Is the cryptocurrency just going to end up reenforcing the financial system it was supposed to disrupt?

Bitcoin was a clever idea. Idealistic, even. But it isn’t working out quite as its developers imagined. In fact, once all the coin has been mined, bitcoin will simply reinforce the very banking system it was invented to disrupt.

Watching the bitcoin phenomenon is a bit like watching the three-decade decline of the internet from a playspace for the counterculture to one for venture capitalists. We thought the net would break the monopoly of top-down, corporate media. But as business interests took over it has become primarily a delivery system for streaming television to consumers, and consumer data to advertisers. Likewise, bitcoin was intended to break the monopoly of the banking system over central currency and credit. But, in the end, it will turn into just another platform for the big banks to do the same old extraction they always have. Here’s how.

At its core, bitcoin is just an extension of the old PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy encryption protocol. Public and private keys are used to hide and verify the identity of the parties in a transaction. The transaction itself is authenticated by thousands of internet witnesses, who vote for its veracity with all the cycles of their computers and the electricity on which they run. In return for dedicating all that hardware and wattage authenticating transactions and recording them in a ledger known as the blockchain, they are rewarded with bitcoin. It is their verification activity that mines new bitcoin into existence. And the more bitcoin they have, the more committed they will be to maintaining the integrity of the blockchain recording their assets.

Content from : https://www.fastcompany.com/40537404/how-bitcoin-ends

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