Bitcoin Forum

I asked in the previous article, what exactly is Bitcoin? What are the essential attributes of Bitcoin? My answer is that if all external factors  are removed, Bitcoin is a distributed database. It is a database that cannot be tampered with. This is my first definition of Bitcoin, and it is also the most basic attribute of Bitcoin.When we know that Bitcoin is a database, we continue to think about what Bitcoin is. Perhaps most of us would say that Bitcoin is a currency. Yes, this is our biggest consensus on Bitcoin. Perhaps many governments do not legally recognize Bitcoin as a currency, but Bitcoin is recognized and used by more and more people in the form of currency. Bitcoin's monetary properties have become increasingly clear.

However, my opinion today is that before we define Bitcoin as a currency, there is another clearer definition of Bitcoin, that is, Bitcoin is a ledger. And I need to emphasize that Bitcoin is a ledger first, and a currency second. The ledger is the cause, and the currency is the result. Rather than Bitcoin is a currency first, and then a ledger. The logical relationship between the two is very important. This helps us to further understand the essential attribute of Bitcoin.Bitcoin is above all a database. What is this database used for? It is used for keep accounts. What kind of accounts does it keep? It records the transaction and transfer records of Bitcoin between different people. This is what Bitcoin does. It exists as an exchange equivalent, as a medium of exchange. When we all regard Bitcoin as the general equivalent in our transaction process, it plays the role of currency. Then it is considered a currency. Please note that the logic here is very important. Because Bitcoin assumes the role of bookkeeping, it has the properties of currency, so we can use Bitcoin as a currency in our daily lives.

The currency attribute of Bitcoin is not agreed by governments in the form of laws and regulations, but is determined by the technical characteristics of Bitcoin itself. Regardless of whether the government recognizes it as a currency or the government does not recognize it as a currency, Bitcoin itself has the attributes of currency.Ledgers exist in all aspects of our lives. We all have ledgers for personal wages, shopping, consumption, etc. We have ledgers for trade and settlement between companies, and we also have ledgers for economic activities between countries. Almost all economic behaviors and life behaviors in our human society have accounts. All accounting systems are maintaining our economic order. So who is responsible for keeping the books in my life now? It is a centralized bank that keeps accounts. In other words, centralized banks keep accounts on behalf of the government. This kind of bookkeeping power is controlled by centralized power.

When the government continuously over-issues currency, it will cause continuous inflation, and the wealth of all those who own this legal currency will passively shrink. This is also the biggest injustice facing our human society. And Bitcoin was created to solve this problem.Bitcoin is a public ledger system that records human economic behavior. When we use Bitcoin for transactions and settlements, our transaction information is recorded on the Bitcoin public ledger. This public ledger is completely transparent and anyone can consult the information of this ledger; this ledger is distributed, and no single force can tamper with the information of this ledger; this ledger has a consensus mechanism that allows us to generate it Machine trust; this ledger will always exist and no one can destroy it.

So who is responsible for keeping the Bitcoin ledger? It is a miner of Bitcoin. The essence of Bitcoin mining is bookkeeping. It is the financial bookkeeping right of the digital bit world. As the Bitcoin network continues to strengthen, Bitcoin miners will not only liquidate basic human economic behaviors, but will eventually liquidate most of human core digital assets.When we sort out this relationship, we will truly understand that Bitcoin was invented as a ledger and assumed the function of currency. This is determined by the technical properties of Bitcoin. Regardless of whether the government recognizes it or not, it will play the role of currency. I believe that with the further popularity of Bitcoin, more and more people use Bitcoin as a payment medium, and Bitcoin will eventually become the ultimate ledger for recording all commercial data of human civilization. And then lead mankind into a brand-new human civilization, an advanced human civilization based on mathematical algorithms. This is the greatest wealth that Satoshi brought to mankind through the creation of Bitcoin.

This is my opinion, what about you ?

I don't think that bitcoin is a ledger, I think the public ledger is a different one but bitcoin is more on the currency side rather than a ledger. It doesn't matter that the government doesn't agree because bitcoin can be used to buy stuff and to me that's enough to be defined as a currency.

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger technology. Look what ledger means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledger

That is basically what a blockchain is.

There are some people which understand blockchain a ledger:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp


I would say that bitcoin uses blockchain, which is a decentralized ledger. Bitcoin is a currency.

I remembered reading something which differentiated Bitcoin with capital B and bitcoin with small letter b. Accordingly, the former refers to the network or the protocol or the entire ecosystem in general while the latter refers to the native currency used in the network. So it's like, bitcoin is the inherent currency in the Bitcoin payment system, although I don't think this was actually spelled out by the creator himself/herself/themselves.

The OP is neglecting to address the fact that a blockchain is a distributed ledger and Bitcoin is simply a currency that has all tx's stored on a blockchain. These days there are MANY applications using blockchain tech and most have nothing to do with Bitcoin. Given that, their title for this topic is wrong as Bitcoin is a currency. Period. While its format allows for inclusion of text and other data the Bitcoin blockchain was designed solely for handling currency.

As the OP mentions, those blockchains are mostly for records keeping. From food production and distribution, civic lighting (streetlights etc), to civil records such as deeds and other property records, taxes, etc you will find blockchain tech used where such data was once stored in a database. Why the change from using a traditional DB? Simple: Security. A normal centralized DB can be broken into and easily modified. A distributed blockchain database cannot be hacked so easily.

You were also trying to say "Bitcoin comes first and blockchain comes later".
The fact is that you can not separate different aspects of bitcoin. Bitcoin is a combination of multiple technologies and if you remove one it will cease to exist. In other words if you "remove all external factors" bitcoin will no longer be a distributed database either simply because it wouldn't have any reason to exist.
This database exists because bitcoin is a currency that has a value and miners mine it and nodes store its blockchain which can be used as a distributed database. All go hand in hand.

The problem when you change the definition and selectively use only one characteristic is that the definition starts to fall apart.
A database by definition is storing raw data that can be interpreted anyway you like and can be changed very easily. Neither of which are true in bitcoin. You can only interpret the "data" in blockchain in one way, as blocks and transactions, and you can not change them freely since they are protected by cryptography.
A database also has no reason to be immutable, in fact the basic characteristic of a "database" is  mutability.

I also wouldn't rank them either, saying this comes first and that second. Bitcoin is a whole system that has all of the above at the same time.

We can not separate Bitcoin and blockchain from each other, although they are two different things and not one thing, they are completely connected with each other, in other words, we can say that there is no Bitcoin without the presence of the blockchain.
But the blockchain can exist without Bitcoin and can be used for hundreds of practical things in our daily lives.
Unfortunately, governments realize this and are deceptively separating Bitcoin from the Blockchain. They want the Blockchain because they realized its great importance in regulating our economic, social, medical and other lives.
 The European Union countries have recently started implementing a huge project related to the use of Blockchain in the financial, economic, medical and social fields of the European Union.
But at the same time, they refuse to accept Bitcoin as a currency, and the main reason is of course because of the unique properties of Bitcoin being decentralized and out of control while maintaining privacy, these things do not like governments of course.
But I am optimistic that in the near future you will realize the importance of Bitcoin as a currency linked to the blockchain technology and of value at the same time, and they will realize the importance of adopting this revolutionary financial system because this is the logic of development and this must happen one day because no one can stand in the way of development.

Bitcoin is not a ledger. For those who have no knowledge of bitcoin and the government cannot manage as it pleases ledger thinks so. Bitcoin is a digital currency that allows you to manage any financial transaction without any restrictions on regional, financial and other features this currency is not bound to a specific country and therefore does not comply with the rules established by the law of a particular state, but at the same time allows you to use it anywhere in the world.

Well well, there is no role of the government in the bitcoin or crypto space except getting scared out of it and putting bans on it!
Who says Government needs to recognise bitcoin as currency and then only we can call it as currency? Bitcoin is all public, made from enthusiast Mr. Satoshi with the vision of making transaction system more or less public intellect rather than having dependency on the current government or central banking system.

The whole point is, if they are not regulating it since the beginning or if they were not the one to approve it then how come their decision is influencing in terms of calling bitcoin as currency or not.

Bitcoin is either a currency or a digital asset. What it is will be different for each person.

If you use it as an asset to store your capital because you think it is a digital gold, it is an asset for you.
Another person can use it as a mean to move money, in a digitalized form, it is a currency.
Another person use it to gamble, it is a mean to gamble. It is not a currency or an asset for that one.

There is no single way of giving the perfect ultimate defujitio if anything. And there are different approaches to definitions themselves which focus on genesis, function, main attributes or other things. Defining Bitcoin primarily as a ledger means focusing on the underlying technology at its core. If we define Bitcoin as a currency, we focus on its function. Both are essential, and why choose between them if we can combine them? And then, the definition would be something like this: Bitcoin is a blockchain-based currency that can be used for trading, long-term investments and as a medium of exchange.

What you are saying is that bitcoin and blockchain exist differently, but if you talk about bitcoin being a ledger, then I think BTC belongs to a currency in terms of technology and it can also pay like other currencies. other currencies, on the other hand, if BTC becomes our popular currency, the bank or any national central government they do not have the right to ban BTC, because this is a community currency.

This makes the most sense. Saying it again for myself:
Bitcoin is a currency, where proof of transfer and values are stored on a peer-to-peer decentralized ledger, which is normally done through 32-byte keys.

The distributed ledger creates security and makes it near impossible to manipulate. Miners add their confirmation of transactions after initiation by owners of those keys.

Bitcoin is a currency and the technology behind it is the blockchain. Both terms are being used interchangeably although they don't refer to the same thing.
The blockchain technology is not limited to bitcoin (or other currencies) and it has many different applications. Since it's decentralized then it would be better to compare it to a destributed database than a regular/centralized database.
Another misconception is using the term accounts when talking about bitcoin! Bitcoin doesn't use an account model but rather uses UTXOs model.

Bitcoin is not "a database", you can't write arbitrary data to it, it exists solely for Bitcoin the currency, and it was obviously designed for Bitcoin the currency. Bitcoin is not a swarm of digital hornets or a technological miracle that will save humanity from all problems, it's simply a decentralized digital currency that isn't even very popular right now. People should stop complicating things with Bitcoin or looking for reasons why it should cost millions of dollars per coin. Satoshi never claimed that Bitcoin is the biggest invention of the century, that it's a fundamental technology, etc. Learn from him.

to the topic creator
you are flip flopping

titles you have made(not verbatim)
flip) bitcoin is a database
flop)bitcoin is a ledger

flip)bitcoin is a currency first blockchain second
flop)bitcoin is a ledger first currency second

flip) bitcoin brings freedom of thought
flop)bitcoin brings math governance

i understand you are new and learning. but your posts are not seeking information. but spouting out naive opinions seeking confirmation bias or corrections.

maybe try to ask questions instead of flip flop some opinion to see which one gets you results.

if your aim is to spout opinions with the intent of promoting bitcoin. well just a spoiler. those on this forum have already been promoted bitcoin, hense how they arrived here.

its like promoting coffee as a new drink people should try.. to a coffee club who have already taken a sip

I think it is inappropriate to directly compare the accounting of Bitcoin with the accounting of the central bank.

Most of the current blockchain projects either use the UTXO model as the underlying data structure, or use the account balance model to store transaction-related information.

• The UTXO model organizes the input and output of all transactions in a chained manner. The output of each transaction can eventually be traced to a Coinbase, which is the first transaction of the block when Bitcoin is currently mined.
  
  
• The account model is easier to understand, each person’s account and transactions are recorded separately

The database you mentioned is not valid in my opinion. Because in the blockchain you cannot deduce from his hash what his content is. So the blockchain is meaningless as a database.

IPFS，I have briefly understood this thing before.Maybe this concept is more in line with the database you mentioned

in my opinion bitcoin can be called a currency and can also be called a very valuable asset because its price value continues to rise from year to year. There are several countries that do not accept bitcoin as a currency because bitcoin is only a decentralized digital currency, the government will have difficulty if someone commits a crime using bitcoin.

if you interpret bitcoin as a ledger for storing all accounts, I think it makes sense, of course we need a ledger to store all the accounts we have, it is already real bitcoin as a currency, the proof is that we can buy our needs using bitcoin, and what is certain is that bitcoin is much better for us to use for assets in the future..

Interesting article.
I do believe that what bitcoins is, is dependent on the user now, how they decide to use it, what are their plans for their bitcoins for the future.
I do think that it's actually easy to track the criminal if they  are using Bitcoins except for the time that they decide to use *virgin bitcoins* plus a wallet where the security level is marginal bur they do not ask for the documents.

So we can consider it an asset, currency, ledger, etc..


That's an asset.
I think the part of earning money comes from the fact that it's an asset with variable value.

Currency would be when you are using it to buy/sell things.


The whole concept of a fixed currency is the fact that it has a variable value which is bound to increase using the demand and supply rule we can make an assumption that all's going to be good with Bitcoins. We have seen tremendous heights because of the popularity and now it's increasing because of countries like El dorado etc ... more adoption of Bitcoins - higher the value.

Bitcoin is a ledger for storing human transactions between bitcoiners but can't be used as a database for all human activities. Bitcoin was introduced to help curb financial difficulties involved in exchanges and since it's introduction it has served as a swift medium for international transactions with open source. If you tell me it is a ledger for transactions I will ready buy the information but not as a ledger for storing all life activities

maybe you mean blockchain, because the blockchain we know is a digital ledger, all traces of transactions will be recorded and stored in it, making it easier for us to monitor the movement of financial activity, bitcoin is definitely a digital currency that can be used for virtual transactions, where we can buy regular goods or services, but the form of money is not physical..

Thank you for your wonderful views, let us further clarify the basic properties of Bitcoin. As everyone has said, it is difficult for us to have an ultimate definition of Bitcoin: what exactly is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is formed by the collection of a variety of knowledge. From the perspective of different disciplines, there are different definitions. As everyone has said, Bitcoin is a whole and cannot be separated. The reason why I listed them separately is to explain them from different angles so that we can understand that Bitcoin has different attributes. However, whether it is a blockchain, a ledger, or currency, they are all integrated. Together, they formed the Bitcoin network and built the Bitcoin ecology.

The ledger is a database that is shared, replicated, and synchronized among network members. The ledger records transactions between network participants, and the ledger can be input and output.

Bitcoin is not a database.

In my opinion, the ledger is the blockchain, and Bitcoin is a currency that can be used for payment and transactions.

Distributed ledger is one of the fastest growing technical fields in the world. Bitcoin is the greatest invention that breeds blockchain technology. It is essentially a distributed and trusted ledger guaranteed by technical means.
    Anyone can own Bitcoin, which means they can keep an account for themselves on this ledger.

Bitcoin is Bitcoin and it is not a ledger. The ledger is what Bitcoin blockchain is, not Bitcoin is.

Bitcoin has more use cases than a currency. It is a digital asset, a digitalized asset of storage. You don't need to call it as a digital currency to use it and you don't need government approvals to use Bitcoin.

If you have private key, and internet connection, you can use Bitcoin.

If you need to have a good wallet for privacy, you can use Bitcoin Core or Wasabi wallet
https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/
https://wasabiwallet.io/

This must be the the most efficient "Ledger" in the world. How many ledgers are distributed to 1000's of P2P nodes, that are not owned or managed by a centralized organization? How many of the other ledgers can be used for "Smart contracts"..?

The Blockchain and the Bitcoin protocol is a masterpiece and it is a miracle to behold. (Google ==> Byzantine Generals Problem + Bitcoin) The Immutability of Bitcoin transactions on the Blockchain is the real value....because people only know how valuable it is, when they know how other ledgers are being manipulated.  ;)