Seeing the words “better than Bitcoin”, I think everyone will immediately raise their lips and smile contemptuously, and their fingers are ready to close the web page, and there is no desire to continue reading. After all, for many years, there have been many encryption projects that claim that they are better than Bitcoin. They are either purely scams, or thunder and rain, and finally do not know what to do. In short, no one is really better than Bitcoin, especially The overall market share of BTC still occupies more than 70% today.
Bitcoin has been the best for twelve years. But what about the next twelve years? In terms of the way people store wealth, is Bitcoin always the best one? Is this the best and final monetary solution for mankind? Does the history of the development of wealth storage form end after the advent of Bitcoin? The author does not agree, because this view does not look at the problem in a developmental perspective. As far back as tens of thousands of years ago, the best carrier of wealth at that time was the feathers of beautiful birds or decorations made of shells, and then food, livestock, salt, spices, iron ore, gold, real estate, stocks, etc. slowly step by step. Instead of the position of beautiful shells, it will become the best carrier of human wealth within a certain period of time. Even in modern times, before the iPhone came out, many people believed that no other mobile phone manufacturer could replace Nokia. We should always keep a forward-looking and open perspective. If everyone is complacent and thinks that gold is the best reserve asset on this planet, then Bitcoin will not be invented.
Perhaps you also think that forever (or in a short period of ten years) there is no possibility of a form of wealth storage that is at least theoretically better than Bitcoin, so after reading this article, you may change your view. This article is different from those exaggerated passionate slogans, brainwashing and bragging. We will not talk about any “huge vision” or “ecological scale”, because these are all meaningless pictures (to say that the serious point is fraud). We will only discuss the existing reality, calmly make a rigorous and comprehensive analysis from technical and economic theories, and explain everything in a way that most ordinary readers can understand.
The first thing that needs to be clear is, what exactly is “scarcity”?
Most people think that “a small amount” or “the total amount has an absolute upper limit” is scarcity, but this is a wrong understanding. For example, considering that the author’s thumbs are always only one pair, the number is extremely small and the total amount can never be increased, then why hasn’t my pair of thumbs become a globally recognized scarce asset with huge value? Some people may say that my two thumbs are of no use to others, so Bitcoin has no “practical use” other than “value”, that is, its financial value occupies 100% and its use value is 0 (this It is also the root cause of many not understanding why Bitcoin is valuable). Let’s assume that if the total number of Bitcoins is not 21 million, but one trillion, and only one BTC is output every day, it will take about 2.7 billion years to mine all BTC. Then I want to have normal thinking ability Everyone will understand that such a “limited total amount” of one trillion pieces is actually no different from unlimited numbers. After all, the age of the earth is less than 4.6 billion years. Therefore, a small amount or an absolutely fixed total amount does not represent anything, let alone become the only source of scarcity value.
There are many things in the world that are limited in total, not just Bitcoin. So why do we just think that Bitcoin is extremely scarce and has great value? Perhaps someone has already thought of the answer: Bitcoin is scarce and valuable because others also find it scarce, that is, because there is consensus. The answer of others may also be “the huge market size and acceptance that already exists.” In other words, the relationship between supply and demand determines whether it is scarce. But “consensus” or “scale” is not a fundamentally meaningful answer -this is a logical error of mutual causal loop argument, just like a dog biting its tail and turning around in circles -after all, Bitcoin is just At the moment of its birth, there was neither consensus nor any scale. In this case, why would the second person besides Satoshi Nakamoto feel that Bitcoin is scarce? It doesn’t make sense to use “huge consensus and demand that already exists” as a reason to explain “the consensus demand will only be greater in the future”. Therefore, the meaningful question should be, what are the underlying underlying reasons that have led Bitcoin to grow to such a huge consensus, scale and demand?
The answer is that the reason why Bitcoin has formed such a high consensus today that it is called a great revolution is because it is the first in history to realize “endogenous value” in digital assets, that is, "no need for a third party The “endogenous scarcity of guarantees” eliminates the “trusted trust risk” in the digital world for the first time, enabling independent verification or self-certification of the number of assets. This kind of strict scarcity proof may not always be a good thing for various other commodities that aim at use value , but it is absolutely indispensable to the core of the economic system -currency. Foundation.
The scarcity of any physical commodity is well realized or easy to prove, but this irrefutable scarcity is extremely difficult in the digital world that can be copied at no cost. Digital form is fundamentally an information form. This intangible form has tremendous efficiency and convenience. For decades, media, entertainment, financial markets and even war have been “informatized revolution”. Therefore, the first type of digital asset that achieves endogenous value in the true sense will have all the benefits of information form: it does not occupy space, can be transferred at the speed of light at almost no cost in any corner of the earth, true and false are clear and irrefutable, and total It can be absolutely controllable, etc., and introduced something that didn’t exist in digital time: endogenous scarcity. Therefore, for the first time, the digital world has the cornerstone of the original economic system: currency.
The revolutionary creation of Bitcoin through the “blockchain” and “PoW mining” technologies can fundamentally achieve the large-scale consensus results as today. It is not easy to elicit a solid and long-term consensus. You must have original, deep, and accurate materials like Bitcoin. The kind of empty-mouthed, bragging and shouting consensus, or hiring someone to change the parameters of a fork currency in five minutes, the result is basically a scam, as you can see.
So, although Bitcoin is undoubtedly revolutionary, is it necessarily perfect? Can we never design a form of wealth storage that is better than Bitcoin’s scarcity or stronger consensus? In other words, does Bitcoin end the evolution of human wealth?
To be more scarce than Bitcoin, some people first think of adding more “uses”, that is, “use value.” But things with pure use value do not necessarily have the scarcity of assets that are not restricted by time and space conditions like Bitcoin. Water is of great value to everyone. Without water, there is no life. But people who travel in the arid desert and those who fall into the lake and drown to evaluate the value of water are completely opposite. Therefore, the increase in “uses” alone cannot make an asset more scarce, especially when the so-called use of any currency that imitates Bitcoin is actually a pseudo-demand created out of thin air. Even if there are such new uses, they are also digital, and we have no reason to believe that Bitcoin has any substantial obstacle in adapting to these needs.
Some people think of a simple and intuitive design that can increase scarcity, which is to modify it to a lower total cap or even introduce a mechanism to destroy deflation. That is to say, it is more scarce than Bitcoin in terms of quantity. But through the above discussion, the absolute amount of the actual quantity has no causal relationship with the actual scarcity. The scarcity of items that are infinite but in increasing demand is far greater than garbage that is declining but no one wants. Still considering the author’s two thumbs and smashing one of them, will the other unique in the world be considered to be extremely scarce and trigger global panic buying? I’m afraid not. Consider another hypothesis: after the Bitcoin is mined, if one day all the Bitcoins owned by all mankind are destroyed for no reason by a mysterious force, and there is only one Bitcoin in your hand. It still exists, so will this bitcoin in your hand have the entire market value of the previous bitcoin? In other words, will the bitcoin in your hand be worth a trillion dollars? I’m afraid this won’t be possible. It is more likely that this only Bitcoin is worthless.
After all, Bitcoin already has today’s scale and volume, and any small change in use or quantity cannot create a scarcity beyond Bitcoin. So, is there any other “revolutionary design” that can take a big step forward on the basis of the “proof of scarcity” created by Bitcoin, and once again arouse huge consensus and recognition among people?
Maybe everyone has heard the term “Bitcoin eternal bull market”. Simply put, because the total amount of Bitcoin has an absolute upper limit, and the mining output is halved every four years, it will be less and less. The market demand will be permanently greater than the number of newly mined bitcoins every day, and since then it has entered a “price singularity” and has become an asset that only rises but does not fall. And the upper limit of 21 million will eventually represent all the wealth of all mankind. Buying 1 bitcoin is a permanent holding of 1/21 million of the wealth of all mankind! This view is too naive and still makes the mistake of “quantitative determinism”. In other words, it is not that a certain item is valuable because it has a small quantity. On the contrary, it is usually because its demand is large and its quantity is small, which causes the ultimate scarcity.
Cryptocurrency is a form of information without physical objects. This characteristic causes its value to come almost entirely from market demand assessments -I will also consider the value as much as others think it is - that is, confidence. In a large-scale and mature market, this kind of value confidence is too erratic and interdependent. Any disturbance will cause a series of collapses in price and confidence, and it will not happen until the ultimate point is reached. Reverse. Bitcoin’s “PoW mining” mechanism provides an objective basis for this value evaluation: the historical total mining cost and the current unit output mining cost are used as two reference values that are not affected by subjective sentiment. The huge amount of energy used to mine Bitcoin is not only an undisputed and non-refundable guarantee for the agreement of the ledger, but also an evaluation reference for its price and confidence. This also explains why all kinds of currencies that proclaim “green and low energy consumption” consensus (such as “PoS”, “DPoS”, “PoA”, etc.) will always end up in death: nothing is actually consumed as a must The established cost of rebuttal, then the price evaluation of this currency lacks any objective factors that can be referred to, and can only be determined by market sentiment, resulting in its price ranging from 0 to infinity. Any number in the range is reasonable. Some unexpected events lead to a collapse of market sentiment, and the price of this currency will inevitably go towards zero. The meaning of this is not “cost determines price” (most of the time, it is precisely “demand determines cost”), but indicates that there is an objective and undisputed reference value, which is more conducive to the stability of market confidence and consensus.
The demand for Bitcoin comes from the consensus and confidence that its underlying creative and revolutionary design brings to everyone: this mechanism will definitely be recognized by more people in the future. If there is no such confidence expectation, let alone 21 million pieces, a total of 1 piece would be redundant. Therefore, any external factors such as actual use, expected market size, capital endorsement, professor R&D, ecological value, quantity, etc. cannot reach a consensus that is better than Bitcoin, and the huge increase in scarcity must only come from The fundamental mechanism design of its internal bottom layer.
To reach a stronger consensus, it is necessary to surpass Bitcoin in the design of the “core mechanism” and make a big step forward in the economic model.
Going back to the “Bitcoin eternal bull market” above, we can conclude that the mere upper limit of the total amount is not enough to achieve the effect of only rising and not falling. Otherwise, those rare antiques and artworks have long been “eternal bull market.” Up. Furthermore, although the output of Bitcoin is halved every four years, the difficulty of block mining will be adjusted according to the level of computing power within two weeks in order to maintain the normal operation of the entire blockchain to ensure No matter how much computing power is added or withdrawn from mining, a block will be produced every ten minutes on average. Such a design actually leads to the absolute rigidity and fixed amount of money supply per unit time regardless of market demand. One of the results of rigid supply is that market prices fluctuate greatly, because whether people want to buy or not, the newly mined bitcoins will go to the market for circulation every day, every week, and every month, and cannot automatically adjust with changes in demand. .
Then consider, what if we can achieve technical mechanisms that do not affect the stable and long-term operation of the overall blockchain, and can immediately reduce or even completely stop the output of new currencies when the price drops? Will this prevent (at least greatly reduce) the continued decline in prices? That’s right, this is the mechanism of HACD!
The Hacash chain adopts a dual currency system, and both currencies are pure PoW products. Both are mining from scratch. There is no pre-issuance of governance tokens. While maintaining the continuous and stable output of HAC coins, it is possible to reduce or stop the output of HACD when needed, thereby suppressing the trend of price decline. But HACD is not just that simple, we will discuss its revolutionary design in detail next.
First of all, HACD is an indivisible NFT currency, and is the world’s first purely PoW-based NFT (again, note that Hacash is an invention in 2018), which means that it can be created at no cost by anyone today “NFT works” are different, each HACD is mined through algorithmic calculations, which consumes electricity like HAC and BTC. Each HACD is uniquely marked by an identifier with a length of 6 letters. It is not all 26 English letters that can form the mark, but 16 of them are selected: WTYUIAHXVMEKBSZN (As for why these 16 letters are chosen and the other 10 are discarded One, the author did not find a suitable reason in the white paper, nor did he get the answer in the community discussion, which seems to need to be handed over to future people to study). The number space of the 6-digit identifier formed by the 16-letter permutation and combination is: 16 ^ 6 = 16777216, that is, the upper limit of the total amount of HACD is about 16.77 million. Since each HACD is unique and has a 6-letter unique ID as an absolute identifier, this allows centralized exchanges and other institutions to forge false tokens (that is, data smashed or sold beyond The real number of fake coins) has become impossible, and any attempt to modify the upper limit of the number of this currency is technically impossible first, so as to ensure that the wealth stored by everyone is not affected by the financial institutions of certain institutions. Manipulation or damage from community division behavior. And because it is indivisible and cannot be combined, a HACD will always be that one!
In the field of ancient coin collection, each banknote has a unique number. Generally speaking, the price of a specific collection with a unique number such as 6666 or 888888 is much higher than other ordinary collections. Similarly, the value of repeated or ordered combinations of letters that are uniquely identified as AAAAAA, WWWTTT, XVXVXV, etc. will be far greater than other random and disordered letter combinations. In other words, this will bring a value to the HACD market in the field of collection that can be individually assessed and identified! Other ordinary coins identified by random letters will have a “base price”, and the price of the HACD with a specific mark will rise by a percentage from that base price. We can even set up a grade identification system for those specially marked HACDs. Just like the grades of diamonds, ancient coins or works of art, each grade represents a special rare way of alphabetical arrangement with roughly the same probability, that is, it represents Its collection value. In addition, in addition to the unique identifier of the 16-character combination, each HACD dug out has a serial number/number that increases from 1. This number represents the order in which HACD dug out the confirmation on the entire network. For example, the letter identification of HACD with the number 11111 is BAAWUE (see: Hacash Diamond 11111 ), and the HACD with such a specific serial number is also the same Will be taken into account in the valuation criteria. In other words, for collections, HACD has two evaluation criteria that can be comprehensively investigated. If in the future a lucky person or someone with huge computing power happens to dig out a HACD labeled XXXXXX on the serial number of 888888, I think its value may be more than a hundred times more than other ordinary HACD!
Seeing this, you might think that the “collection” above is a ridiculous fuss. Who cares about the arrangement of a few letters? If HACD was created by a project party at no cost, then it is really worthless, after all, anyone can create it. But the difference is that each HACD is mined at a cost of computing power, and its mining algorithm and difficulty adjustment mechanism are fundamentally different from any existing PoW currency. This is different!
Not all of these 16.77 million HACDs have been issued, but they are mined one by one just like HAC or BTC. The Hacash mainnet was launched in early 2019, and HACD started mining 6 months later. So far, a total of 24,888 HACDs have been dug out, with an average of less than 40 per day. In fact, the Hacash mainnet is designed to produce a block every 5 minutes, and an average of about 288 blocks are mined every day. HACD only contains one block whose height is divisible by 5 (that is, blocks whose height ends in 0 or 5 can contain HACD), so on average, one HACD is mined every 25 minutes, and a maximum of 288 can be mined per day. / 5 About 58 pieces, with a maximum of 1,740 pieces per month and a maximum of 21,000 pieces per year. Regardless of the increase in difficulty, it will take at least about 800 years to dig out all 16.77 million HACDs. But in fact, we will never be able to dig out so many HACD, as explained below.
Maybe you have discovered a problem: HACD’s daily design target output is 58 pieces, but why is the actual output that has been dug up is only 40 pieces per day? This is about the unique difficulty adjustment mechanism of HACD: the difficulty of mining increases with the output of each coin, and it only increases.
Technically speaking, there are two ways to increase the difficulty of HACD mining that can produce superimposing effects: 1. After a HACD is dug out, because it already occupies an available 6-letter unique identifier, then this specific identifier The coins will never be confirmed again. However, the possibility of the calculation result of the hash algorithm may still produce such a “duplicate” HACD, but such a HACD with the same name cannot be confirmed by the main network and can only be discarded, so this part of the hash space is excluded. In other words, coins that have been mined may be mined again but cannot be confirmed. This actually slightly reduces the possibility of digging the next valid HACD, thus making it more difficult to dig the next HACD. Such an improvement may not be obvious in the early days when the number of mining is small, but as time goes by, for example, after mining half of the HACD, the difficulty of computing power doubles. If there is a small part of HACD waiting to be mining in the end, Then since most of the hash space has been occupied, the difficulty of mining will eventually increase exponentially, resulting in an astronomical amount of computing power that will be consumed to mine the last batch of HACD! 2. HACD’s unique hash algorithm has an intermediate result of 32 bytes when executed. The hash generated in this intermediate step will be checked by a difficulty value: the number of leading zeros in the hash value. The difficulty target value represented by this number is mapped to the range of the total amount of HACD, so that the difficulty will be adjusted to a higher level after every 3277 HACDs are dug out. This difficulty adjustment is also irreversible. In other words, unlike Bitcoin, the difficulty of mining can be reduced with the withdrawal of computing power. Once the difficulty of mining HACD increases with the increase in the number of mining, it will never be It may be down again! The number of leading zeros (difficulty target value) of this hash will be 0 in the first 20 digits, which will be an impossible level of difficulty. Currently, the number of leading zeros of the hash target difficulty value of Bitcoin is about 10. The difficulty value will increase exponentially with the increase of leading zeros, so the hash difficulty with zeros in the first 20 bits will also be an astronomical number that is actually impossible to achieve!
In other words, through the combined effect of the above two difficulty improvement mechanisms, mining HACD will become more and more difficult over time, and eventually the difficulty will approach a limit that can never be reached. Even in between, the difficulty may rise to the point that with all the computing power of the entire network combined, it is impossible to dig one coin a day. So, in fact, we will never be able to dig out all the HACD, and perhaps only a small part (such as 500,000?). After that, the energy consumed for each new HACD mined will be a huge number.
Such a difficulty adjustment mechanism of “only increase but not decrease” will possibly bring about the most revolutionary feature in the history of the asset market, truly realizing the “eternal bull market” in which prices only rise but never fall!
As we discussed above, a mere upper limit on the number cannot bring about the effect of an eternal bull market, for two reasons: 1. After all the chips are dug out, the price loses any cost reference, which will cause the market pricing to be completely determined by people’s emotions and Confidence, and certain accidents may cause confidence and price to step on each other and spiral collapse. In the long run, such accidents are almost always inevitable; 2. If it is issued at no cost and is controlled by a project party In most cases of bargaining chips, without exception, the market price tends to return to zero due to the “harvesting” behavior of the project party;
However, a mining algorithm whose difficulty only rises but does not fall is completely different. First of all, its issuance is 100% fair. Even the project party cannot obtain even one HACD at a computing power cost lower than market competition (not to mention Hacash does not have any project parties, it is a purely community-driven open source project) , Everyone is open to competition on the same starting line. Who gets the next HACD is entirely because the real money and silver energy he invested in defeated others, and there is no fraud or harvest. Moreover, as the difficulty of mining becomes greater and greater, and the current input of computing power is not enough to mine a HACD within 25 minutes, the entire network loses an opportunity to confirm the HACD, and everyone can only continue to mine and wait. The next 25 minutes are here. In other words, only a block whose height is divisible by 5 can contain an HACD, but it may not contain it. Not every block that can contain HACD does not have to contain an HACD. Therefore, if the number of HACDs dug up every day is not saturated, the daily target limit of 58 will not be dug up. Once the computing power is reduced, the mechanism of reducing or even completely stopping the output of new coins will bring about a huge revolutionary feature: the marginal price is getting higher and higher, and it may realize an eternal bull market that only rises but does not fall. Let’s analyze it step by step.
HACD is a heterogeneous, high-energy form of currency. Its total amount is about 17 million caps. It is indivisible, and the difficulty of mining can only rise and never fall. This property brings about a very important feature in monetary terms: the elasticity of output and the decentralized market-oriented elastic adjustment. In other words, when the difficulty of mining HACD rises to a certain stage, if its price decreases due to weakening demand, the energy consumption (that is, the difficulty of computing power) for mining each HACD will not decrease at this time, and still maintain At an existing high level, at this time, because the expected mining cost is fixed, for some HACD miners with higher comprehensive costs, there is no profit or even a loss in mining HACD. At this time, some miners will stop mining new ones. HACD, the new supply in the market will be reduced, thereby reducing the decline in market prices. When the market price of HACD drops severely, all new HACD excavations will be completely stopped and the new market supply will be reduced to zero. Until the price of HACD rises above the expected cost at some point, bringing profits to miners, the mining of new HACD will slowly become active again. This process is a completely decentralized, market-oriented, average cost-based adjustment method, without any manual intervention or “governance”, and is gradual, smooth, efficient, timely, accurate, and fully meets the real needs of the market In this process, no one can improperly benefit from information or cost advantages that are much higher than others.
After excluding the increase in mining efficiency brought about by the early years of technological progress and entering a relatively stable period, the difficulty of mining in HACD only rises and does not fall. In addition to bringing about supply elasticity, there is a more important feature. : The “marginal cost” of mining HACD has been rising and cannot be reduced. Because every HACD is extracted with energy consumption, the energy cost of the latest HACD that has just been unearthed on the market must be higher than that of all HACDs in history. The cost of the newly unearthed HACD is the cost of the entire HACD market. “Marginal cost”. Most of the time, because demand determines the cost, this new HACD was dug out at the current marginal cost. It must be because the market price of HACD at this time, that is, the “marginal demand” is greater than this marginal cost. At that time, the price of all HACDs on the market will be aligned with the “marginal demand”, that is, aligned with the latest and highest price, so that every time a HACD is dug out, the market price will rise with the marginal cost. When the “marginal demand” of HACD drops below the “marginal cost”, the market will immediately reduce or even immediately stop the supply of new HACD, thereby preventing the price from continuing to fall. Since the only purpose of HACD is to store value, people buy HACD to store it, and there will be no other “uses” to consume, and due to the indivisibility of HACD, the market circulation of HACD will not be “active” enough. , That is, the liquidity is not high. It is expected that the marginal cost will only rise but not fall. Short-term price fluctuations will not cause everyone to scramble to sell the HACD in their hands, because if the price of HACD at this moment is the “always highest price”, then it means never again from this moment. No new HACD will be dug out, so the total amount of HACD that has been dug out on the market will be the “eternal total upper limit”, and at this time, we have no reason to sell a supply that is impossible. Many store-of-value assets!
Therefore, a revolutionary design that can never be completed, and as long as the price does not rise higher, the existing quantity in the market is the actual total. Its scarcity will be far greater than setting a fixed total and regardless of demand. A currency that will continue to be produced regardless of changes in prices. In other words, from a certain theoretical point of view, the scarcity brought about by HACD in the underlying mechanism will be a revolutionary huge improvement for Bitcoin!
Finally, there is one detail we need to pay attention to: Since the difficulty of mining HACD is determined in advance by the code, then in the early stage, the difficulty is small, or when a large amount of computing power is suddenly flooded due to the market heat, everyone may be A confirmation cycle, that is, multiple or even dozens of HACDs are dug up within 25 minutes. At this time, since only one HACD can be packaged and confirmed at a time, the miners who mine HACD in the same cycle will give a higher fee quotation (the fee will be paid by another native asset HAC on the Hacash mainnet. ), the miner with the highest bid will successfully compete for the right to confirm the HACD, while the other HACD mined in the same cycle will be discarded due to the failure of the bidding, and the computing power will be wasted. Everyone will restart the next cycle of HACD mining. In other words, to successfully mine an effective HACD, you need to go through two steps: 1. Expend more and more computing power to mine it; 2. If someone else also mines the HACD at the same time, you need to pay more HAC to bid successfully.
The commission paid by the HACD bidding will “overflow” to the HAC miners, allowing the mining of HAC to have greater returns, thereby increasing the overall computing power of the entire network. This inseparable interconnection between HAC and HACD will increase the value of the entire Hacash mainnet as a whole.
Original Article: 币乎 - 好文有好报！
