You should treat Bitcoin as a System
Basically, the three words "Bitcoin" you hear about online are all about the "coin" in bitcoin. If you only talk about the coin, then you are observing it superficially and not understanding it thoroughly, making it impossible to fully comprehend Bitcoin. From my observations, a large majority of people do not even know the title of the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Translated, it is titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". Did you notice? System means a system. Therefore, Bitcoin is not just a type of "currency"; more importantly, it is a system.
If you only focus on the coin, it means you are only seeing the surface value of Bitcoin - the price fluctuations as an asset and investment opportunities. But the true essence of Bitcoin carries a decentralized financial system that disrupts the traditional financial system's control over value circulation.
Decentralization is crucial; although it may sound like something "illegal" or "non-mainstream." In reality, it represents a brand-new trust mechanism and way of social (financial) collaboration. In traditional centralized systems, trust relies on authoritative institutions such as banks, governments, or corporations. Decentralization discards this model, replacing authority with technology and algorithms, creating a system that does not require intermediaries.
Currently, the total value of Bitcoin is $2.1 trillion, while gold is $17.8 trillion. That's more than an 8-fold difference, which means that Bitcoin's future upward potential could be from $100,000 to $800,000. Does that mean Bitcoin's price is at its "peak"?
Bitcoin system = Hash function (such as SHA256) + p2p (network protocol) + blockchain technology + Proof of Work mechanism (PoW) + scripting system + Merkle tree + digital signature + distributed ledger technology + Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) + timestamp server + UTXO
The more you understand the technical components of Bitcoin, the more you will marvel at the power of the Bitcoin system. And objectively speaking, the Bitcoin system is not the best trading system; its transaction speed is not fast, and it can even be said to be very slow; its transaction efficiency is not high, with a very limited number of transactions recorded in each block; at the same time, it has very high requirements for operators, and if you make an error, it is irreversible.
