The MIT Technology Review has published an article today, April 24, called "Destroy the Bitcoin," detailing three ways in which the "cryptocurrency" could be "knocked down."
The first option, according to the article, is a takeover of Bitcoin by the government with the creation of a currency backed by the Federal Reserve (Fedcoin):
"It's the year two thousand and something big, and it's the day you have to file your taxes. But you do not keep them. Instead, an algorithm automatically makes a withdrawal from your electronic purse, in a currency called Fedcoin. "
This new blockchain would have verified financial institutions as authorized nodes instead of networks between people, "basically, trustworthy institutions," Yale student Sahil Gupta told the MIT Technology Review. The article notes that the Bank of Canada built a simulation of a system of this nature with Ethereum (ETH) in 2016.
The second option is a stealth acquisition by Facebook about Bitcoin, which involves creating a social network site that has a BTC wallet for all its users, rewarding them in cryptocurrencies to interact with ads, and providing them with an ad-free experience. allow Facebook to mine in the unused power of your computer (as Salon offered earlier this year):
"If Facebook could persuade a large enough fraction of Bitcoin users and miners to run their own version of Bitcoin software, the company would subsequently control the rules. Next I could remodel Bitcoin as a corporate version of the Fedcoin described above. "
Facebook could also take control away from Bitcoin by issuing its own cryptocurrency, just as the Telegram messaging application is in the process of doing after its combination of $ 1.7 billion in initial currency (ICO) offerings that took place earlier this year. year.
The third way to make "irrelevant" Bitcoin is by creating several new cryptocurrencies for each situation:
"You're in the supermarket row. Inside your digital wallet phone you will find not only Fedcoin and FacebookCoin, but also AppleCash, ToyotaCash, and a specific currency for the store in which you are. There is also a currency redeemable for nanny services, and another that allows you to enter the local metro system. "
This option, according to MIT Technology Review, "is already happening", as companies are creating their own currencies or tokens to be used only for their services, such as Kodak's ICO to form a currency used to obtain the license of the photographs.
How Bitcoin can prevent any of these options from being carried out is to capitalize its advantages, that is, that Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and impossible to censor. "
However, the article notes that the National Security Agency of the United States (NSA) is already trying to link the identities of people with their BTC addresses, according to the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and if governments "try to create impose blacklists "could put pressure on the" crucial "BTC miners.
At the end of March, Snowden had said in an interview that Bitcoin's Blockchain accounting was "devastatingly public," and that a good alternative for the fiat that can not be controlled by the government has not yet appeared.
MIT Technology Review concludes that "if cryptocurrencies are widely used, it will be the habits of the masses, not the wishes of the early adopters of Bitcoin, that determine what becomes the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto."