Bitcoin Forum

According to Bitcoin's purpose on the doc written by Satoshi, it stated the purpose of Bitcoin as a P2P medium of exchange. But I see some companies using it for the purchase of Goods and Services which makes some governments interested in its regulations because the economy is involved.

Is this purpose going to take a turnaround?
Because I see Bitcoin being accepted by some governments and regulated.

The problems is a little bit more complicated. Imho the goal would be to get Bitcoin useful for paying (everywhere) for goods and services.

The problem is not that companies would use it for that. The problem is that the merchants pay for the goods, for the employees and also the taxes in fiat.
Also - sooner or later - a lot of people or companies want to buy and sell bitcoin (miners have to pay for electricity and others, traders want to buy and sell, companies and individuals want to invest and hold, maybe sell some now and then....).

And unfortunately the contact with "fiat world" goes through regulations. Without regulation Bitcoin use could remain somewhat limited (i.e. as a P2P coin, especially between individuals, who don't care much about KYC).
This is how I see it. Not as a turnaround, more like "comply so you can grow further".

This in my opinion described what bitcoin is in essence; it is P2P system which does not need a third party, the purpose of this transaction is not defined. There definitely has to a reason behind a transaction.

Bitcoin is a free system and essentially everyone is allowed to use it he way they want, this sometimes means that some users actually allow a third party to mediate transaction.
However, companies using bitcoin to purchase goods and services is still in line with how bitcoin was designed. Peer-to-Peer could involve Individual-to-Individual, Business-to-Business, Business-to-Individual, et al.

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Governments attempting to regulate bitcoin is a secondary effect of its adoption and usage, and not necessarily caused by businesses.

Regulations will come to bitcoin if it sees mass adoption but they probably can't be added on chain and would have to be done in a centralised manner (so might be ignorable).

If bitcoin doesn't take over from fiat then we'll likely see conversions happening quite a bit of selling pressure may be added to the crypto market. Conversions themselves are inherintlu how the current currency systems work, many international businesses require the ability to convert money and a lot of governments and banks make it easy and cheap (or free) to do.

The purpose of Bitcoin as a trustless medium of exchange (thus P2P without needing a trusted third party) can never be changed.

Bitcoin is a lot of things to a lot of people. The people and institutions that are seeing it as an asset class they can actively trade, speculate on and benefit from are the ones who are lobbying for regulations. To be more accurate, lobbying for clarification of the regulatory stance.

That does not change the basic purpose. More so when there isn't really any accepted definition on the basic purpose. It is open source software which is evolving over time and finding its own use cases.

It is not the purpose which is taking round but it’s the utilisation of blockchain in other sense. Satoshi did invest bitcoin which runs on the bankend algo of blockchain. However, what you referring to is utilisation of the coin that is bitcoin which is the only thing that can be accessed in reality over blockchain for various purpose such as p2p exchanges.

What other companies are doing is, making use of blockchain for their internal work while making bitcoin as forefront barrier to showcase the use of same. You know it’s like you show the world what they are interested in by looking at what world really wants.

This is what I am understanding from the OP.

...And that's still the purpose to this date.


Now that's entirely upon the companies and the people. They still have a choice on whether to go fully p2p or go under Government's control

Nope. Like I said, it's a choice. Bitcoin will still remain around with it's intended purpose


Bitcoin as a network cannot be regulated or controlled by government, and I don't think it will ever be.

Main purpose is for micro-payment scheme.


But as soon as bitcoin started to have a price, then obviously, we have the Mt. Gox exchange, pushing it to become a commodity to be traded. And moving 10 years later, it has evolved so much, being compared to gold, companies putting their assets into bitcoin as hedge and have it in their balance sheet. And countries like El Salvador accepting it as legal tender.

Yep, the purpose of Bitcoin is become a medium of exchanges without third party involved (e.g. government) but since government is being accepted and regulated Bitcoin, this defeat the Bitcoin purpose. Take a look with centralized exchanges and centralized wallet (El Salvador) they can have control over your coins. They also can track your address what do you doing with your coins.

To make Bitcoin doesn't have third party involved is shutting down all centralized exchanges and wallet, use DEX instead.

Those companies usually provide centralized platforms and services. What they provide to you and other customers are not decentralized, peer-to-peer platform for trading. Because they are centralized, they are not matched with the core idea of Bitcoin protocol for peer-to-peer trade.

Some platforms claim to be peer-to-peer platforms but they are not actually decentralized and on their platforms, you are only given custodial wallets. It means that without access to non-custodial wallets, you don't own private key and don't have your own banks.

Such platforms are similar to central banks and they can seize your money, restrict your account whenever they want.

Bitcoin as a currency based on trust that no one can control especially banks and governments, and distrust with centralized system finance methods, where the center can control everything and the lack of transparency of transactions in a central system allows data manipulation to occur, because bitcoin is very transparent and will not there is data manipulation because anyone can see transactions through bitcoin explorer.
and a decentralized system makes the cost of sending money very cheap and very fast regardless of distance and time, in contrast to a centralized system the cost of sending money is very expensive and speed depends on the distance to the recipient and the process is relatively long even hours.
bitcoin makes everything more secure, convenient and perfect because everything is completely controlled by the user.

You see companies that are accepting Bitcoin as a payment for goods and services, then what’s the difference between that and using as P2P?

I know that you fear that the government will come in to regulate Bitcoin, but what the companies are doing is no different from the purpose that Bitcoin was created, the only thing is that since they are big institutions and companies, they will tend to draw more attention from the government than when ordinary people are using Bitcoin for transactions.

Even these days most people are seeing Bitcoin as investment and not even a P2P method of transaction.

Have you ever seen multifunctional furniture, a sofa can be a bed and a bookshelf, if you understand about that, surely you also understand about Bitcoin.

Even though what you see and what Satoshi (P2P) says with a peer to peer system, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin can't be used in other ways or things, Bitcoin is a digital currency that is multifunctional apart from what you know, that's the advantage of Botcoin.

If you already understand how Bitcoin works and use it legally, you no longer think Bitcoin is only used through P2P, Bitcoin can be used to fund, borrow, buy goods, transactions in any form with instructions in the form of currency in their respective countries, great not Bitcoin.

Wrong. The main purpose is to be a payment system, the size of the payments (micro or massive) is not a defining factor. We also have always had both, from millions of dollars being transferred in a single transaction to a fraction of a dollar.

Just want to point out that the day the word "mining" was used, people started comparing bitcoin with gold. And that term is used from day one in bitcoin paper.

The point of  Bitcoin is that no one decides how it can be used. Perhaps what we have now, the ongoing institutional adoption, is not what Satoshi has envisioned, but Satoshi created something that even they can't control anymore. The fundamentals of Bitcoin haven't changed, it's still decentralized, censorship resistant, peer to peer, accessible to everyone. The fact that insitutions are adopting it faster than general population just means that they were the first to spot its benefits.

But this was what people wanted right? Because I know very well that a lot of people were always wishing that big companies and institutions everywhere, and even shops would start accepting Bitcoin and allow them the option to make payments using Bitcoin.

There is no way that these big companies will accept Bitcoin without the government coming in to start their regulation, it was bound to happen. Unless we are just going to continue only with P2P payments and nothing else, but as long as we are going to have big companies , there is no way that you wouldn’t have regulations involved.

If you want to avoid that, then you will have to just stay clear from all that continue with peer to peer transactions. That’s the only way you wouldn’t have any thing to do with regulation.

What people want is not clear. People often don't know and contradict themselves and each other.

Regulation is often seen as bad/evil. And yes, I understand that the requirements for KYC are basically stupid and while it partly covers governments' incompetence, it opens Pandora's box in terms of abuses from all directions.

On the other hand without regulations Bitcoin can't grow. Without regulations some actors can pump and dump, can fake volumes, can use bots to rise the price artificially and such. Without regulations companies may not buy into bitcoin (and lower demand means lower price, and lower price makes some cry). Without regulation the average Joe may not trust Bitcoin to buy. Without proper regulations the banks may not allow you buy or sell Bitcoin (and freeze your fiat if they catch you doing it). And without regulations most merchants can't/won't accept Bitcoin. Without regulations scams can rise easier.

All in all.. yeah, regulation is evil and the tool of evil. It is against the liberties. But without regulations it's also very bad.
So.. what did people want? Both and neither 8). In the same time 8)

The bitcoin proposal was clear from the start... We only have to read the message on the genesis block to understand what's the purpose:


A decentralized financial system where each user can send money around the world for the same fees.

Everything that gets big is going to be regulated by the government since at the end of the day government is an integral component but this might be the first time in centuries that they have been challenged by something like bitcoins, crumbling their power. I do think that the purpose of Bitcoins is:
Providing individual support to the people involved, giving them the authority of their own assets
Proving a medium of exchange that can only be controlled by the owners
Providing asset+ a method of exchange+ currency all at the same time depending upon the user as well
Giving people power, freedom, individuality that cannot be controlled by the rich and the powerful.
We don't know what the purpose of Bitcoins was, what it intended to do but we do know that it's doing a far greater good than that. Therefore you can bend it down to your needs as well, it might be an asset for some and a source of earning for the others. Quite variable.

Bitcoin is just a tool and someone could make use it no matter what ways or form it would be but speaking on having in control on centralized aspects or technically speaking then it cant be possible.

Government could only make out only involvements but only into those centralized businesses or platforms which they could only touch off but not in directly with Bitcoin.

Speaking of purpose then it do still able to do so on what it is meant to be or its true purpose it is just there are some applications on where it did really go out into its
boundary.

Everyone will define it purpose of bitcoin due to the way it understand it, I don't think we have a specific definition of bitcoin purpose on the, where you will translate, compare and make conclusion of purpose of fiat, its the same to categorized cryptocurrencies and especially bitcoin, from my assumption and perspective, Bitcoin is a currency which is been use for exchanges of goods and services, using this as illustration, during you the early establishment or introduction of bitcoin some used Bitcoin for exchange of pizza, and currently some people use bitcoin to exchange cars and buildings, so Bitcoin have varieties of purposes.

Keep in mind that doc was written back when the crypto landscape was much different than it is now. MUCH different. And considering that whoever Satoshi is/are, I am sure he would have thought it could come to this and that the intital version was just as a starting point, and that for BTC to evolve and survive, it would need to make adjustments to how it's percived and be more fluid in that sense.

In my opinion: Government is obsessed that they generate little or no money despite thousands of transactions happening everyday on bitcoin blockchain. Miners get the reward. If government can mine bitcoin it's the only means they can generate money from bitcoin. They can only regulate the institutions that work in line with bitcoin such as exchanges, businesses, etc. Scarcity is another reason government is working hard to control bitcoin so that they can handle huge amount of bitcoin when the 21 million bitcoins have been Mined. Can they get taxes from Bitcoin network?

BTC is used on any other things that are not written in the documents of satoshi. It was unexpected but what was your understanding with P2P medium of exchange? IMO a P2P user can be a single person, a group of people or it could be a company or a government.

While a medium of exchange means it is like a money that can be used to purchase goods or services. That is what the government currently doing and there is nothing wrong with that because that is how BTC intended to be but not for the regulation part that have done by the governments. This slowly takes away the decentralization part of BTC. this should be controlled or stop before it gets worst.

It's inevitable that government will really intervene. As well as the big financial institutions. I'm half biased on this development because just like what others have said, it's really not intended to be like that.

But as bitcoin grows, we have to embrace developments like this in a positive manner. Before, it was thought and asked like what if the governments start to become interested in bitcoin. Now that we're here, I think it's unlikely that we have to turn back and return.

The purpose of Bitcoin is to give it a purpose.  ;)

Jokes aside, the purpose of Bitcoin is written in the very first sentence of the whitepaper:

Who knows, let's find out by adopting it. There's a better type of sound money, so let's make it official.

Lol who told you that Satoshi did not anticipate those government actions towards bitcoin? Satoshi is a Mindful person his Views in situation is far from what is the present meaning he knew this all coming and this same reason why he does not want to be on the front .
he hide His identity so he can protect his life and His family.
Satoshi Nakamoto knows all of these are coming , and He is ready how to face the situation .

Bitcoin serves as a replacement for toilet paper money as well as a store of value similar to gold. A blockchain is a transparent and tamper-proof ledger, and blockchain technology is altering the world in the same way that bitcoin is revolutionizing money. Bitcoin is stored in wallets with public addresses, but bitcoin can only be transferred from that wallet using a private key known only to the wallet holder.

Thousands of personal computers monitor every bitcoin transaction in the blockchain to ensure that it is accurate and transparent.
So, my final thought is that the purpose of bitcoin is to give financial freedom to everyone and be followed by privacy.

Yes, bitcoin purpose is to develop decentralized currency and improve medium of exchange globally. It was also created to reduced unemployment in the world labour market so that many graduate will not be lack of job opportunity in the world. It was also created to eliminate delay in the world transaction and to bring fast and safe to people transaction in the world.

Bitcoin has developed many countries that adopted decentralized currency and they are more better than those countries that rejected bitcoin some years ago in their country. Satoshi created bitcoin to help people who cannot help themselves to grow well in the community and to leave the condition of poverty in the community.

Unfortunately we have already moved away from the goal of bitcoin mentioned by Satoshi Nakamoto as we hardly use Bitcoin as a p2p transaction rather we invest into bitcoin for profit and since the institutional investments started pouring into bitcoin it has changed the course of game and I know still some of us use Bitcoin for P2P but there are other cryptos which provides faster transaction speed and almost zero transaction fee hence bitcoin is no longer utilized as P2P and rather an investment medium which has come under government's radar wherein they have already started implementing taxes on Bitcoin and trying to regulate it. We need to accept this fact and understand that the original goal has been ruined and it has been turned into more of a investment medium wherein corporates can change the tide anytime they want.

Why the heck then some countries are considering legalizing bitcoin as a legal tender while others have already done this if no one wants bitcoin to be P2P currency but rather wants to use it for obtaining short-time gains in fiat money that constantly is depreciating and losing trust? Even more, you know what, I don't care how Satoshi envisioned bitcoin because once he left the project for the community, his view and his writings became irrelevant and obsolete. If I want to use bitcoin as an investment I will do that because no one in this world can hamper me from doing whatever I want with the private keys I myself generated and funded. But if I want to exchange my bitcoin for goods or services in a P2P transaction, I will find like-minded people who are ready to transact and can't be stopped from transacting in a decentralized currency.

I think being accepted does not mean the original purpose of bitcoin can be released because basically bitcoin as a decentralized currency. Unlike other currencies in general, bitcoin does not depend on one main issuer.
Bitcoin uses a distributed database and propagates to the nodes of a P2P network to a transaction journal.
It also uses cryptography to provide basic security functions, such as ensuring that bitcoins can only be used by those who actually own them, and never more than once.
As a result, bitcoin can be used in various types of transactions such as buying internet servers, buying fashion products and so on.

I think that what happens is that in every speculative market the great whales will always emerge and as long as there are people with other visions those who have the most money are those who handle the most power, this is not only present here but in everything, we probably live where to There is a business model for everything, and everyone wants to win, very few remain with the interest of being enthusiastic or of being a Pro Technological person and/or that supports everything that has to do with progress, everything adds to the usual interest to win.

peer-2-peer as intended by satoshi is to is create a payment network between two parties that is devoid of a third party intermediary which implies it can be between any two party possibly two friends, two businesses, companies or any organisation that has bitcoin and want to make payment for virtually anything without relying on a central authority. Government regulation fighting against the p2p exchange is because it presents anonymous transaction but there is little that can be done about this

Bitcoin is a form of money that no government or bank can control. It is a digital currency that can be transferred over the internet directly between two people without going through any financial institutions .It serves as an alternative to fiat as form of digital money.Bitcoin can also be used to purchase goods and services. And lastly, it also use for investment.

Bitcoin has also a lot of advantages. It gives you a full control of over your money. With bitcoin, you are the bank. No government or bank can decide to freeze your account or stop you from receiving payment. :)

Bitcoin is the first digital currency and it has been very popular all over the world..Bitcoin has many purpose.But the main reason why bitcoin was created, is that it can be used for peer-to-peer transanctions which means no banks or any financial institutions are involved.Bitcoin serves as an alternative to traditional money. It can be use to buy and sell things online.Some people used bitcoin as an investment and have made large profits by buying it at a low price and then selling it for a high price.

I personally believe what you’re mentioning is the exactly what Satoshi had in mind for its main purpose, an electronic payment system.  I’m not sure the fact that its being used for goods and services is not something he wasn’t expecting or wanting it to be used for.  I’m sure he had planned for it being used for all sorts of things.

No, I don't see Bitcoin giving us the freedom, banks and some exchanges are already asking KYC that could breach our privacy. And to found that legalizing Bitcoin is the solution to poverty nor it gives solution to our economic crisis. But I don't stop people looking positive at Bitcoin and thinking it helps them to have a better future as it eventually helps in real life.

However, we can't just easily see that Bitcoin will consider as a form of currency if people will just think of this as an investment. Apparently, this is what we see.