Bitcoin’s internal and external troubles, what the hell is “one ounce of Bitcoin”?

Recently, an article titled "Beware of the Risks Behind Bitcoin" published in the People's Daily caught my attention. The article mentioned:

"In China, the price of Bitcoin is as high as around 7,000 yuan每盎司."

When did Bitcoin start using ounces as its unit?

Forgive my ignorance, I have only heard of BTC, cBTC, mBTC, μBTC (bit) and satoshi (satoshi). Can the unit of emotional quality be used? I am really enlightened.

We all know that Bitcoin is actually some data, not an entity.

Of course, data itself has weight, but it is negligible. According to E=mc², someone estimated the power required by the server and estimated that the current weight of the entire Internet is roughly the same as a 50-gram strawberry. Google CEO Eric Schmidt estimated that the entire Internet has about 5 million terabytes of information. YouTube science channel Vsauce estimates that the weight of these Internet data is only one-fiftieth of an ounce (about 28 grams) (less than a speck of dust).

So it makes sense that the original author used ounces as the unit, but if you really calculate it in ounces, the price behind it will be an astronomical figure.

Of course, the title of the article does make sense. Bitcoin itself does have many risks, and it is currently facing "internal and external troubles."

Internal concerns: the battle for expansion

At present, the expansion dispute in the Bitcoin community is getting more and more fierce, with the core camp and the non-core camp going back and forth. Is the implementation of the soft fork segregated witness blocked? The core side proposed the "User Activated Soft Fork" (UASF) plan, and then the largest Bitcoin mining pool AntPool announced its full support for Bitcoin Unlimited (BU).

Then, developers like luke-jr proposed to change the PoW algorithm, and BitFury, which supports segregated witness, said, "I will sue anyone who changes it to the ends of the earth!"

Seeing the conflict between the core camp and the miners getting bigger and bigger...

Do you think the scaling dispute only involves developers and miners? You are too naive.

Recently, 18 exchanges jointly issued a statement, saying that they planned to directly list BU as a competing currency. In the end, these 18 Arhats helped other exchanges:

What’s even more outrageous is that the chain hasn’t even been split yet, but some exchanges can’t wait to launch BU coins for trading. To borrow a phrase from Night Cat: When it comes to tactics, I only admire Bitfinex!

This internal struggle has lasted for nearly three years, and now it seems to have the flavor of a decisive battle. We can wait and see which direction the Bitcoin expansion will go.

External threats: regulation and competition

As the saying goes, "the first bird to stick its head out gets hammered down." Bitcoin is the first bird in the digital currency field that is being targeted by regulators. Bitcoin has a large market value, a great influence, and is used by many people, so regulation starts with Bitcoin. The People's Bank of China determined that Bitcoin is a virtual commodity at the end of 2013, and has now drawn a regulatory "red line" for it. Recently, the central bank has also issued a draft of regulatory rules to exchanges, bringing Bitcoin exchanges under the regulatory scope of the Anti-Money Laundering Law.

Duang, Caixin reported:

The discussion draft mainly regulates the anti-money laundering work of trading platforms from two aspects: first, it regulates the platform's own construction, that is, establishing an anti-money laundering organizational structure, and establishing and improving the internal control system for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing; second, it clarifies the obligations that the platform should fulfill, including taking preventive and monitoring measures, establishing and improving the customer identity identification system, the customer identity information and transaction record preservation system, the large-value transaction and suspicious transaction reporting system, and fulfilling other anti-money laundering obligations.

It is particularly noteworthy that the draft for discussion proposes that customers need to be "present for authentication" when handling virtual currency recharge, withdrawal and other services for the first time.

What, on-site certification? Central Bank, will you reimburse my travel expenses?

While Bitcoin is facing heavy regulatory pressure, altcoins are clamoring, saying that you can double the price today, and I will increase it by 250% tomorrow. Then the founding teams start to fantasize:

“10,000 dollars is definitely worth it”, “Surpassing Bitcoin is not a dream”…

Are you sure you're not dreaming?

When the regulation is actually implemented, what impact will it have on Bitcoin? Do you dare to talk about it here?