Bitcoin: The next generation of monetary revolution beyond gold

Nakamoto 2025-11-12 22:46 22967人围观 BTC

The evolution of currency has always revolved around "value transmission efficiency". In the early days, gold became the core currency of human civilization due to its natural attributes of scarcity, durability, easy identification, and portability. Howev

The evolution of currency has always revolved around "value transmission efficiency." In the early days, gold became the core currency of human civilization due to its natural attributes of scarcity, durability, easy identification, and portability. However, the shackles of its physical form made it difficult to subdivide it. When the value of gold far exceeded the needs of daily transactions, low-value metals such as silver and copper coins had to supplement small payments. The paper money spawned by industrial civilization solved the problem of segmentation as "gold tokens". By printing numbers, gold was divided into smaller shares, which not only improved circulation efficiency, but also paved the way for the rise of the credit currency system.

The arrival of the digital age has ushered in a fundamental revolution in currency segmentation, and Bitcoin is at the core of this revolution. Unlike gold, which is physically indivisible and banknotes that can be easily counterfeited, Bitcoin breaks the boundaries of value expression in the information world: 1 Bitcoin can be accurately divided into 100 million satoshis, and the value of the smallest transaction unit can approach 0 infinitely, and the division process does not require any trust intermediary, and is completely rigidly guaranteed by mathematical protocols. This programmable infinite subdivision allows Bitcoin to achieve free transmission and global verifiability while maintaining a constant total amount, becoming a key breakthrough different from gold and legal tender.

However, there are significant misconceptions in the “Bitcoin is digital gold” narrative. The BTC Core camp overemphasizes its scarcity and value storage functions, but ignores the core attribute of currency-circulation. By limiting the block size, raising transaction fees, and compressing transaction volume, they have shaped Bitcoin into a "scarce asset" rather than a practical currency. This model seems to return to the gold standard era: the L1 blockchain is reduced to a "treasury" and the second-layer lightning network acts as "paper currency". However, the exchange between the two is neither frictionless nor trustless, completely deviating from the original intention of the "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" defined by Satoshi Nakamoto in the white paper.

In fact, the divisibility of Bitcoin gives it the ability to bear daily payments, and on-chain expansion is the key to returning it to its currency nature. This is not a departure from decentralization, but an engineering upgrade in the information age: by increasing block capacity, optimizing communication protocols, and introducing SPV light node verification and coverage networks, Bitcoin can fully support billions of people's daily on-chain micropayments, and each transaction can obtain complete encryption verification. Under this model, 1 Bitcoin is both a value unit and a settlement layer account unit. Each satoshi can be independently priced and settled instantly, truly realizing the deep integration of the scarcity of gold, the liquidity of banknotes, and the programmability of the Internet.

The infinite divisibility of Bitcoin also contains profound social significance. From the perspective of inclusive finance, when the value of one satoshi is as low as a cent, anyone in the world can participate in the global economic system without any barriers and break financial barriers. ； In the field of micropayment and machine economy, divisibility makes it possible to settle extremely small tasks between machines - an API call, a frame of video playback, and an energy sharing can all achieve instant settlement. ； At the level of monetary discipline, the fixed total amount of Bitcoin realizes the redistribution of value units through division, rather than relying on additional currency issuance, resisting inflation from the root, and completing the reconstruction of the monetary system.

The core reason why gold has withdrawn from the stage of history is that it cannot adapt to the circulation needs of the information age. Bitcoin inherits the scarcity and trustworthiness of gold, but breaks through physical limitations with its infinite divisibility, making "digital gold" no longer a static storage product, but digital cash that can be circulated instantly around the world. It is not a simple replacement of gold, but the next stage of monetary civilization - allowing "scarcity" to have the freedom of "circulation" for the first time, allowing human wealth to regain a flowing life under the rigid constraints of mathematics. The emergence of Bitcoin marks the end of the golden age and opens a new era of digital currency.

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