The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

Using Bitcoin as a general purpose currency is not the smartest thing to do right now, as transaction costs (in the broad sense) are too high. Its price remains volatile, it is illiquid, and in many cases throughput, confirmation times, and fees create serious obstacles.

The usability problem can be solved by improving the technology, increasing capacity, and improving the user experience. However, the volatility problem can only improve with increasing adoption, which requires Bitcoin to be attractive, used as a cash balance, and held. This can be achieved if we manage to develop Bitcoin into a good store of value.

We have already made the relevant arguments with sound economics in the previous article. The desire to hold a currency lies in its value (i.e. purchasing power). Therefore, being able to use it for payment is a result of the value of the currency, not its cause.

Satoshi Nakamoto's work is not sacrosanct. However, one thing he got right was economics, and for non-state fiat currencies to have value, you need to get the economics right. Bitcoin can serve as a good store of value and medium of wealth transfer, and eventually become a general purpose currency that is both sound and stable. In fact, with a predictable, finite, and mathematically provable asset supply, it has the potential to become the most hardcore currency ever, more scarce than gold.

Censorship-resistant digital sound money is the foundation upon which all other applications are built. Payment networks, exponential capacity, off-chain asset issuance, distributed markets, smart contracts, and decentralized applications offer endless possibilities. However, they all rely on a sound money.

There are many reasons that distinguish Bitcoin from the rest of the cryptocurrency market. Among them, two factors are important and mutually reinforcing. First, Bitcoin has a clear first-mover advantage. The network effect, while not insurmountable, constitutes a huge moat. Of course, Bitcoin's advantage is not just the broader user network and the corresponding Metcalfe's Law.

Second, only Bitcoin's development focuses on enhancing and maintaining its utility as a store of value. Only Bitcoin has a firm attitude towards security and value preservation. Other cryptocurrencies do not even realize that beating Bitcoin means beating it on the value storage function. Being a value storage is a game of confidence, which is built on time and past historical records, so Bitcoin is far ahead and the only player in this competition.

Moreover, Bitcoin's becoming the leading competitor is a result of both economics and technology. Monetary theory shows that it is an inevitable trend for one currency to dominate. From a technical perspective, there is also a tendency for a single protocol to survive and become the single standard. Because cryptocurrencies are both currencies and protocols, the two reinforce each other. Therefore, for Bitcoin, the network effect is both a monetary and a technical phenomenon.

I am not advocating that all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin will soon go to zero. The fact that many cryptocurrencies are valuable now does not invalidate my above argument. Because we are in the experimental stage, the market has not yet distinguished long-term potential from mere short-term speculation.

Finally, I propose here a final thought experiment.

Gold has been a recognized useful commodity for thousands of years. Its properties are well known and understood by everyone. It is a chemical element with atomic number 79 and is considered the most malleable of all metals. It remains scarce, and to this day, no alchemist has been able to replicate gold.

Now, what if chemists could "fork" gold by changing its appearance while retaining its key properties? Turning it from a reddish-yellow metal with a density of 19.3 g
/cm³ into something electronic and virtual. What once required the use of large physical vaults with safes for secure storage and transportation by truck and ship can now be achieved using unforgeable digital cryptographic signatures. The properties of these technologies are that it is much more expensive to try to break into the digital vault than to defend against intruders, while allowing it to be transferred to any part of the world at the speed of light.

Given this unparalleled security and utility at a fraction of the cost, isn’t this forked gold more valuable? Isn’t it a superior version of the original?

If precious metals have been freely chosen by different societies over the centuries through a gradual and competitive market process, is it reasonable to imagine that the same will happen to this technologically enhanced version of gold that provides true monetary sovereignty?

Bitcoin forked gold. Although, in terms of monetary maturity, it is roughly equivalent to gold around 3000 BC. However, this incarnation is growing exponentially. Sufficient time, solid protocol development, and unchangeable social rules can make it a substitute for precious metals.

We are in a marathon, not a sprint. We are designing and building parallel monetary and financial systems for the digital age. This is monumental, it is historic. And for those who are part of this process, it means great responsibility.

Bitcoin hopes to replace gold as the reserve asset and the world's unified currency. It is bigger than fiat currency and goes beyond being a mere payment network in the Internet age. Just as gold once did, Bitcoin is competing to become the ultimate asset.