
Opinion: Bitcoin — masked as a get-rich-quick scheme, an instrument in the fight against dictatorship
Bitcoin is the ‘realisation of the store-of-value function’. This was stated by analyst Maxim Onegin at the online conference \”Bitcoin at Full Throttle\,” during which experts discussed Bitcoin’s development from technical and economic perspectives.
Bitcoin Core developer Gleb Naumenko regards one of the most precise descriptions of the first cryptocurrency as an instrument for fighting dictatorships, masquerading as a get-rich-quick scheme.
He called the price rally a ‘good side effect’, but stressed that the cryptocurrency’s original purpose should not be forgotten.
Speakers noted that more people are turning to Bitcoin amid government actions and the crisis of the current economic model, and the issuance by central banks of their own digital currencies (CBDCs) threatens even greater regulatory control.
Fintech entrepreneur Viktor Sovetov noted that ‘China is doomed to CBDC’.
“I hope we will look at this and chuckle, because healthier processes should help avoid a digital concentration camp,” he said.
Experts added that there can be no competition between Bitcoin and CBDCs in any respect.
\u201cCBDC is a circus with horses. Most likely, it will die even sooner than Ethereum,\u201d said Gleb Naumenko.
Unix/Network expert Alex Petrov noted that Ethereum \”has spent the last several years trying to fix the mistakes they have, while Bitcoin is developing.\”
Petrov called Vitalik Buterin’s decision to move Ethereum to the consensus algorithm Proof-of-Stake (PoS) a fallacy. He noted that PoS \”is not cheaper, not faster and not greener.\”
According to him, the move to PoS carries many risks. Among them are validation difficulties, susceptibility to attacks, the \”timestamp problem\” and others.
\”If we move to PoS, we sacrifice performance. When we move some additional operations onto a PoS full node, we burden it with extra work and, taking resources away, we lose speed and throughput,\” added Petrov.
Trader and analyst Tone Vays noted that the main components of decentralisation are nodes, code and mining, and each of these parts should be as decentralised as possible.
Therefore, in Vays’s view, abandoning Proof-of-Work (PoW) is ‘completely wrong’:
\u201cBecause when there is no mining, you lose one-third of decentralisation.\u201d
He added that moving to PoS could split Ethereum:
\”When Vitalik [Buterin] removes PoW, miners may resist, and Ethereum could split.\”
Alex Petrov also noted that claims of excessive energy consumption by Bitcoin miners are not entirely accurate, as powering the traditional financial system requires \”thousands of times more electricity\”.
At the conference, Tone Vays shared his forecast for Bitcoin’s price movement. In his view, in the coming weeks the cryptocurrency would rise to $70,000, after which its value would fall:
\”As soon as we break through $60,000, I expect a rapid rise above $70,000. And the longer we stay at the $55,000-$58,000 levels, the faster and higher we will rise.\”
He added that it is too early to discuss further scenarios before reaching $70,000, though one can preliminarily expect the price to start rising in autumn 2021 and growth to continue into the next year.
Earlier, Vays predicted Bitcoin would rise to $300,000 in 2021.
Watch the full conference on ForkLog’s YouTube channel.
In December, ForkLog held an online conference \u201cBitcoin 2020: New Horizons\u201d, during which experts stated that, should a quantum computer appear, Bitcoin holders should hodl and its forks Bitcoin holders should hodl and its forks.
Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed — the full news feed, ForkLog — the most important news and polls.
Рассылки ForkLog: держите руку на пульсе биткоин-индустрии!