While many interesting financial applications have resulted from fintech innovations, they all remained bound to the traditional fiat system. True innovation in money and finance has only started with Bitcoin. pahueg writes
This is because Bitcoin’s native monetary policy is elegantly simple, and its immutable supply is free from human discretion, something no other money has had since gold. In contrast to the yellow precious metal though, Bitcoin's monetary policy is algorithmically determined and thus perfectly predictable, rule-based. It is neither event- nor emotion-driven.
By depoliticizing monetary policy and grounding it in a code that follows a strict formula, Bitcoin’s monetary asset is structured as neutrally as possible. Bitcoin is truly sound money since it provides the highest degree of stability, reliability and security as a monetary system.Because this new form of global, digital money resides on a base layer, it’s more apt to speak of Bitcoin’s asset as being base money.
This all-important nuance was already clear to Bitcoin's anonymous founder, which is why he chose his terms carefully in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Satoshi Nakamoto described Bitcoin as anIn hindsight, Nakamoto probably should have emphasized the term cash, as it carries a distinct meaning within monetary theory.from the old French word casse, which means money box or money in hand, cash is defined as a bearer asset that is typically used to settle money transactions.
This quality contrasts starkly from so-called smart contract platforms like Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Terra or Binance Smart Chain. While these fully programmable blockchains – technically called Turing-complete systems – allow for native smart contract compatibility, Bitcoin’s programming languages script has been intentionally limited. By not going for full programmability on its base layer, Bitcoin has been optimized for stability, reliability as well as security.