The MIT Technology Review is an American newspaper owned by MIT , and aims to equip its audience with tools to understand emerging technologies. The newspaper recently published an online article titled "Let's Destroy Bitcoin," in which the author presents three ways that could lead to the end of Bitcoin . Josiah Wilmoth, journalist for CCN has responded to this article , and for him, Bitcoin is much more resilient than it seems. The following article presents, one after the other, the different "plans to destroy Bitcoin", followed by a response to this plan, inspired by Wilmoth's article.
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The government attack
One of the first strategies mentioned would be the intervention of government competition. The MIT article presents a situation where governments create their own digital currencies ("Fedcoins"), and use the massive resources available to them to improve the protocol, until Bitcoin et al. Become obsolete in comparison.
The main flaw of this strategy is that it does not take into account one of the key reasons for the appeal of Bitcoin: it is a currency that ignores borders, censorship, and not responding to no monetary policy.
"In the worst case, Bitcoin would likely continue to exist alongside Fedcoins, especially once new privacy-focused features are added. " John Wilmoth
The total tokenization of the economy
The second situation places us in a scenario where everything has been tokenized . In short, the economy will have evolved into a very advanced barter system, where each company has its own token, and automated systems to exchange "CarrefourCoin" against "FnacToken", for example. You could do your shopping by spending a fraction of your shares in any business, and as such, the concept of "store of value" would lapse, removing much of the interest that can be brought to Bitcoin.
If this scenario is conceivable, it is based on distant technological developments, the existence of which we do not yet know. For now, the only way to get to this point is to allow each company to issue its own native token (based on its own blockchain). In this case, the existence of Bitcoin as an instrument of exchange would still be possible.
Another problem, noted by Wilmoth, would be that in case a firm closes, the tokens associated with it would lose all their value. So we are in a situation where we need a store of value again ... Bitcoin is still there.
The big bad Facebook
One of the most interesting scenarios is probably the one that predicts an attack from a social media giant, like Facebook .
The idea for Facebook would be to create a wallet related to its platform. In this situation, it is very likely that a majority of the BTCs in circulation are found on this wallet. The company has the resources - both financial and technical - to create an intuitive, fast, and secure interface. The competition is tough, especially for those who did not dare to take the step to buy BTC, Facebook seems reassuring, and attracts most newcomers. It would be possible for example to win some Satoshis while watching advertisements, or by sharing posts (like a faucet )
As adoption increases, Facebook will launch a massive mining operation. One could imagine that by allowing a CoinHive script to work, it would be possible to browse the site without advertisements.
Finally, once Bitcoin is definitely associated and inseparable from the image of Facebook (and that the company has a large fraction of BTC and computing power) it would be left to the company to discretely forking Bitcoin. Since most users do not care about technical details, the new version would probably be adopted quickly, and the "new Bitcoin" would be just the instrument of Facebook.
If this scenario is enough to make you shudder, it's still important to keep in mind that this is a disaster scenario. Indeed, what would be the motivation of Facebook to embark on such an attack, at this point consuming resource and time? If interest is only pecuniary, launching an ICO would do the trick. There is no doubt that a Facebook-branded ICO could attract billions of dollars, just see the recent Telegram ICO .
Let's say that Facebook is still engaged in such an attack. Mass adoption would dramatically increase the price. The logical consequence is that new miners would come to the market en masse, preventing Facebook from having control over too much of the network.
Finally, Wilmoth reminds us that the Bitcoin community should not be underestimated. The latter had withstood a fork attempt that was considered "unfair" (SegWit2X), and the feat could very well be repeated.
BTC vs Everyone
In sum, it is actually possible that Bitcoin will disappear one day. But we should not believe that if Bitcoin continues to exist, it is simply because the "big players" let it.
By its decentralized nature, destroying Bitcoin is almost impossible. It would be feasible, by a coordinated effort, from the majority of the major players, but such action would imply that Bitcoin is now a target to be shot down, and that it has therefore been adopted by a large part of the population. which makes so many people ready to defend the terrible child of Satoshi Nakamoto !
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://infos.link/mits-plans-to-destroy-bitcoin/