consumption. This figure was higher than the yearly
power consumption of nearly 160 countries or
regions, including Iceland and Nigeria. If all the
Bitcoin miners around the globe were to form a new
country, its power consumption would rank 61st in
the world. ((Sources: power compare)
3.2 An Exchange Medium
Currency serves as a medium of commodity
exchange. In the exchange process, the sellers convert
their goods into money, and then use the money they
received to purchase new goods. Here, currency
serves as the exchange medium that enables goods
circulation.
Bitcoin is favored by users due to its
decentralization, high anonymity, transaction
irreversibility, perfect traceability, and low
transaction fees. Many people regard it as a safe and
effective means of payment. But we still need to
remind you that Bitcoin still poses some concerns:
First, the Bitcoin system generates a new block every
ten minutes and only at this time, the transaction
record loaded on the blockchain will be preliminarily
confirmed. The transaction will be further confirmed
once the new block is connected to the previous
block. Based on the technicality of the Bitcoin
system, the transaction could be truly and irreversibly
confirmed only after the confirmation of six new
blocks. The means to truly confirm a Bitcoin
transaction takes about an hour, which is too slow
compared to the current centralized payment system
that only takes seconds. The slow transaction speed is
closely linked to the underlying technical design of
the Bitcoin system. Second, a block is 1 M in size,
which is big enough to contain around 1,000 pieces
of transaction information. This means that a large
amount of transaction information will be temporarily
stored in the transaction pool to be confirmed. This
would prolong the transaction time, posing great
limits on the number and scale of transactions being
conducted simultaneously. Third, every node in the
Bitcoin system must keep a copy of the entire
blockchain, and this chain is still getting longer, with
one new block added every ten minutes. Currently, its
size is even bigger than the storage capacity of any
personal computer. Many Bitcoin users have to seek
help from the supercomputers in large institutions,
which contradicts Bitcoin’s decentralization nature.
Since deficiencies like this were developed out of
Bitcoin’s decentralization nature, they cannot be
1
Geek: With the rise of the Internet culture, geeks refer to
those who show passion for computing and Internet
fixed by merely upgrading the central hardware or
software just like what has been done on a centralized
trading system. The solutions to those problems are
still unknown and under discussion.
3.3 Store of Value
Currency as a store of value refers to its being
preserved as a symbol of social wealth when it is no
longer circulated on the market. It can adjust the
amount of currency being circulated. Only authentic
and pure gold and silver, in the forms of coins and
bars, can be kept as a store of value. When kept in
banks, paper money can be seen as the symbol of
one’s assets, but it can never be a store of value.
People will only keep paper money only when its
value could remain stable for a long time.
Bitcoin does not possess any value in itself, so it
can never be a store of value like gold and silver.
Though the total amount of Bitcoin was set to be 21
million, some people insist that it has high resistance
to inflation. However, two shortcomings that exist
with Bitcoin make it almost impossible for this
cryptocurrency to become a store of value. On the one
hand, there will be only 21 million Bitcoin in this
world, but our total economic and social production
capacity is far greater than this. We all know that
Bitcoin can be divided into eight decimal places, so it
seems possible for it to satisfy the transactions of the
whole society. However, owners of Bitcoin, seeing
the rising trend of Bitcoin prices, would not use their
Bitcoin for transactions. Instead, they will hoard them
and wait for them to appreciate. An American
economist, Paul Krugman, once wrote: “What we
want from a monetary system is not to make people
holding money rich; we want it to facilitate
transactions and make the economy as a whole rich.”
“Due to the expectation that Bitcoin economy will
grow, people will tend to hoard the virtual currency
rather than spending it,” resulting in “money-
hoarding, deflation and depression.” On the other
hand, when Bitcoin first appeared, only geeks 1
would collect this virtual currency, leading to today’s
excessive concentration of Bitcoin. As reported by
Bloomberg, nearly 40% of the world’s Bitcoin is
owned by a thousand users. “They have a great
impact on the Bitcoin market. They are known as
whales.” If Bitcoin can serve as a store of value, it
means nearly 40% of the social wealth would be in
the hands of these one thousand people. Obviously, it
is unacceptable to almost any economy or society.
technologies and are willing to devote much of their time
in learning such technologies.
ICPDI 2022 - International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology