The first mention of Bitcoin dates from November 1, 2008. The term "block chain", formed eight days later by Hal Finney, first referred to Bitcoin's decentralized register of blocks and transactions. The word thus formed was used, a few years later, to designate the registers of all currencies and decentralized assets transfer systems (such as Ethereum). Since 2015, the meaning has been extended to the various banking experiments of registers distributed between institutions in a more or less decentralized way.
In order for a bitcoin blockchain to function effectively, a network, a critical threshold of users and a transaction register must be built, based on a "lottery" consensus guaranteed by proof-of-work -Work).
"Bitcoin is a technology. Currency and blockchain are inseparable as such. In fact, the very existence of the bitcoin results from a very complex balance between three factors: a technological one, an economic one and a social one.
The technological factor represents the blockchain in itself, the protocol, the necessary and available computing power, the storage capacity and so on. The economic factor refers to incentives to miner: miner brings in money, that is why miners exist. Finally the social factor represents the social phenomenon that is Bitcoin: there is a network effect. I want to be able to spend my bitcoins. The more people using the bitcoin, the more the value of the bitcoin increases.
One quickly realizes that removing one of these three aspects would make everything collapse: without technology, no blockchain. Without incentive to undermine, no verification. Without users, no value. The balance found by Bitcoin is not under the control of anyone. It is not replicable at will. In this sense, it is truly unique and exceptional.
Therefore, we can not know if something will replace Bitcoin. It is possible, but it would take a considerable time to rebuild this balance. - Richard Caetano, co-founder of Stratumn, interviewed by blockchainfrance.net.
Written by Jean-Luc