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@ roman
2025-04-15 20:09:27Bitcoin is more than just a digital currency. It’s a technological revolution built on a unique set of properties that distinguish it from all other financial systems—past and present. From its decentralized architecture to its digitally verifiable scarcity, Bitcoin represents a fundamental shift in how we store and transfer value.
1. A Truly Decentralized Network
As of April 2025, the Bitcoin network comprises approximately 62,558 reachable nodes globally. The United States leads with 13,791 nodes (29%), followed by Germany with 6,418 nodes (13.5%), and Canada with 2,580 nodes (5.43%). bitnodes
This distributed structure is central to Bitcoin’s strength. No single entity can control the network, making it robust against censorship, regulation, or centralized failure.
2. Open Participation at Low Cost
Bitcoin's design allows almost anyone to participate meaningfully in the network. Thanks to its small block size and streamlined protocol, running a full node is technically and financially accessible. Even a Raspberry Pi or a basic PC is sufficient to synchronize and validate the blockchain.
However, any significant increase in block size could jeopardize this accessibility. More storage and bandwidth requirements would shift participation toward centralized data centers and cloud infrastructure—threatening Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos. This is why the community continues to fiercely debate such protocol changes.
3. Decentralized Governance
Bitcoin has no CEO, board, or headquarters. Its governance model is decentralized, relying on consensus among various stakeholders, including miners, developers, node operators, and increasingly, institutional participants.
Miners signal support for changes by choosing which version of the Bitcoin software to run when mining new blocks. However, full node operators ultimately enforce the network’s rules by validating blocks and transactions. If miners adopt a change that is not accepted by the majority of full nodes, that change will be rejected and the blocks considered invalid—effectively vetoing the proposal.
This "dual-power structure" ensures that changes to the network only happen through widespread consensus—a system that has proven resilient to internal disagreements and external pressures.
4. Resilient by Design
Bitcoin's decentralized nature gives it a level of geopolitical and technical resilience unmatched by any traditional financial system. A notable case is the 2021 mining ban in China. While initially disruptive, the network quickly recovered as miners relocated, ultimately improving decentralization.
This event underlined Bitcoin's ability to withstand regulatory attacks and misinformation (FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), cementing its credibility as a global, censorship-resistant network.
5. Self-Sovereign Communication
Bitcoin enables peer-to-peer transactions across borders without intermediaries. There’s no bank, payment processor, or centralized authority required. This feature is not only technically efficient but also politically profound—it empowers individuals globally to transact freely and securely.
6. Absolute Scarcity
Bitcoin is the first asset in history with a mathematically verifiable, fixed supply: 21 million coins. This cap is hard-coded into its protocol and enforced by every full node. At the atomic level, Bitcoin is measured in satoshis (sats), with a total cap of approximately 2.1 quadrillion sats.
This transparency contrasts with assets like gold, whose total supply is estimated and potentially (through third parties on paper) expandable. Moreover, unlike fiat currencies, which can be inflated through central bank policy, Bitcoin is immune to such manipulation. This makes it a powerful hedge against monetary debasement.
7. Anchored in Energy and Time
Bitcoin's security relies on proof-of-work, a consensus algorithm that requires real-world energy and computation. This “work” ensures that network participants must invest time and electricity to mine new blocks.
This process incentivizes continual improvement in hardware and energy sourcing—helping decentralize mining geographically and economically. In contrast, alternative systems like proof-of-stake tend to favor wealth concentration by design, as influence is determined by how many tokens a participant holds.
8. Censorship-Resistant
The Bitcoin network itself is inherently censorship-resistant. As a decentralized system, Bitcoin transactions consist of mere text and numerical data, making it impossible to censor the underlying protocol.
However, centralized exchanges and trading platforms can be subject to censorship through regional regulations or government pressure, potentially limiting access to Bitcoin.
Decentralized exchanges and peer-to-peer marketplaces offer alternative solutions, enabling users to buy and sell Bitcoins without relying on intermediaries that can be censored or shut down.
9. High Security
The Bitcoin blockchain is secured through a decentralized network of thousands of nodes worldwide, which constantly verify its integrity, making it highly resistant to hacking. To add a new block of bundled transactions, miners compete to solve complex mathematical problems generated by Bitcoin's cryptography. Once a miner solves the problem, the proposed block is broadcast to the network, where each node verifies its validity. Consensus is achieved when a majority of nodes agree on the block's validity, at which point the Bitcoin blockchain is updated accordingly, ensuring the network's decentralized and trustless nature.
Manipulation of the Bitcoin network is virtually impossible due to its decentralized and robust architecture. The blockchain's chronological and immutable design prevents the deletion or alteration of previously validated blocks, ensuring the integrity of the network.
To successfully attack the Bitcoin network, an individual or organization would need to control a majority of the network's computing power, also known as a 51% attack. However, the sheer size of the Bitcoin network and the competitive nature of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism make it extremely difficult to acquire and sustain the necessary computational power. Even if an attacker were to achieve this, they could potentially execute double spends and censor transactions. Nevertheless, the transparent nature of the blockchain would quickly reveal the attack, allowing the Bitcoin network to respond and neutralize it. By invalidating the first block of the malicious chain, all subsequent blocks would also become invalid, rendering the attack futile and resulting in significant financial losses for the attacker.
One potential source of uncertainty arises from changes to the Bitcoin code made by developers. While developers can modify the software, they cannot unilaterally enforce changes to the Bitcoin protocol, as all users have the freedom to choose which version they consider valid. Attempts to alter Bitcoin's fundamental principles have historically resulted in hard forks, which have ultimately had negligible impact (e.g., BSV, BCH). The Bitcoin community has consistently rejected new ideas that compromise decentralization in favor of scalability, refusing to adopt the resulting blockchains as the legitimate version. This decentralized governance model ensures that changes to the protocol are subject to broad consensus, protecting the integrity and trustworthiness of the Bitcoin network.
Another source of uncertainty in the future could be quantum computers. The topic is slowly gaining momentum in the community and is being discussed.
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My attempt to write an article with Yakyhonne. Simple editor with the most necessary formatting. Technically it worked quite well so far.
Some properties are listed in the article. Which properties are missing and what are these properties?