Author: @zzmjxy

When market sentiment turns cold, the narrative of "Bitcoin is dead" always resurfaces. The core assumption of this argument is that Bitcoin, as the first-generation blockchain technology, will eventually be replaced by its successors, just like the fate of all pioneering technologies in history.

This assumption seems logically flawless—but it is wrong.

1. The Curse of First-Generation Technology and Bitcoin's Exception

The lessons from the history of technology are harsh.

Western Union—once the communication giant that controlled 90% of the telegraph business in the U.S. in 1866. In 1876, when Bell wanted to sell the telephone patent to them, the executives refused. Bell went on to establish Bell Telephone, which later evolved into AT&T—the largest company in the world in the 20th century. And what about Western Union, which rejected the telephone? Today, it has a market value of $2.7 billion, ranking 3990th globally.

Intel—invented the commercial microprocessor in 1971, dominating PC chips for thirty years. At the peak of the 2000 bubble, its market value was $509 billion. Twenty-five years later, investors who bought at the peak have still not recouped their investments, with a market value of $160 billion—less than a third of its peak. It was not defeated by "faster CPUs," but was left behind by a generational shift in architecture (the rise of ARM and TSMC's leading processes).

Cisco—the king of internet infrastructure. In 2000, its market value exceeded $500 billion, surpassing Microsoft to become the world's number one. After the bubble burst, its stock price fell by 88%, and although its revenue quadrupled afterward, its stock price has never returned to its peak. The value at the device layer was siphoned off by the protocol and application layers.

The pattern seems clear: first-generation technology establishes proof of concept, while second-generation technology harvests market returns.

However, 16 years after Bitcoin's birth, the situation is completely different.

Today, Bitcoin has a market value of about $1.8 trillion, accounting for over 58% of the entire crypto market. The second place, Ethereum, is around $300 billion, less than one-sixth of Bitcoin's value. All the "Ethereum killers" and "Bitcoin alternatives" combined still do not reach half of Bitcoin's market value. Sixteen years have passed, and Bitcoin has not only not been replaced by its successors but has instead widened the gap.

The difference lies in the fact that telegraphs, chips, and routers are tools; their value lies in functional efficiency, and when their functions are replaced, their value goes to zero. Bitcoin is not a tool but a protocol layer—a global consensus system that requires no permission.

The value of the protocol layer does not lie in the speed of functional iteration but in the accumulation of network effects, immutability, and the Lindy effect. TCP/IP will not be replaced by "faster protocols" because the cost of replacement far exceeds the efficiency gains.

The logic of Bitcoin is exactly the same.

2. Misunderstood Positioning—From Payment System to Global Settlement Layer

Bitcoin's biggest narrative dilemma is that it is judged as a "payment system"—and then deemed a failure.

Transactions are slow, fees are high, and throughput is low. These criticisms are factual. But they criticize something Bitcoin has never attempted to be.

Payment and settlement are two different things.

When you swipe your card at Starbucks, it completes in 2 seconds. But has the money really transferred? No. Visa merely records a promise; the actual transfer of funds waits for interbank settlement—possibly the same day, possibly days later. Visa processes tens of thousands of transactions per second, but it processes promises, not settlements.

Settlement addresses another question: has this money truly and irreversibly moved from A to B? The final settlement between global banks still relies on SWIFT and various central banks—a system that requires days, permissions, and trusted intermediaries.

Bitcoin is not a competitor to Visa. It is a competitor to SWIFT—a permissionless global settlement layer.

This is not theoretical. According to research data from Riot Platforms, in 2024, the Bitcoin network settled over $19 trillion in transactions—more than double that of 2023, with a single-day peak exceeding $30 billion. The Lightning Network, Ark, RGB—all these L2 protocols treat the Bitcoin main chain as the final settlement anchor. This is precisely what a settlement layer should look like: the underlying layer does not pursue speed but seeks irreversible finality.

From this perspective, Bitcoin's "shortcomings" are precisely its design: a block time of 10 minutes, limited block size, and conservative scripting capabilities—these are deliberate choices to ensure that anyone can run a full node, verify the entire history, and not rely on any centralized entity.

Inspiration from TCP/IP

In the 1970s, the performance metrics of TCP/IP were quite "poor"—high latency, low bandwidth, and no native encryption. IBM's SNA and DEC's DECnet were technically more "advanced." But TCP/IP won. Not because it was faster, but because it was simple enough, open enough, and difficult to control.

Fifty years later, no one is trying to replace TCP/IP with "faster protocols." It's not that there aren't faster solutions; it's that the cost of replacement has become unbearable.

This is the profound insight of the protocol layer: once it becomes a foundation of trust, efficiency is no longer the primary metric; irreplacability is.

Proof of Human Collaborative Ability

In November 2025, Bitcoin Core completed its first independent security audit since its inception 16 years ago, with results showing: zero high-risk vulnerabilities, zero medium-risk vulnerabilities.

Behind this number is an even more astonishing fact: a protocol supporting nearly $2 trillion in market value has only 41 core developers globally, with annual funding of just $8.4 million. In contrast, Polkadot—worth less than 1% of Bitcoin—spends $87 million annually on development.

We may be underestimating humanity's self-organizing ability. Without a company, foundation, or CEO, a group of developers distributed around the world maintains the largest decentralized financial infrastructure in human history with extremely low resources. This itself is a validation of a new form of organization.

The underlying architecture is also evolving. v3 transactions, Package Relay, Ephemeral Anchors—these upgrades share a common goal: to allow L2 to more reliably anchor to the main chain. This is not a stacking of functions but a structural enhancement.

The Grand Strategy of the Protocol: The Last Few Pieces Before Solidification

Adam Back—the inventor of Hashcash, a pioneer of Bitcoin's proof-of-work mechanism, and CEO of Blockstream—recently pointed out the direction for Bitcoin in the next decade: L1 should be conservative and minimal, ultimately "solidifying"—not to stop upgrading, but to make only a few final, crucial upgrades.

Before that, several key primitives need to be completed: BitVM, Covenants, Simplicity. These terms may not mean much to most people, but their common goal is clear: to make Bitcoin a sufficiently powerful "anchoring layer," and then push all innovations to L2.

The roadmap is: minimal L1 → key primitives → innovation migration → final solidification.

This is a grand strategic plan at the protocol level. It is remarkably similar to the evolution of TCP/IP: the core protocol remains stable, while complex functions are implemented at higher layers.

Bitcoin appears weak on the payment side but is becoming stronger on the structural side. This is design, not a flaw.

3. Value Capture of the Protocol Layer—Bitcoin's Mother Currency Status

TCP/IP is one of the most successful protocols in human history, but it has a fatal flaw: it lacks a value capture mechanism.

The internet has created trillions of dollars in value, almost all of which has flowed to the application layer—Google, Amazon, Meta. TCP/IP itself is not worth anything. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn changed human civilization, but the protocol itself captured no economic returns.

This is the classic dilemma of the protocol layer: the more fundamental and open it is, the harder it is to charge fees.

Bitcoin breaks this dilemma.

A Financially Native Protocol Layer

From day one, Bitcoin has been financially native. The transfer of value itself is a function of the protocol; every transaction and every settlement directly involves the flow of BTC. The success of the protocol is directly tied to the value of the token.

TCP/IP has no "TCP coin." HTTP has no "HTTP coin." But Bitcoin has BTC.

When Bitcoin becomes the global settlement layer, BTC automatically becomes the unit of account for this settlement layer—in financial terms, it is the mother currency (Numeraire).

Observe the actual behavior of the market: the main trading pairs on exchanges are priced in BTC; when institutions allocate crypto assets, BTC is the benchmark, and others are "risk exposure relative to BTC"; the risk parameters of stablecoins, DeFi, and AI computing networks ultimately bind to BTC. This is not faith; it is market structure.

One Layer More than Gold, One Layer More than TCP/IP

"Digital gold" only gets it half right.

Gold is a store of value but not a protocol layer. You cannot build applications or run L2 networks on top of gold. The value of gold comes from its scarcity but does not generate network effects.

Bitcoin is both a store of value and a protocol layer. The Lightning Network, RGB protocol, and various L2s are built on top of it, and their existence, in turn, reinforces Bitcoin's network effects. This is a compound growth logic that gold does not possess.

Conversely, TCP/IP is a protocol layer but lacks value capture. Bitcoin is both a protocol layer and can capture value.

Thus, Bitcoin's ultimate positioning is: the technical network effects of TCP/IP + the value storage properties of gold + the financially native value capture ability.

These three aspects overlap rather than replace each other.

4. Incremental Changes in the AI Era—Why the Big Picture Has Changed

The above three layers of logic are based on the extrapolation of a "stock" world. But the real variable is that we are entering a completely different era.

The internet connects people with data. AI connects algorithms, computing power, and autonomous agents.

This is not a change in degree but a change in nature.

In the internet era, the main agents of value flow are humans—humans create content, consume services, and make decisions. The financial system is designed for humans, with KYC, business hours, national borders, and manual approvals—these frictions can be tolerated by humans.

In the AI era, the main agents of value flow will include a large number of non-human agents. There is a key structural constraint here: AI agents cannot use the existing financial system.

It is not "inconvenient," it is "impossible":

• AI agents cannot open bank accounts—no ID, cannot pass KYC
• AI agents cannot wait for T+2 settlement—they operate on millisecond decision cycles
• AI agents do not understand "business days"—they operate 24/7
• AI agents cannot tolerate manual approvals—any human process is a bottleneck

Every feature of the existing financial system is not friction for the AI economy but a fundamental barrier.

The Algorithmic Economy Needs Algorithmic Currency

When AI agents begin to trade autonomously—purchasing computing power, paying for API calls, exchanging data, settling services—they need a "mother currency." A benchmark that all agents can recognize, trust, and use for valuation.

The U.S. dollar is not suitable for this role because it relies on human institutional intermediaries. Ethereum is not suitable for this role because its monetary policy can be changed through governance, and it has a clear leadership—Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation can influence the direction of the protocol.

But BTC—with a fixed cap of 21 million, a predictable issuance curve, rules that cannot be modified by any entity, no founder, no foundation, no CEO—happens to possess all the characteristics required for a "mother currency of the algorithmic age." Returning to the earlier audit data: 41 developers, $8.4 million in annual funding, zero high-risk vulnerabilities. This is not only a miracle of capital efficiency but also the ultimate proof of absolute decentralization and self-organized collaboration.

In the AI era, it is not that humanity needs Bitcoin more, but that non-human intelligence for the first time requires a global settlement layer.

This is why the economic scale of the AI era may far exceed that of the human internet era. The users of the internet are 8 billion humans. The participants in the AI economy could be billions of autonomous agents, conducting millions of microtransactions every second.

Bitcoin is not competing for market share in a stock world. It is laying the groundwork for a settlement layer in an incremental world that has yet to fully unfold.

Conclusion: Ultimate Valuation and the Return of Capital

Looking back at the logical chain of the entire text: Bitcoin is not a first-generation blockchain technology but a protocol layer; it is becoming a truly reliable global settlement layer through architectural upgrades; as a financially native protocol, it inherently possesses value capture capabilities and is becoming the mother currency of the crypto world; and the arrival of the AI era will provide this mother currency with application scenarios that far exceed those of the internet era.

If this logic holds, the valuation anchor for Bitcoin is not just "digital gold."

The total market value of gold is about $18 trillion. The total value of the global internet economy is measured in trillions of dollars. The economic scale of the AI era will far exceed the sum of both.

Bitcoin is the intersection of these layers of value. If it is merely "digital gold," it would be valued at $18 trillion, with each BTC approximately $850,000. If it simultaneously carries the network effects of the protocol layer and the settlement demands of the AI era, this number is just the starting point.

Understanding this ultimate logic allows one to comprehend the current market behavior.

The temporary departure of capital is not "abandonment." If BTC's long-term target is $1 million per coin, would smart money choose to start buying at $120,000, or wait for a pullback to $80,000 or $50,000 to enter?

Every panic sell-off is a transfer of chips from weak hands to strong hands. Every narrative of "Bitcoin is dead" is the market repricing at a lower position.

Bitcoin's mission is not complete; it has just begun.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。