Bitcoin Forum

Charles Darwin is famous for his observation of "survival of the fittest" leading to a healthier eco system. Under his narrative organisms compete. Those best suited to thrive under existing conditions pass on their genes.

Could this type of darwinism be applied to finance and money. Is a competitive environment for currencies and assets under markets favorable to society.

If it is true that nature abhors a vacuum. Could aspects of finance and economies revolve around the opposite spectrum. Propping up vacuums due to an anti competitive slant whereby they seek to consolidate and monopolize markets to prevent any form of real competition from existing.

It is common for many today to accuse american tech giants like google as being monopolies which exist in a vacuum where perhaps no real competition exists. Might it be fair to say, that competition carries a potential to make monopolistic giants like microsoft and google better. Competition can produce incentive and necessity for self improvement. Which drives industry advancement and progress. Elevating standard of living. In the absence of such can humanity, business or anything truly thrive?

....

Food for thought:

Money needs an investor for power, and an investor needs an opportunity for money. Therefore, competition increases the investor's money rather than increasing the power of money.

I think its more suitable to call it payment system instead of money in this context(?). We have gone through alot of it until we currently settle with fiat / paper money for convenience. Back it the day, people used barter system and then switched to gold and copper before we came to known about paper money so I wont be surprise if we use any type of digital payment for all transaction in the future ( not crypto just digital payment system using standard fiat )

regarding competition, back then all those automobile manufacturer literally have no competition at all because most of those giant brands have their fair share of market until Tesla come and screw the market with their electric car.

That is why it's called money as it is used to pay or used to receive payment. Even now, there are some barter going on instead of using money to pay or receive payment but as we all know paying fiat money is mostly done.

Meanwhile, the central bank already prepared their own central bank digital currency. ;)

Well, personally, I rather more intrigued by the question of did these giants companies are in the game of healthy competition or not? When we mentioning these giant companies I took their skin in the game experience and all the big data that they have. Not to mention that big tech companies are acquiring much smaller competitor that has a threat to their business model. And that makes them slaying in the market share.

Speaking about the absence of competition. Well, I believe if that's happening there will be no things being made. So indeed competition is essential in such hierarchical human life/nature.

Competition has to be moral/healthy though.  Competitors need to pass all the safety standards to  considered success/moral/good.
If a competitor is breaking safety standards/rules while others in thesame field are obeying them, the ones breaking the safety standards may "succeed" first in the business and gain undeserved reward/success.  That's one of the reasons we have bad products (typical "processed sugar" instead of honey for example) in consumers goods.
Whoever solves an important problem first without breaking the good standards/rules deserves the right market. The rest could be tutored by the best so that we have more best competitors. No one is left to die else it could be considered immoral competition.
Darwin theory is based on selfishness which is actually against the fact that good Earth is supposed to be filled with living things that coexist in harmony and selflessness

Money or Currency has to evolve with the needs of the people that use it. Let's take the evolution of payment methods as a quick example and why things are changing...

Humans first bartered with Goods and Service (I give you 6 eggs for 1 bread) and that was fine, until someone figured out that you can replace the goods and services with something that represent value. (1 x seashell = 6 eggs etc..)  It was just more effective to pay someone with 20 seashells ..than having to pay them 120 eggs for say ...a wagon wheel.

Then in ancient China, someone figured out that you can use paper or rocks carved in a specific way to use as currency and later metal coins was used. (Gold & Silver) ....and things evolved from there.

Then paper currencies was backed by Gold and when people figured out that Gold will not be enough... they created (IOU's) out of thin air to be guaranteed payment that are backed by the government. (Today we call it Fiat currency)

Then clever people invented computers and databases and debit cards and credit card.. (Now you do not even own the money, but you borrow it from the Banks and pay them interest for using it)  ::)

Satoshi Nakamoto then developed "Bitcoin" ...because he wanted to offer people a payment option that were not controlled by governments... and also something that gave people some privacy. (pseudo anonymity)  ;)

Bitcoin evolved into 1000's of Alt coins .... and it is still evolving since then.  ;) (People wanted more privacy and the developers gave them Dash.... people wanted better Smart contract platforms and they developed ..say Ethereum...  ::)

We have national currencies,that compete against each other on the FOREX markets-dollar,euro,frank,etc..
Are they becoming better,by competing on the FOREX markets?Nope,I don't think so.
Money are a pretty specific product.It doesn't expire,the demand for money is always strong,everyone needs money,in order to survive.The problem is that central banks don't want to control the money supply anymore.They just want to boost the inflation and pump the economy,by producing more and more debt.
This devalues money,so the people want spend them fast,before they lose more of their value.
The central banks need proper management,not competition.

No, I don't think that money needs any competition because it's not an organism, it's just a tool that is used to do transactions in exchange for services or products. The value of money is dependent on the growth of the country and not competition, competition will only lead to deflation, remember that if there are chocies, the lowest price is going to be one's that will be favored and that's the opposite of flourishing.

The facility represents labor and goods. They are soulless and cold. Only countries impose politics to make currencies compete with each other. That takes away the essence of money, money becomes a tool to achieve other benefits.
Bitcoin currency is the most advanced generation of world currency and it helps us to see the essence of traditional currency.

I don't think money has to have a competitor in order to flourish. It is not some kind of organism or an organization that suddenly evolves and increases its potential when threatened in a match. Money serves as a payment method during ancient times up to this date. It stabilizes the economy of a country and controls the market flow. In fact, money's value tends to go higher or lower depending economy itself. So basically, the economy will be one of the main factors why monetary value goes up and down. One best example would be the money exchange rate. The more your country's economy is growing and stabilizing, the lower the exchange rate of it to the universal currency, the dollar.



 

I think this is relative but what can make money become competitive can also be tied to inflation. Inflation can either devalue or increase its worth. If you have inflated economy then the money is less competition because it value reduce and hardly valuable both locally and internationally and that gets a responsible government to start setting up competitive mechanism up like introduction of inception and maybe increase investment, partnership with investors and provision of cheap repayable loans to push up production that could drive down cost of goods.

If we check to theorize that no competition will happen towards the same industries globally, I think we will still be old where the latest technology is radio. Connecting with people from other countries would be complex, and information would still be in books and not easily accessible. It's hard to think about it, but I think that can be the scenario.

Competition would always be there and imagine just money, there wouldn't be another alternative towards it but look where we are now. Many possible tradeable currencies from coins, valuables, etc., as long as the person you are trading with perceives its value.

Additionally, there wouldn't be any standard if there's no competition. People would accept one, and we all know that it's impossible to have an "agreeable" thing with our society. The best way to fix those different situations from the competition is to have a standard. Having standards is required, IMO, so that everything is standardized and settled towards what every nation should have and learn.

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of money. It is simply a store of value. Before money existed people had to barter - e.g. I'll cut your hair in return for some of your freshly picked strawberries. Instead of constantly having to find ways to exchange such value, people decided that coins and notes could be used as a storage medium. A good currency will hold it's value and not be too unpredictable. There are plenty of other things in life that have value (paintings/whisky/cars/precious metals) and often they are measured in terms of the amount of money it costs to buy it from the owner. Money doesn't need competition, it is simply a well understood mechanism and accepted form of exchange which can co-exist with many other items of value.

Bad money drives out good money.

For sure, although it is very tough for any feasible competition to gain ground against fiat currencies.

It's essentially a monopoly. The government stipulates that by virtue of law, their own fiat currency is legal tender and hence worth something.

Even if competitors spring up in the short run, such as BTC, the government can simply pull the switch on the regulation end and start their draconian campaign against it.

But over the long run, it is survival of the fittest as you say. The masses will speak and act us eventually against the rampantly depreciating fiat and moved to decentralised currencies as it has happened time and time again throughout history, imho.

Absolutely! I love the comparison. WIthout the competitiveness, there's no growth, so if all the companies held a monopoly over a certain market sector - they wouldn't develop as fast and efficient as they're doing now.

In addition, we can see how harsh environmental conditions accelerate the "natural selection" among the companies. A good example is Ponzi Schemes. These are the companies that carry "bad genes". And when there are stressful conditions in the economy, e.g. inflation, depression - these are the first ones that burst and die. While the truly good companies, that have everything backed up survive.

Ikr the chinese are preparing for their Digital Yuan. Im not sure what that is but its definitely not going to be a decentralized cryptocurrency. Heck yeah it might not even be a cryptocurrency, just some sort of usual Yuan but in form of digital payment


I think the OP was referring to crypto as the competition to money. Most of the cryptocurrencies are created to be the next payment system . So in correlation with his quoted references from Darwin,  pretty much you can see cryptocurrencies as an evolved form of the current fiat system and a competitor for the current system

I don't think it's currencies that compete with each other, but people's choices with each currency and the way the economy works. Currencies have been around for a long time such as shells, snails, stones, copper, gold coins, banknotes… so far we have more currencies in online banking and finally cryptocurrencies. They are developed to match the value of goods, labor and are guaranteed by scarcity, convenience, anti-counterfeiting.
People are self-conscious about each coin in each period, so they have invented new coins and are supported by human society. So the evolution of money is human's sense of monetary nature to make the right choice. The development of money is the result of human evolution.

Hmm I guess the better term here would be economy? or economic power? Money IS merely a medium imo, whether we are using multiple types of currency for different countries or one global currency, it's still a medium nonetheless. Countries compete with each other over how their products are developed, how it is used by consumers and whatnot, which makes them develop more and grow more, to outgrow their competitors. Pretty much development begets development, it's simply a never-ending cycle.

I am not sure how much of it is currency competition. The thing observed when we stack up to different currencies one another and see their different values is that it's only reflection of a couple of factors like the economic power of a country, their political and sometimes military dominance, the debt they have, and so on. So in a sense, traditional currency only reflects the competition between countries. Crypto might be different as it does not have the same economic or political background as FIAT (well, it does but in a different way than other currencies). Crypto seems to be benefiting from the competition.

Almost every job requires money if you have money you can rise to the top of the competition and exercise power. Everyone competes to encourage money competition is an inherent aspect of the business not just in the retail industry but in a free enterprise system for every industry the us retail industry is relentlessly competitive measuring the largest us retail chain in terms of customer experience brand value innovation policy reputation franchise and even fidelity compared to all other retail competitors. As the economy improves money is needed to develop itself.

This is nice healthy discussion, I'm loving it.
IMO, at what form could be the competition? Even cryptocurrencies value are being based with fiat and not with food or things.
You cannot say "I want to trade my 1 Bitcoin for 100 pieces of canned goods." As long as we are stuck with our traditional way it's difficult to let it go.
The hardest part will be the mass population that will try to adopt the situation. They will need to learn it if we are talking about cryptocurrencies as the new competitor. It cannot be "gold" otherwise, scientists will be calling us like going back to being homo sapiens.
Bartering is all I could think of but if all your bills are paid thru "fiat" then how are you going to extend your electric consumption if they will cut it down due to lack of fiat for payment.

In unregulated environments, sure. I mean, Bitcoin did spawn things like Monero and Ethereum, among other popular crypto that aren't just clones. The competition aspect is more tech than finance though, so there's that.

Once something tries to kill fiat in a survival of the fittest scenario, governments are essentially judge, jury, and executioner. Competitors are even dead right out the gate in some territories, where their official currency is the only legal tender by law. It's also why companies like Paypal are competing for a way to make spending fiat easier, because they can't touch fiat itself (remember Libra? lol).

I guess fiat vs. fiat is also a thing, and China has been trying to beat the USD as a reserve currency, but nobody but the countries involved themselves actually benefit from that, so maybe the general answer is no?

In terms of barter is a very important thing where in the past when gold was a means of payment, it showed that there was no inflation rate. and when the implementer decides to replace it with paper money so that it looks more dangerous the impact. well one of them is inflation that we often talk about. while the resistance value is much higher and gold has that advantage.

and Bitcoin is now present as a digital-based reincarnation of gold, so it is very fortunate that we today cannot experience payments to transact item x with gold. but Bitcoin provides a solution.

It is very well known fact that monopolies tend to have a bad effect on society, and while it may seem that Google or Facebook may not have any competitors the issue is that they keep buying any company that could pose a threat making their monopoly even larger and imposing even more ridiculous terms and conditions to their users, so with that in mind I think the observation that every single entity needs some competition in order to show its true potential is correct.

Money and currency are just tools in our hands. They serve to help us in the outside world, to have access to products and services in the real economy. Without that economy, money would have no reason to exist. Don't think of money as an end, but as a means to an end.
And the same is true for bitcoin even though one day you'll be thankful that you've accumulated some satoshi when its real function in the real economy will finally unfold.

The sad news is we are too old to be using crypto currency if you are talking about satoshi value and that means the price and Bitcoin really still exist. But the real question is does it really still remains in the future or some new technology about currency are still we using?

Op needs to understand that money is a tool we used today since we can't barter goods forever since it will gone to waste in the long run as it has an expiration date. Imagine bartering gold for a sheep or something big? Can you hold it if you wish to travel to your mainland if you are a trader?

the development of the times continues to develop, in the past, exchanging goods was the best way to meet the needs of life, but it was deemed less effective then the agreed money was found, and finally with a centralized system, and currently a decentralized system is developing, we are waiting for the development Of course the government has more authority

Where there is competition in a business then the end-user is going to get more benefits than anyone because they will get better products or services for cheaper price due to much competition, but those monopolies never allow any companies to grow, if any company has the potential to grow then they will buy the company with an unimaginable price tag.

But when we talking about money, fiat money is ruling here for a very long time since the infrastructure was made for this kind of payment system and are under the control of the government, when bitcoin becomes the payment modes where the government doesn't want to there is becomes the evolution of the monetary system to the next era.

Well, firstly money has already flourished. It has done so several thousand years ago and it is still with us in several shapes and forms and the competition has basically been the product per product trade, so I sell you my onions and you give me your tomatoes, etc... Obviously, money has been "the fittest" on that regard, since it has wide adoption.

On regards to cryptocurrencies, I think that competition is exactly what is needed. Bitcoin has successfully captured the larger value even under the competition of many chains, tokens and other. Nothing lasts forever, but, for now, it seems to be doing quite well.

Just to add, all "money" equivalents, such as currencies, short term debt, gold or fungible values are always competing, not to mention the currencies of different countries.

What is the competition for money? For me, money has got no competition. Money remains money and it is that which gives or a commodity is valued at. Money is simply value how we express value and its got no competition. Be it fiat or bitcoin, money remains the same, they just operate on different spheres and jurisdiction based on compatibility. Imagine fiat being used in electronic transactions just as bitcoin is too. Its simply balancing of accounts. Bitcoin is quite same but operating in a decentralizedsystem in contrast to fiat that operates a centralizedsystem. So, money isn't competing with anything its just a matter of suitability where as, as much as bitcoin is definite in its number, fiat money are printed as the need arises to ensure its availablein circulation.

Competition has made it easier for the fiat to circulate effectively throughout the globe. I mean different countries with up and down denominations cause this circulation to move quickly. We started the trading over fiat to fiat and this added whole new era of competition in between them and thus they want to prove whose currency is the best in the world?

The race between fiat has always been there with different businesses and cultures.

The competition is for value that fiat carries.

It's like you are saying that Dollar, Euro, Dinar, Yuan, Kruna... they are all the same, just money! And you can do the same with all of them?! Do you think that all coins and tokens are the same too?! Bitcoin, Doge, Ethereum, Digibyte... and all others are just coins?! You can do the same things with all of them?! Intentionally I missed the part about the values of each of them, I wanted to point out a more important fact for this discussion, and it's that you can't do the same thing with all of them! Why?! Some are better than others?! And if some are better and more popular than others there's some kind of competition, and it makes a big difference what currency you have in your wallet! It's the same with crypto, it's important which coins you have. Simply some services accept just some currencies/coins!

Competition is something natural! We people will always thrive to take more, to make it better, it's evolving... take the crypto, for example, it's easier to understand because it happened in the last decade!!! Satoshi created Bitcoin! And after 10 years how many actively developed coins/tokens we have around?! How many of them died in trying to become Bitcoin?! Can we say that in some way all of them compete with Bitcoin standards?! And people are trying to find a way to make it better, different, faster, cheaper... you name it!

The same thing happened with traditional currencies! First, there was one, then others start having their own and to compete which one will be more valuable, more used... but of course, what crypto did in 10 years, traditional currencies are doing for centuries!

Money has no soul, not a life form. It's just a tool for humans to use.
Money also serves the political purposes of governments. The evolution of money is a reflection of its changing mission over time. The history of currency development from its inception to the present has gone through many different shapes and I believe cryptocurrency is the next evolution. So today we have Bitcoin.

The thing is, the finance as we see it is different in the way we use it and the way it ideally should be. We can complain that in capitalist system, there is monopoly. And surely, there's competition needed to thrive and be a success in the market, and another flaw is the giants can actually buy off their competitors to eliminate the competition but here's the thing, there's nothing bad in it. Atleast for the consumers, let's say, as a WhatsApp user, I don't care if it's bought by Facebook or Google or Microsoft, as long as the service it gives me smoothly. The thing is, competition in terms of ideas is the most important thing in market, and as long as that exists, I am sure the market will thrive taking human beings along with technological advances as well.

Money can't flourish, it is unchallenged and will stay that way no matter what we create, crypto will not be a competition it would be alternative and it would not make any changes on fiat world because in the end we all need to go back to fiat for regular life anyway. You can have bitcoin at 100k if you want but at the end of the day you are going to be the one that is upset over the fact that you can't spend it everywhere, how many bills can be paid with it? Not many I think, in my nation none of the bills can be paid with it.

This is why at the end of the day we are not going to be moving away from fiat and will still use it and as long as you keep using fiat they do not have to change it, they are still doing what works best for the governments and they will keep that going. The only way for fiat to get better would be to have politicians who think about the population and let's face it nothing like that exists in any part in any nation.

Money is not a form of life so it is not biologically competitive or volatile. Money does not compete for growth but is adapted to the will of the people and the economic system. It is the human who creates money, so it is the human who makes everything perfect.
Bitcoin is a new currency that is tight, secure, public, transparent so we love Bitcoin. This is just like our ancestors used paper money to replace coins.

Money does not need any competition to flourish like you said google enjoined monopoly I will say money also enjoy a monopoly as well. Anywhere in the world, you need money this now depends on the currency you own and in what state you hold the money. It may be in form of cash, savings, stock, land, and some sort of investment.

There are different forms of money and right now we have three different forms that are competing among each other, we have gold, fiat and bitcoin, the three of them based on different principles, gold is based on natural scarcity and its properties that made it the form of money to go for thousands of years, fiat is based on faith and the belief the governments can manage the money and the economy in an effective manner, bitcoin is decentralized and it is the first form of digital scarcity ever created, so even if the three are money they could not be more different from each other.

Gold is not money, gold is an asset and a store of value, people do not pay with gold to buy something, "money" is what you use as a middle man in order to work and earn it and then spend it for living, gold is not like that, you just buy it and store it and sell it, there is no spending it.

Right now, there is only two things in the world people use for purchasing an orange for example, it is either fiat or crypto, it could be any fiat or it could be any crypto, but basically you spend them to buy something. At the end of the day, the competition between them is not that big because fiat is so much more bigger, even dollar itself is bigger than all of crypto, and I am not even calculating all the other fiat involved, which means that the competition is not even close hence I doubt that it would be flourishing each other at all, they are in different leagues.

Just like any other stuff in this world, money needs to be invested on or patronized in order for it to flourish. We should atleast remember that the country's population affects the value of its money as well as the economy of it. On the other hand, the existence of crypto poses a threat for some countries since their fiat may be set aside by it and will end up causing its value to fall down. After all, it is not really a competition but a natural occurence. Someday a transition may occur which will surprise and benefit many.

It's not just competition that chooses who or what will survive or not. Sometimes, it is simply the survival need to adapt. It is either you adapt or you die. Well, it seems there's still a subtle form of competition in there but there's actually nothing you are competing against but yourself. For example, other animals need to develop fins and gills and the ability to swim or their entire species get drowned and become extinct.

I guess this is also the same with money. Competition indeed helps one form of money flourish more than another but it could also be possible that even without an alternative that a certain form of money competes against, the issue of survival is still present. In the case of fiat, for example, even without Bitcoin it still needs to adapt. Otherwise, it will become obsolete and die and will be replaced with something better.  

Gold is money and it has been for thousands of years, if more people do not use gold to pay for stuff is because in many jurisdictions this was forbidden and people then just used it as a store of value, but since the economic crisis of 2008 we have more places accepting gold as a payment, so I will have to disagree with you here, even if gold is way behind fiat and bitcoin at the current time in terms of being money we cannot discard its long history in which this was the case.

I may be exaggerating, but you are concerned that Darwin's theory can work here also for Bitcoin, survival of the strongest and fittest means that survival of Bitcoin and soon there will be the demise of the old monetary financial system, this theory can be applied here already where through the evolution of the monetary system we were able to reach Bitcoin being the fittest and strongest, therefore, according to the logic of development, Bitcoin will be able to displace the old monetary system and replace it.

This is an interesting take, fiat has all the current circumstances at its favor but that is because the governments are manipulating the circumstances for this to be the case, but they cannot do this forever, which is why they tried to kill bitcoin early only to fail, now that bitcoin has survived then this is nothing more than a waiting game in which bitcoin needs to keep existing until those circumstances change and a more fair playing field is in place which will benefit bitcoin tremendously and help it to demonstrate that it is the fittest coin to survive the economic crisis that is coming.

In my view, money has no competition, it is only changed in denomination from money printing machines with governments and banks. It is just a tool of each country to bring about economic balance. Of course, the effects of inflation and because of non-competition, it has become obsolete and hidden many disadvantages by those basic factors. There will come a time when paper money will have to be replaced.

what kind of competition do you really mean? Isn't the money in each country already competing with one another... This can be proven by looking at inflation in each country, the higher the inflation in that country, the lower the value of money in that country and vice versa.

Yeah, really your right in one aspect, which is survival of Bitcoin, but it's very obvious that fiat can't be eliminated irrespective the adoption or the values of Bitcoin currently in the societies, we know that old monetary system as you called it, has been in existence for some years now, and before the demise of it to occur is not possible as we may think, so therefore the possibilities can only occur in twenty years time, because right now old adults always concentrate on their native money, which i notice that they find it very difficult to adopt new currency.

I think they would probably do the opposite because that's what most countries do, they only have one official currency. Money flourishes when it is left alone and no competition, look at what happened to fiat when bitcoin was introduced, they have a less power.

While it is true that all currencies are competing among each other at the same time the competition is cosmetic among fiat currencies, after all do you really think that if instead of the US dollar being used as the currency of the world we used the Euro things will change? Of course not, everything will be the same, however bitcoin has for the first time in at least 50 years brought a legitimate contender, a form of money that is based on different principles than fiat.

People need money to have competition, so that we can flourish.

When watching a sports match, remember, you are not watching your team play alone, but the competition between your favorite team and the other team that is the opponent. This competition is the benchmark and comparison to judge the real performance of your favorite team.

“Just like sports, to be able to understand forex you need an 'opponent' as a comparison. For example, you can't understand the standard USD value unless you know the value against which it is compared. It's the same meaning in a sporting match, you can't say your team won if you don't know who they're playing with."

I understand what you mean, because in this life almost everything we have to compete in order to develop and become better. We are looking
for competitive jobs, we as students have to compete in school, even in my opinion worship we have to compete to be a better person. Money have
to compete in order to grow. Because each country has its own currency, it will compete with each other. The winning currency is usually used for
many international transactions, for now I think USD is the winner of the competition. Then Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, this sparked unrest
in several developed countries. They fear Bitcoin will win the competition, because Bitcoin offers decentralization that many people desperately need.
Therefore it is not surprising that until now there are still many countries that want to kill Bitcoin, but so far Bitcoin is still safe and can be used by anyone.

Money needs a competition to thrive I believe. Since cryptocurrencies were released, fiat money has started having a tough time I think. Because it has a new competitor now. And it doesn't look like fiat will be the winner at the end.

Some things may be different for the US as they greatly benefit from the USD being the world currency. They can exert control a lot of power on global markets, in particular with regards to energy markets. Generally speaking though you are right. For society as a whole nothing would change no matter what the world currency finally is. But who knows, maybe it is better that it is the USD rather than the Yuan.

each country thrives hard to provide their people and the economy is depicted by how competitive the price of the currencies against each other. the countries may be trading partners but their currency competes with each other. the country with more trading partners and the biggest volume are usually the ones to be considered base currency just like USD today.

Bitcoin is a newcomer to the world economy but this is not owned by a country nor a government. its the currency of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. this last line is plagrized  ;D

Competition is needed for business. I learn about it in university, I learning business management now. Competitors are respect each other, although they fight to get market share but actually they don't hate each other. I think since bitcoin is become popular now bank service is getting better unlike in the past. I personally feel that bank is faster in term of local transactions now but it still can't beat bitcoin in term of international transactions and deflation.

The national currency of any state, in principle, does not need competition. To thrive, it needs competent management of the country's economy, which also includes monetary policy. If the country is strong economically, then its national currency will easily compete with other currencies of states.
Cryptocurrency, of course, needs good and healthy competition to accelerate its development. This will stimulate her improvement.

You give the answer yourself that it does need competition. How does a management know if it is performing good or bad if there is no competition at all? How does a car producer know it is working to its maximum of its capabilities if there is no other car producer? How does Apple know it is producing state of the art if there is no Microsoft or Samsung?

For sure, you’re right about competition being a drive towards self improvement. If there is no competition, there wouldn’t be that urge for improvement. Everyone wants to come out and do something that is better than the other. But I think that in the case of Bitcoin, and fiat, this is totally different. There can’t be any competition in this case. I don’t know how I am going to put this for you, but maybe I can try.

The example you used here is between an organization that is centralized which is Google and Microsoft, and these two are selling products to people, so in a case like this there has to be a competition and both will be trying to do something better as a way to get better than the other team so they can sell out their project. But since Bitcoin is decentralized, who exactly are you competing with?

Money isn't business though so I think that they are a bit different in terms of flourishing. I don't agree with you about the speed of transaction though, I think that banks still are much faster than bitcoin because we still don't have a definitive solution against network congestion which makes the transaction much slower.