Bitcoin’s Greatest Strength: Verifying the Rules Without Central Authority

[BlackBoss_]

You can't use the market cap or price to determine that people actually know the genius of Bitcoin. People like profit, people like an asset or somewhere to store their wealth, so if they see that something will give them profit, they would buy it and hope to make profit from it. So you can't simply take the market cap and use it to determine it because you would be taking a lot of things out of context.

Bitcoin market cap is reflection of its value and Bitcoin is much better than altcoins by maintaining its market cap very well. Even with deep corrections in bear market, after all Bitcoin has always recovered from bear market bottoms, and made new market cycles with new all time highs. This survival and capability of growth can not be seen in most of altcoins.

Bitcoin vs. Altcoins – projected Marketcap.
Don't buy altcoins because they are top altcoins.

Using altcoins for examples of your point, not all people who bought bitcoin actually understood about Bitcoin, its value, and their plans are even not long term investment too.

[MiF]

The people here mostly say money when describing Bitcoin, but the way I think about it, the most critical aspect is that transaction verification does not depend on anyone having a position of centralized authority. Any node participant can independently scan the blockchain, look at transaction history, and confirm that the nodes followed consensus rules. This seems to contrast quite clearly with the conventional financial system where most users have to trust a financial entity like a bank with history of the system or something like that.

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What do you think is Bitcoin’s strongest long-term advantage, its monetary properties, or the ability for anyone to independently verify the rules without relying on a central authority?

I feel that not many people say that bitcoin is money but currency and this is clearly a different approach. Even though bitcoin has value (price) but in the end it will not be true if bitcoin is said to be money because until now money was synonymous with fiat and a means of payment.

Although in some countries may have implemented bitcoin as a payment system but this does not cover all (global) because this is only a handful so it would be very ambiguous when saying bitcoin as money here.
As for the issue of profit from bitcoin for now for me is the long-term value that bitcoin has. The value of bitcoin is getting bigger (if we compare it with fiat) and this is certainly an attraction although there are no guarantees but by reflecting on historical data from the beginning of creation until now there will always be hope that by investing and hodl for the long term, its value will increase.

I believe the best thing about Bitcoin is its monetary qualities and the fact that it is independently verifiable. The term ‘currency’ or ‘investment asset' can fail to recognize what makes it distinct from traditional money. It's relatively scarce, hence worth money, but it's also the fact that anyone can start running a node to verify transactions and consensus rules without having to trust a central authority to do so. Bitcoin's price might keep being appealing to investors, but speculation is not a measure of the price. The new thing about it is that the users can verify the monetary record themselves, rather than taking the word of banks, governments or other intermediaries.

[OsaiEmma]

The people here mostly say money when describing Bitcoin, but the way I think about it, the most critical aspect is that transaction verification does not depend on anyone having a position of centralized authority.

Decentralization doesn't mean different computers are approving a transaction - this type of setup can be found anywhere. Decentralization means, no individual entity controls how things are done in the network.

The Bitcoin network has 4 major entities which consist of: Developers, Nodes, Miners, and community/users.

Every BIP (Bitcoin improvement proposal) goes through these 4 entities, but the sweetest part is that the community has the final say. If the community refuses the BIP, it won't be used. Afterall, the coin was made for the end users, if a proposal is not suitable to the users, it will be obsolete. But if some users use it, then we will have a chain split - but that's a discussion for another day, and besides I know most of us know these things.

And another thing, you alone are in charge of the changes to your wallet. No other entity can have access to it or modify it at will. Its database has no way to be modified.

So it is not decentralized because we have multiple nodes/setups verifying transactions, or because we have different system hosting the network's database. It's decentralized because no 1 entity or person owns Bitcoin.

I’d say the ability to verify the rules is the single strongest element the long-term strength of Bitcoin derives from, more even then the market volatility of it. Rules may change value but verifiability remains a basis of the system.

This is one thing we can really appreciate about Bitcoin, the level of transparency and users control. But trust me, more people appreciates its volatility more than its transparency.

What do you think is Bitcoin’s strongest long-term advantage, its monetary properties, or the ability for anyone to independently verify the rules without relying on a central authority?

As so many have stated, the strongest long-term advantage is its monetary properties. Sure! The decentralization is a beautiful attribute that is solving a real-world problem, but this alone wouldn't have gained traction as it has done. The best feature is its disinflationary attribute and the 21 million capped Total supply.

I feel that not many people say that bitcoin is money but currency and this is clearly a different approach. Even though bitcoin has value (price) but in the end it will not be true if bitcoin is said to be money because until now money was synonymous with fiat and a means of payment.

This is not true, money isn't just related to fiat. Gold, precious stones, different materials have at some point been used as money. Money is anything generally accepted as a means of exchange for goods, services, and debt that can be stored and used as a unit of account.

Currency is what a group of people identifies as money and used within a particular community or geographical region.

Currency is a subset of money, you can't say currency while excluding money. Just as you can't mention this forum without the internet.

Although in some countries may have implemented bitcoin as a payment system but this does not cover all (global) because this is only a handful so it would be very ambiguous when saying bitcoin as money here.

Are you trying to say the Chinese Yuan is not money to an American?

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

What do you think is Bitcoin’s strongest long-term advantage, its monetary properties, or the ability for anyone to independently verify the rules without relying on a central authority?

Both factors are contributing greatly to the success of Bitcoin. The centralized system has so many disadvantages and high cost fee before you can use it and it is time consuming and stressful at time but Bitcoin makes p2p transaction seamless with low cost and also privacy. So, its decentralized nature and value appreciation over time makes it great. Another important thing is that Bitcoin supply is not infinity the way fiat currencies can be easily printed by the government, more Bitcoin can not be created like that. So, Bitcoin characteristics and the adoption of the community makes it great.

[OcTradism]

Both factors are contributing greatly to the success of Bitcoin. The centralized system has so many disadvantages and high cost fee before you can use it and it is time consuming and stressful at time but Bitcoin makes p2p transaction seamless with low cost and also privacy. So, its decentralized nature and value appreciation over time makes it great.

You can have zero transaction fee with bank transfer in some types, not all bank transfers are no fees but some are fee waives. You can have cheaper transaction fees with other blockchains from altcoins and can do transactions cross national borders too.

However the most important things why people choose Bitcoin blockchain are no irreversible transactions (no 51% attacks so far), no bitcoin freeze in non custodial wallets, no censorship on Bitcoin blockchain.

If zero or cheap transaction fee is not biggest concern, people will choose Bitcoin blockchain that has many advantage in security than altcoin chains and bank transfers.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

What do you think is Bitcoin’s strongest long-term advantage, its monetary properties, or the ability for anyone to independently verify the rules without relying on a central authority?

Bitcoin has many strengths and in no particular order they include; Finite supply, Blockchain technology (privacy and decentralization). Trust, as soon as a transaction is been sent out, there isn't a reversal option as they're with fiats/centralized currency.

Buying Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to hodl a scarce assets that won't ever increased its supply. Bitcoin is the complete packages as you gain everything so no need just highlighting only one area. You also have complete ownership of your assets so if thats not enough reason to invest, what else?

Bitcoin's greatest strengths, P2P transaction's, store of value/price appreciation and all I said above.

[yhiaali3]

In fact, both the ability to independently verify and the critical properties of Bitcoin (such as scarcity, decentralization, security and privacy) are not separate but complementary to each other.

What I mean: without the ability to independently verify people would not be able to trust that Bitcoin's monetary properties are real and stable and cannot be manipulated.
On the other hand if no strong and attractive financial characteristics for investors there would be no financial value to the system that would motivate people to bear the cost of running the contract and verifying the rules.

[Jegileman]

What do you think is Bitcoin’s strongest long-term advantage, its monetary properties, or the ability for anyone to independently verify the rules without relying on a central authority?

The decentralized nature of bitcoin has been the most talked about advantage it had over the traditional fiat currency. Its invention tends to close the gap of third party in monetary policy. Being able to control your own money is a big advantage that many are deprived of today with traces and identity of the holder been known and can be acted upon on by the government or bank in custody of the money. From my own observation, I’ll go with the second option which allows anyone to independently verify rules without relying on a central authority, this is a very big advantage to the system and has been one of the reasons why bitcoin is embraced and continue to widespread.

[stompix]

You actually have a point. I don't know why 2016 blocks were chosen. I haven't thought of it like that before.
Aside from the Chinese ban, how often does it happen that there would be an instant 20% drop in hasrate?

Satoshi seems to like round things that are tied more to human life than just numbers, this is why the 4-year cycle and not 200 000 but 210 000 blocks, the two-week adjustment and not 2000 blocks and so on, he preferred units close to human day-to-day experience, much like an hour is 3600 seconds and not 3000...not to screw everything else with complicated math.

As for a 20% drop, no it never happened again because not only do we need a catastrophe but ussualy the trigger doesn't happen at the start of the period, it would have had to be the perfect event for that, so the drop is ussualy split between two periods: one goes one week normal one week with miinus x hashrate, the next one goes with the same hashrate but because the previous was not adjusted properly, it will still end up with a downtrend.

This is like a factory firing half of it's workforce in the middle of the month, the actual number of products they made at the end of ithe current month will not be the same as next month, it will be even lower.

Now, we did have two consecutive drops recently,in February
From 146T to 141T to 125T.
Not 20%  but still -15% over two periods, triggered by price alone.

Are you trying to say the Chinese Yuan is not money to an American?

Yup, go and ask people how much a yuan is versus the dollar without googling and I doubt you will find 1 out of 100.
Also, you seem not to know the yuan is still a restricted currency with China setting limits on how much of it can be exchanged through its banks.