Bitcoin: A 'Limited Edition Digital Relic' Rather Than a Currency
Hu Jie, a professor at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance and former senior economist at the US Federal Reserve, explains that Bitcoin is not primarily a currency. Instead, it's a 'limited edition digital relic' that has gained popularity due to its unique properties.
The concept of Bitcoin began with Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper on October 31, 2008. The goal was to create a ledger system that didn't belong to any single authority and couldn't be tampered with at will. Traditional ledgers are controlled by a single entity, making them vulnerable to manipulation.
BTC offers an alternative through its peer-to-peer network, where the ledger is jointly maintained by all nodes. This requires a majority consensus to alter records, preventing any single party from controlling it.
Hu Jie emphasizes that the true significance of Bitcoin lies in the co-managed ledger model it demonstrates. This has given rise to various innovations like smart contracts, tokens, stablecoins, and RWA. Even traditional assets, such as stocks, are essentially numbers on a digital ledger.