On November 1, 2008, a new post signed by Satoshi Nakamoto appeared in a "cryptography mail group".
I am developing a new electronic money system that is completely peer-to-peer and does not require the intervention of a trusted third party. "
"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System""Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"papers.Among them, Satoshi Nakamoto questioned the trust of traditional banking institutions and built Bitcoin as a digital currency and an online payment system that is different from the traditional financial system.Encryption is used to transfer funds without relying on central banks.
Two months later, on January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the open source Bitcoin client, and Bitcoin was born. At the same time, it obtained 50 bitcoins through "mining", and produced the "genesis block" of the first batch of bitcoins.
Today, it has been nearly 10 years since the public publication of the Bitcoin white paper. During this period, people came up with the idea that this brand-new, decentralized virtual currency, which is completely protected and supported by Internet basic protocols and strict encryption technology, forms a new set of currency rules and systems, and It can be bought, sold or exchanged with legal tender.
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Bitcoin flash payment field, practice is still shallow
It is undeniable that the popularity of Bitcoin continues unabated. Blockchain technology has also begun to move from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, and it is hot in the global Internet field, especially in the financial Internet field. But right now, we have yet to see a payment revolution triggered by the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Instead, money has been circulating around the world in digital form long before Bitcoin got involved.
Let's take developing markets as an example.
In 2007, Kenyan mobile phone operators launchedM-Pesa Business, bypassing banks, providing deposit and withdrawal and remittance services to solve the pain point of low bank penetration in Kenya. Today, the mobile payment platform M-pesa has more than 25 million users worldwide, with an average daily transaction volume of about Ksh 15 billion (approximately US$148 million).
Because its system exists in the Kenyan currency and banking system, it is relatively stable and has low risk.The World Bank has stated, M-Pesa provides a low-cost payment platform for low-income consumers, and Bill Gates also praised M-Pesa as one of the highest achievements in financial inclusion innovation.
Turn your attention to Asia.
AlipayAlipayRealize the digitization of currency. In 2011, Alipay was awarded the "Pay for Business License". Today, it has covered 38 countries and regions except mainland China, becoming the world's largest mobile payment manufacturer.
It is worth mentioning that with the popularity of digital currency, China's digital currency market is in chaos, and many Bitcoin derivatives such as ICO evolved after Bitcoin disrupt the normal financial system, and China's attitude towards Bitcoin has become stricter.
India has also launched a localized "Alipay" Paytm. After receiving investment from Ali and Softbank, it has entered the wealth management and insurance business and carried out cross-border trade.
Financial services in developing economies are alsoWestern UnionAn important part of building a global electronic remittance financial network, it takes about 15 minutes to realize a cross-border remittance payment. In February this year, CEO Raj Agrawal said it had spoken withRipple companyAfter reaching a cooperation, the two parties will carry out a payment trial operation project based on blockchain technology.
But it seems that he is not optimistic about this cooperation.Raj Agrawal says, "Although blockchain technology can bring some benefits to the financial industry, it has not achieved much substantive results. Therefore, it is still too early to say whether blockchain technology can bring disruptive changes to Western Union. .”
As early as 3 years ago, Western Union and Ripple had tried to cooperate, but at that time it did not bring any major changes to the Western Union business.
In addition to Western Union,MoneyGram、Xoomsecondary title
The underlying technology blockchain "singing on stage"
Although Bitcoin affects the public's perception of the blockchain, its associations with online black markets such as the "Silk Road" can't help but make people talk about it. With the heating up of Bitcoin, blockchain technology, which has been unknown, has become a hot technology and topic. Bitcoin's blockchain technology is not equal to blockchain technology, and users can use this distributed accounting technology without using the Bitcoin chain.
Both Bitcoin and the thousands of cryptocurrencies issued by unsupervised entities dismantle previous concepts of finance. With the help of a new payment chain, the normal operation of its financial system can be guaranteed. Compared with Bitcoin, blockchain technology seems to be slightly favored.
MasterCard CEO Ajay BangaCalled cryptocurrencies "junk" at a seminar and said "anonymous" units that fluctuate so much cannot be considered stock market instruments.And Visa CEO Alfred F. Kelly Jr. also said, blockchain technology and digital currencies will never be as useful as corporate credit cards. Credit cards are an excellent example of a fintech success story, while Bitcoin is not because blockchain transactions are too slow to be useful.
However, based on the original payment system, they coordinate the distributed network operations of issuers, cardholders, merchants, acquirers, and processors to increase the speed of settlement. While both networks are making massive investments to make their chains more efficient, neither has rebuilt the foundations of the global financial system to make this happen.
At the same time, a group of brave innovators are using distributed ledger technology and digital assets issued by supervised financial service companies or government departments to realize real-time settlement and transaction payment on a global scale. In addition, it conducts financial work in an existing, secure, supervised environment, using fiat currency between these transaction terminals.
Traditional industries, including the financial industry, have gone to the chain to test the water, trying to share this "big cake".
In the past year and a half, we have found more than 140 announcements about blockchain technology pilots, including many cases of payment and other financial services. However, after tracing back, it was found that among these announcements, only 4 technology pilots updated the further implementation of capital investment and service output.
Investors blindly chasing the trend of the industry may just "burn money" for the concept of blockchain, lack of deep cultivation of the investment layout of blockchain technology, and the final outcome may be nothing but chicken feathers.
While the blockchain market bubble and value coexist, the seemingly fanatical investment in blockchain technology is also slightly inferior.
In 2018, global business investment in blockchain technology is expected to reach$2.1 billion, twice as much as last year, while investment in cybersecurity measures may reach $97 billion.
According to a Juniper study, companies that have invested $100,000 in blockchain-related experiments say they will continue to invest in the future. The most likely reason for the investment is that the company's board of directors is worried about missing out on "being the first to eat crabs", so they bet on blockchain technology.
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Mystery no longer, Bitcoin "stepped down the altar"
International trade payment toolPayPalamazonamazon10 years after its launch, it has nearly 70 million users and launched Amazon Prime membership service; international credit card organizationVisa(Visa) andMastercard(MasterCard) 10 years after its launch, hundreds of millions of consumers around the world trust and pay with credit cards. Jobs' "iPhone Empire" has also passed ten years, and its mobile phone sales have exceeded 1.2 billion.
Bitcoin has long faded from mystery and gained a great reputation, but it does not seem to have achieved the ideal picture outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Own flaws, hackers covet, Bitcoin "lost fans"
Bitcoin is not a "pie falling from the sky", and the high transaction fee makes it "lose powder". In addition, the lengthy transaction time and high transaction failure rate caused payment service providers to give up using Bitcoin for payment.
In addition, as the value of Bitcoin rises, its transactions are frequently attacked by hackers and interfered by third parties. cyber security companyCiferTraceCryptocurrencies stolen through hacked exchanges and trading platforms soared to $927 million in the first nine months of this year, an increase of nearly 250 percent from 2017, according to the published report, which is difficult to recover.
Currency of choice for dark web transactions
75% of Bitcoin transactions are the result of transfers of funds between miners and transactions by speculators. At the same time, it remains the currency of choice for criminals and the “best” way for hackers to launder money. Due to the intervention of speculators, the price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies have become more extreme, cashing out, cutting leeks... The encrypted world is full of mine pools, and it is becoming more difficult for speculators to make profits.
American blockchain security companyAccording to a CipherTrace report released in July,According to statistics, digital currency has become one of the main tools for global criminals to launder money. In the money laundering cases that have been investigated this year, about 1.2 billion US dollars were carried out through digital currency, and the most commonly used one is Bitcoin.
It is not difficult to see that the vast majority of transactions supported by Bitcoin are illegal in nature.
Supporting Higher Prices, Geographical Centralization of Mining Networks
Three-quarters of bitcoin mining farms are located in China and are concentrated in the hands of a few miners. The Bitcoin mining network presents significant geographical centralization, which poses a threat to the "decentralized" Bitcoin network. As the difficulty of mining increases, and the energy consumed by mining equipment also increases, the support price of Bitcoin increases, making it increasingly difficult for Bitcoin players to afford it.
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After Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency Runs In
Due to the design flaws of Bitcoin itself such as large energy consumption, long transaction time, and difficult implementation of transaction scenarios, various altcoins have begun to appear in the cryptocurrency market. Currently, more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies are in circulation.
Although these currencies cannot shake the dominance of Bitcoin, they all try to realize the flow of funds with the help of distributed ledger protocols, and then establish their own payment networks. It is driven by the need for innovative financial services and payments.
The emergence of cryptocurrencies seems to be following in the footsteps of Bitcoin, that is, to realize innovative payments.
The only reason for users to use these cryptocurrencies is to avoid the existing financial service network and avoid the need to use fiat currency circulating in the traditional financial service network, thereby avoiding regulation.
However, whether it is Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, it is assumed that the innovation of global financial services can only be realized outside the existing monetary service infrastructure, completely splitting the traditional payment system, and reshaping the channel structure of funds transfer between parties. purpose of its existence.
The world of cryptocurrencies is unpredictable, and behind the prosperity are mostly crazy scams, and cryptocurrencies that were once ambitious have also disappeared. In order to hedge against the huge market fluctuations of mainstream currencies such as Bitcoin, stablecoins anchored to real fiat currencies came into being. according toReporting by Garrick HilemanThere are currently 57 stablecoins in the world, of which 23 have been put into use, and the other 34 are still in the testing stage.
The emergence of stable coins means that cryptocurrency is no longer a dream in the field of payment. Admittedly, stablecoins don’t seem to be “stable” either.October 15, USDT, which is regarded as synonymous with "stable" by cryptocurrency investors, plummeted by as much as 8% without warning.
Economist at University of California, BerkeleyBarry EichengreenIn a world of digital currencies, an article warns that stablecoin creators may pose unknown risks.
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Where will Bitcoin go in the next decade?
When Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he didn't reinvent mobile broadband to fulfill his Apple empire; nor did Jeff Bezos abandon the concept of the Internet entirely to launch Amazon. Bitcoin, which "subverts the concept of traditional currency", has received billions of dollars in venture capital in 10 years, and promises to create a financial ecosystem that will trigger a global payment revolution. At present, it seems that there is still a long way to go to fulfill its promise.
Bitcoin has not lived up to its promise, largely because it has not solved a common problem for the vast majority of its users. This does not mean that Bitcoin is completely negated, and its supporting technology has the possibility of finding applications in more fields. But whether it will become a powerful payment tool as expected, there is no way to know.
We can imagine that Satoshi Nakamoto's original intention of designing Bitcoin may be to create a better payment system that is unsupervised, completely anonymous, and hidden from public view. It does not expect Bitcoin to change the global payment system, and its goal is to satisfy a small number of people, such as commercial occasions with high privacy requirements, even dark web transactions. Or maybe in the next ten years, the evolved Bitcoin can establish a stable currency ecosystem and drive an unprecedented exciting period.
