Way back in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to Bitcoin, the first peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Satoshi Nakamoto (whose real identity remains unknown) hoped to create a completely decentralized legal tender that would be free from government or corporate interference.
Nakamoto wrote
The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that's required to make it work . The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
But is he right?
In my opinion, however, Nakamoto failed to fully appreciate why fiat currencies had come to replace the gold standard and other intrinsic value systems. Despite its vulnerability to manipulations by the central bank, a fiat currency still has the advantage of representing the actual buying power or productive worth of the society that uses it.
In other words, it's scalable and tokenizes utility. For example, people who exchange the U.S. Dollar are really trading shares in the collective wealth, capability, innovation, and military might of the United States. On the other hand, gold only has value by popular consensus because it's scarce and difficult to mine, the same as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin can't beat fiat currencies because it digitally replicates an outmoded model of arbitrary, non-utility value.
Some newer cryptocurrencies, including ICP, go beyond Bitcoin to embrace the advantage of directly tokenizing utility without the disadvantage of centralized administration. Owning ICP allows participation in network governance using Network Nervous system (NNS) and can power cycles to run decentralized applications that do not depend on the whims of governments or major private entities like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
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Because of this, Internet Computer's theoretical model of value is better than Bitcoin's.
Conclusion
Although only time will tell if this theoretical potential will be realized in practice, ICP shows promising signs and enjoys remarkable growth. It seems likely that ICP will play an essential role in establishing what financial evolution comes next after Bitcoin. It's the next blockchain revolution after Ethereum and will shape the future internet (Web 3.0) for years to come.
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