With the birth of bitcoin, the controversy about itself has never ended. Everyone has its own opinions on bitcoin.

The pro-bitcoin side claims that it’s a great invention which completely creates a new production relationship and provides another advanced option for future high productivity. Even some of them have called the blockchain technology behind bitcoin as the most indispensable component of the fourth industrial revolution.

While the anti-bitcoin side believes that bitcoin, together with diamonds, can be known as the top two scams in the 21st century! Since it’s meaningless with great waste of resources, it’s completely a piece of junk.

It is a very common for a product to trigger big controversy. When somebody likes it, there must others who dislike it. As a financial product, it’s very normal for bitcoin itself to become very controversial. After all, it can be bought easily in the secondary market, and those who gain profits from it would naturally praise it while those who lose money would certainly complain about it. However, is it so simple? Let’s check out why the bitcoin is so controversy.

 

The Controversy

As we all know that bitcoin was born in 2009, only 10 years ago. When it came into being, the father of bitcoin, Nakamoto Satoshi, described its function very simple, that is, a point-to-point (P2P) payment without any third party. Even not knowing who the receiver is, people can pay him the money. Isn’t it interesting?

However, as more and more people start to understand bitcoin since 2016, the economic values of bitcoin itself have kept rising from a few hundred USD at the very beginning to hundreds of thousands of USD. As the prices keep rising, the resulting controversy is also constantly growing.

Such disputes have also been accompanied by the growth of bitcoin till today. If neglect the parties in dispute and only focus on bitcoin itself, there are actually very simple points as follows:

1. Is the price appropriate?
2. Does it have practical application value?
3. Is it worth of being invested?

 

The Price

Let’s have a look at the price first.

The price of bitcoin has always been a very interesting. At the beginning of its birth, the price was naturally not high. At that time, bitcoin was only a tool for exchanging rewards between programmers or geeks. The first publicly recorded transaction was the story of the famous story of 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. If being converted to today’s currency value, that’s about 400 million yuan. Later, someone once interviewed the programmer who bought the pizza, he smiled and said that the pizza was delicious.

After 2016, the price of bitcoin skyrocketed and started a sharp rise compared to the stable horizontal prices. By the end of 2017, it reached a peak price of about $20,000. In the face of such skyrocketing prices, there was a large amount of capital rushing into the market. At this time, bitcoin also completed the gorgeous turn from the peer-to-peer payment system to the object of capital speculation and the controversy will arise then. Those who make money in the secondary market were likely to praise the investment value while those who suffered from the loss of money would inevitably give negative feedback.

The chart below shows the sharp fluctuations of the bitcoin prices.

 

The Practical Value

In terms of practical value, both parties have always been in dispute. Although bitcoin itself has low practical values and limited applications, the blockchain technology behind has been constantly developing.

The supporters believed that although blockchain technology just appeared a short time ago, it had undergone several generations of changes. The bitcoin is the first-generation application. ETH is the second generation, and EOS is the third-generation (to be doubted), as well as many other applications, such as cross-border finance, supply chain finance, traceability and so on.

However, the opponents believed that no real practical application could allow people to really see the blockchain technology, enable the ordinary people to have a sense of actual observation and enjoy the true charm of technology. That’s a problem of the blockchain industry because it’s, in fact, a solution to improve the production relationship by itself and a real practical application based on blockchain technology is really needed.

 

Postscript

From a historical perspective, a technology needs a long period of time from its invention to the maturity then to be accepted by the public. We are now still in the early stages of blockchain technology. When the blockchain technology has truly been mature, the dispute on the topics such as the bitcoin value will completely vanish.

 

Appendix Ⅰ

Graph Credit: Ethereum World News

 

Appendix Ⅱ

Series articles on cryptocurrency introduction and analysis at EastShore:

• What Are People Arguing Against and for Bitcoin? | EastShore Mining Devices
• With the upcoming Litecoin Halving, Will Litecoin Maintain Its Status? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Where are the Mainstream Cryptocurrencies Heading to? | EastShore Mining Devices
• What’s the Charm of DASH? | EastShore Mining Devices
• The Untraceable Private Crypto Currency Monero | EastShore Mining Devices
• What’s Going on with DAG? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Is XDAG the Next Dark Horse? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Introduction of New Cryptocurrency Grin and Beam Based on MimbleWimble | EastShore Mining Devices
• Emerging New Cryptocurrencies | EastShore Mining Devices
• What will Facebook’s Libra bring to the world? | EastShore Mining Devices
• Observation and Reflection on Application of Private Currency | EastShore Mining Devices
• Introduction to Technical Framework and Applications of IPFS | EastShore Mining Devices