Over the past three months, the original cryptocurrency returned to the front scene after 18 months of disillusion. This is the consequence of 2 very unique properties.
Bitcoin is unstoppable. No matter how illegal, decried, or down its price is, its distributed nature makes it nearly impossible to stop. As long as a few individuals worldwide believe it is worth mining its coins, the blockchain won’t stop. No central authority, organization, or committee is required to keep it alive. Bitcoin would only die if nobody in the world thinks it’s worth existing, and given its cult nature, we know that won’t happen.
Another consequence of its distributed nature is that it is unseizable. No matter how powerful a state, an army, or a thief is, they would not be able to take ownership of someone else’s Bitcoin unless they knew that person’s cryptographic key.
Combined with its capped supply of 21M tokens, Bitcoin is a unique financial asset. Like gold, it cannot be “created” by people, and like the most traded financial instruments these days, it’s completely digital. This has not been ignored by powerful financial organizations, and earlier in January, we saw the launch of 9 ETFs, hinting at an increased adoption.
Interestingly, though, when looking at technology adoption, there are two approaches: incumbents embracing the technology or new players displacing the incumbents. An example of the first is seeing the New York Times become an online publication, while an example of the second is Amazon becoming the main bookstore.
Here, we’re clearly on the first approach: incumbents (Blackrock, Fidelity, or Ark…) embracing Bitcoin, and it’s really the first time this has happened at scale, as until now, the “big names” of cryptocurrencies (Coinbase, Binance, Ledger… etc) were all companies trying to disrupt their market with the help of blockchains.
It’s really the beginning of a new era for these technologies, led by Bitcoin.