A decade after the birth of the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, there are still many unknowns around this technology and its benefits. Is the blockchain technology today what it promised it would be in its first days of existence?
Since blockchain technology emerged in 2009 with Bitcoin (BTC), the interest in this technology has not stopped increasing. Experts affirm that it will be the next industrial revolution, the era of the Internet of value. A blockchain is nothing more than a database that is distributed among different participants, cryptographically encrypted and organized in blocks of transactions mathematically related to each other.
The first blockchain was the Bitcoin (BTC) one, launched in 2009. But how is it now, almost ten years later? In its latest edition, The Economist has included a special report on this technology, saying that “Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies are useless.”
It wasn’t supposed to work that way, The Economist says. Bitcoin (BTC) emerged after the 2008 global financial crisis, as a kind of techno-anarchist project to empower and protect people who shared a deep distrust of governments, banks, and big trusts. Its original objective was the creation of a popular currency as an alternative global financial system that is controlled by governments and banks. In short, Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized project.
A decade later, Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain technology are hardly used for their purposes set in their first days of life
Relatively few suppliers accept Bitcoin (BTC), disillusioned by their volatility and grim reputation. Its decentralized nature and mining-based working environment make it slow as this blockchain handles less than ten transactions per second which is very really sluggish compared to the tens of thousands of transactions per second conducted by existing payment networks or other blockchain technologies, as well.
While the infrastructure based on Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain is highly secure, crypto exchanges that handle the conversion of this digital asset into fiat money have been repeatedly hacked over the ten years of Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain technology existence.
As for the blockchain technology that supports Bitcoin (BTC)and almost all the other cryptocurrencies, “the advantages of blockchains are often oversold,” said The Economist.
While we know that the cryptocurrencies market is more and more attractive to investors, it’s volatility is one of the main challenges someone has to tackle when putting money on cryptos. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, is a very promising solution in comparison with the conventional payment system, even though it’s slower at the moment.
