cryptovibes.com
Ever since its inception, Bitcoin has faced a variety of mixed reactions. Some criticize it while others support it whole-heartedly. One renowned Bitcoin bull is Cameron Winklevoss. This one half of the eponymous family office Winklevoss Capital believes that Bitcoin’s possibilities go far beyond digital gold. On October 23, the co-founder of the Gemini crypto exchange posted on Twitter:
“Because Bitcoin is open-source software, its possibilities are boundless. I often talk about gold as a target market cap, but that’s really just the beginning…it’s digital gold, source of truth, etc…”
A Common ‘Source of Truth’
Cameron’s line of thought targets going far beyond the normal analogy of Bitcoin with gold. Most of the bitcoin proponents compare the scarcity of gold with BTC’s finite supply. They argue this way to emphasize the crypto’s role as a digital store of value.
He is not opposing this perspective. But, his argument lies in the revolutionary potential of the flagship crypto’s open-source software. This software establishes a decentralized digital public record of transactions that is entirely immutable, anonymous, and secure. He refers to it as a shared, single source of truth.
A Source of Truth (SOT) in the information systems sector is a term that is used to denote a trusted data source that offers a complete picture of the data object in general. This large and trustless model for guaranteeing data integrity between a massive network of the participants is Cameron’s point of view. He sees it as the foundation for the asset’s unique promise.
Eliminating Falsity
Most of the crypto commentators had in the past implicitly conjoined these two perspectives. They are convinced that integrity and scarcity are related especially in response to the forgery crisis that has severely affected the gold industry this summer.
In August 2019, almost 1,000 fake gold kilogram bars were discovered in several vaults of major banks like JPMorgan Chase. Many more fake bars are thought to be already in circulation. At that time, one cryptocurrency enthusiast argued:
“Would you accept gold as payment from someone you didn’t trust, without verifying the weight and purity of the gold before shipping your products to them? Think of a Bitcoin full node as a ‘fake Bitcoin detector’ — all you need to verify ‘purity’ of your Bitcoin is a Raspberry Pi.”
Will Bitcoin overtake gold to become a haven asset in times of economic crisis or will the precious metal retain its position? Only time will tell.