Differentiating Bitcoin from the rest of the crypto market: Part 1

Initially, the term “crypto asset” meant bitcoin and nothing else. However, the sector has experienced massive expansion by creating thousands of alternative crypto assets and tokens over the past decade. And while all of this activity was made possible by the Bitcoin network’s seminal use of blockchain technology, the reality is the intended utility of bitcoin is quite different from basically every other crypto use case.

Bitcoin has an intended use case as a new, global, digital, decentralized, permissionless, non-custodial, and apolitical monetary and financial system that rewards and protects savers much more than the current central banking system. But the rest of the crypto market mostly involves riskier, more speculative use cases that may not stand the test of time and often reintroduce many of the problems Bitcoin intended to solve, particularly regarding issues around trust and counterparty risk.

The underlying point of Bitcoin is a move away from central banking and towards a bitcoin standard, which would involve restructuring the economy with a greater emphasis on savings and less speculation or outright gambling in the financial markets. To put it bluntly, most of the rest of the crypto market stands in direct contrast to bitcoin. It operates more like a casino than any innovative financial phenomenon. These contrasting philosophies illustrate why it makes sense to differentiate bitcoin from the rest of the crypto market.

What is the Point of Bitcoin?

To understand the differences between bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market, it makes sense to first look at the intention and purpose behind Bitcoin’s creation in the first place.

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto a little over a month after the network’s launch, wrote:

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.”

At its core, bitcoin is an alternative to the current standard of inflationary, government-issued currencies and centralized banking institutions. Due to its deflationary monetary…