Bitcoin is called "digital gold" by some people. Can Bitcoin compare with gold?

In a sense, it can really be compared with gold. But bitcoin is a deflationary currency, which makes it a bit like gold. The newly dug gold in the world every year can't keep up with the expansion of economic scale and the circulation of legal tender. Therefore, the continuous appreciation of gold can also be seen as the continuous depreciation of legal tender relative to gold. ?

However, when the global economy was in turmoil recently and the stock price and oil price plummeted, we found that the market's safe-haven funds did not flow to Bitcoin, and the currency price plummeted. On the contrary, the price of gold is very firm.

Does this mean that bitcoin acts as a? Digital gold? This position has not been recognized by the global mainstream. Because the price of Bitcoin is the result of the global market game, a few determined users have no influence on the price of Bitcoin. In my opinion, the mainstream market does not recognize the safe-haven nature of Bitcoin, which just shows that Bitcoin has great risks.

I think the biggest risk of Bitcoin in the future is not that quantum computers crack encryption algorithms, because this risk is gradually accumulated, and we only need to replace the existing algorithms with more advanced anti-quantum encryption algorithms. This is a normal technical upgrade and does not affect the value of Bitcoin.

The biggest risk of Bitcoin comes from its * * * knowledge, that is, the constant total of 2 1 10,000 is actually realized by code, and the logic of halving every four years is also realized by code. If the upper limit of 2 1 10,000 is cancelled in the future, for example, it will not be halved after this halving (around April 2020), and inflation will continue at a constant rate, that is, a few lines of code will be changed.

Seeing this, senior people in the currency circle will definitely laugh at me for worrying too much, because if you break the understanding of * * * *, Bitcoin will no longer be Bitcoin, and it will be worthless.

However, is the knowledge of Bitcoin really unbreakable? Let's take a look at other digital currency's revision history of * * * knowledge:

1.20 16 years, due to road attack (not the cause of Ethereum itself), with the support of founder Vitalik, Ethereum was hard bifurcated, and Ethereum was divided into two parts.

2. The reward of each block of Ethereum has been reduced from the earliest 5 ETH to 3 ETH, and now it has been reduced to 2 ETH, but this is not a code control rule, but was artificially modified after the software upgrade;

3.EOS will adjust the annual reward of 5% to 1%, and the remaining 4% will be decided by the community;

4.Zcash revised the rules and decided to continue awarding the award after the expiration of the 2,654,380+founding team award.

Many people think that the knowledge of Bitcoin is far more reliable than other currencies, because Bitcoin has never changed the upper limit of 2 1 10,000 and the rules of bonus. This is actually due to Satoshi Nakamoto's retirement, which makes the Bitcoin community have no power to keep changing. However, bitcoin is like this at present, and I am afraid it may not be the case in the future. Because the development authority of Bitcoin is actually in the hands of a few people and the mine pool is highly concentrated, if the joint miners modify the rules, as long as the pre-publicity is in place, the change may not have much resistance. After all, in the face of interests, the future of Bitcoin itself is not worth mentioning.

This is also the biggest risk of Bitcoin in the future: because it is so easy to modify the code, knowledge may no longer exist in the face of huge benefits. In contrast, the real safe-haven asset gold has several incomparable advantages:

1. As a super-sovereign currency, almost everyone knows it;

2. The central bank cannot print gold;

3. In the foreseeable 100 year, mankind will not be able to master the technology of synthesizing gold.

There is another potential advantage of gold, which may not be obvious now, that is, when the major economies in the world move towards zero interest rate or even negative interest rate, the investment value of gold as an interest-free currency will become more and more significant, because many people will find that the yield of 10 ~ 20% in the past few decades may become history.

The knowledge of Bitcoin is not unbreakable. Are you separated? Digital gold? There is still a long way to go. This paper does not mean that the knowledge of Bitcoin is doomed to be shattered in the future, but points out the potential risks in the future, which should be taken into account when investing in Bitcoin.

It is not advisable to hold a firm belief in Bitcoin and think that it is digital gold. In Russell's words, it summarizes the central idea of the full text, that is: it doesn't matter what you believe, what matters is that you don't believe it completely.