva clase de dinero, con mayor utilidad que el dinero al que estamos acostumbrados.
El dinero fiat no permite realizar pagos muy pequeños a distancia. No pagas cinco céntimos a un creador de contenido que se encuentra al otro lado del mundo, no porque sea técnicamente imposible sino porque es económicamente inviable o demasiado complicado como para que la mayoría de la gente considere que vale la pena hacerlo. Las criptomonedas tienen el potencial técnico de permitir esta clase de pagos de manera muy sencilla para el usuario, y algunas de ellas (Bitcoin Cash por ejemplo) pueden hacerlo a costes muy reducidos, lo que lo hace económicamente viable.
Pero esto significa abrir la puerta a una enorme cantidad de transacciones de importes muy bajos, que hasta ahora nadie realizaba porque no eran viables, ya que no se justificaban técnica o económicamente. Aún no sabemos hasta qué punto este mercado puede crecer, pero quizás estas transacciones lleguen a suponer un porcentaje muy significativo del total, permitiendo todo un conjunto de actividades económicas que se tornen dependientes de esta clase de pagos.
Esto significa que escalar la capacidad del sistema para el tipo de transacciones a las que estamos acostumbrados va a ser claramente insuficiente. Cabe esperar que la facilidad para generar transacciones y su bajo costo produzcan un enorme aumento en la demanda del uso de la red para transacciones de muy bajo importe (vea lo que está sucediendo con noise.cash y servicios similares), lo que debería impulsar al ecosistema hacia un entorno técnicamente capaz de satisfacer esa demanda de manera eficiente, de modo que los suministradores puedan satisfacer plenamente esa necesidad de uso, junto con la procedente de los usos comunes del dinero fiat.
Eso significa que no tiene demasiado sentido comparar con las transacciones que hoy hacen empresas como las operadoras de tarjetas de crédito, salvo como objetivo a medio plazo. El objetivo real de uso para las criptomonedas no es solamente sustituir a los medios de pago tradicionales de manera descentralizada, sino permitir un notable incremento en el número total de transacciones a un coste bajísimo por cada transacción, de modo tal que ese coste agregado para todos los usuarios supere con creces los costos generados por una red plenamente descentralizada y segura. Llegados a ese punto, no sólo cabe esperar un crecimiento orgnánico imparable, sino la sofisticación que la competencia entre desarrolladores y mineros introducirá en el mercado y la consecuente reducción adicional de costes. Hablar de bloques con un tamaño de 32mb, 256mb o 1Gb puede ser razonable para el medio plazo, pero el largo plazo nos demandará capacidades mucho mayores.
Personalmente, tengo plena confianza en la capacidad de los equipos de desarrollo comprometidos con el ecosistema de Bitcoin Cash y en los mineros SHA-256 para lograr tales objetivos, y en que la Ley de Moore irá resolviendo holgadamente las necesidades técnicas más concretas, tal como lo ha venido haciendo hasta ahora. Mientras los desarrolladores continúen manteniendo un perfil bajo, libre de enfrentamientos, resolviendo los conflictos mediante la negociación y manteniendo la plena sintonía con las necesidades del mercado, creo sinceramente que Bitcoin (BCH) tiene un brillante futuro por delante.
Much more than common currency
Bitcoin has the potential not only to be money, but to be a new kind of money with greater utility than the money we are used to. A fiat currency doesn't allow for very small payments over distance. You don't pay five cents to a content creator halfway around the world, not because it's technically impossible but because it's economically unfeasible or too complicated for most people to consider it worth doing. Cryptocurrencies have the technical potential to enable this kind of payment in a very user-friendly way, and some of them (Bitcoin Cash for example) can do it at very low costs, making it economically viable.
But this means opening the door to a huge amount of transactions of very low amounts, which until now no one was doing because they were not viable, as they were not technically or economically justified. We do not yet know to what extent this market can grow, but perhaps these transactions will come to account for a very significant percentage of the total, allowing a whole set of economic activities to become dependent on this kind of payments.
This means that scaling the system's capacity for the kind of transactions we are used to will be clearly insufficient. The ease of generating transactions and their low cost can be expected to produce a huge increase in demand for the use of the network for very low value transactions (see what is happening with noise.cash and similar services), which should push the ecosystem towards an environment technically capable of meeting that demand efficiently, so that providers can fully satisfy that need for use, along with that coming from the common uses of fiat money.
That means that it does not make much sense to compare with the transactions that companies such as credit card operators do today, except as a medium-term goal. The real goal of use for cryptocurrencies is not only to replace traditional means of payment in a decentralized way, but to enable a remarkable increase in the total number of transactions at a very low cost per transaction, so that this aggregate cost for all users far exceeds the costs generated by a fully decentralized and secure network. At this point, not only can we expect unstoppable organic growth, but also the sophistication that competition between developers and between miners will introduce into the market and the consequent further reduction in costs. Talking about blocks with a size of 32mb, 256mb or 1Gb may be reasonable for the medium term, but the long term will demand much larger capacities.
Personally, I have full confidence in the ability of the development teams committed to the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem and SHA-256 miners to achieve such goals, and that Moore's Law will loosely solve the more specific technical needs, as it has been doing so far. As long as developers continue to keep a low profile, free of confrontation, resolving conflicts through negotiation and remaining fully attuned to the needs of the market, I sincerely believe that Bitcoin (BCH) has a bright future ahead of it.
Tether's backing and the wonderful snowball rolling
I'm probably going to give an unpopular opinion here. But it's mine, so it's the only one I feel compelled toward.
I could start by discussing to what extent Tether is backed by US dollars, to what extent the dollar is itself backed by anything, or what usefulnesses support the prices of Tether and USD in the event they are not backed by anything else. But I don't think it’s worth doing so, because the main point is that, ultimately, the only thing that supports the value of things, and therefore their price, is their usefulness. If Tether is held around USD price it’s because the market perceives its utility to be essentially the same as that of the USD, but in a different arena (the cryptoasset markets). Even if it isn’t backed at all, its price in the recent past is an indisputable fact. The market may not always feel the same and it can change suddenly. But this is the current reality, the only one the market knows, since the future is actually unknown.
Regardless of its backing, the point is what influence can it have on cryptocurrency prices if a stablecoin like Tether loses the confidence of the market. And the answer is actually quite simple. Prices are historical events, not futures. The price of BTC or BCH that we know right now is already a past event, the future we can sense but not know. What we must be very clear about is that BCH, BTC, ETH or other cryptoassets are not backed by Tether, but have been acquired with Tether, which is a completely different matter. In the past, up to this very moment, they have been exchanged for Tether and the latest price relationship between them is what we know.
If first thing tomorrow morning the market completely loses its confidence in Tether, because it discovers that Tether isn't backed by anything, because it finds something more useful for the same function, or for any other reason, what is going to collapse is the price of Tether, not the price of the cryptocurrencies that were bought with Tether. In other words, what can be expected is a collapse of Tether with respect to BTC and the other cryptocurrencies, a brutal flight to these and a massive sale of Tether, either to cryptocurrencies or to fiat currencies.
If, from the moment Tether disappears or becomes irrelevant, there is a negative influence on the prices of cryptocurrencies that were purchased with this instrument, it will not be because in the past these assets were purchased with Tether, but because the absence of this instrument in the market may hinder the flow of demand towards it. In other words, investors may find it relatively more difficult to convert their fiat currencies into cryptocurrencies, since access to exchanges that don't use fiat currencies would be less accessible to those who wish to buy cryptocurrencies with them. And that, of course, would reduce demand for those cryptocurrencies until the market finds a substitute asset for Tether. Since there are already Tether substitute assets, the reduction in demand for cryptocurrencies would last only as long as it takes for the supply of those other assets to adapt to the demand for them, and therefore no lasting influences on cryptoassets prices, other than the extreme volatilities to which we are already accustomed in these markets, can be expected.
In short, it is probably very true that Tether is poorly backed by USD. At least as true as USD is even worse backed by anything else. Moreover, Tether is an asset of irrelevant dimension compared to USD. What underpins the price of both is the market's perceived utility of them as a medium of exchange. All the FUD regarding the danger Tether poses to the price of cryptoassets is based on an unfortunate misunderstanding, that of confusing backing with trading and market price. If Tether one fine day collapses, or if the USD does, it will not be negative for cryptocurrencies, but precisely what those of us who buy cryptocurrencies have been waiting for since Satoshi Nakamoto set this wonderful snowball rolling.
@Moeb