Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, was in a dispute yesterday on Twitter with Zack Voell, a Blockstream employee, who claimed that Bitcoin was originally created as digital gold.

Replying to this claim, Buterin said the narrative has changed since 2011:

“I joined Bitcoin land in 2011 and back then I remember a clear vibe that Bitcoin was P2P cash first and gold second.”

Buterin’s opinion that BTC was initially designed to be peer-to-peer electronic coin was confirmed in Bitcoin whitepaper published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

Actually, the first line of the whitepaper reads:

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

Why the debate?

The dispute arises because of difference between P2P and gold coin. Although the gold is precious and valuable for daily transactions, it cannot be easily distributed or separated and can be used for micropayment unless a giant centralized network manages it. Accordingly, this scenario involves higher transaction fees.

On the other hand, the P2P coin is just as it looks like, which means that the currency can be exchanged by two people without an intermediary.

Bitcoin records largest transaction fees

Today, Bitcoin recorded the highest fees in the crypto space. The average transaction fees reached $0.40 on 1 March, and rose to $1.76 on 20 March, Bitinfocharts showed.

Over the last 24 hours, the average transaction fees ranged between 617% and 645,900% compared to other cryptocurrencies, especially ETH and XRP.

However, Bitcoinists accept such higher levels and consider them a manifestation of the network’s high security.

Similarly, Buterin accepts the fact of Bitcoin high fees, suggesting BTC use case has been established, so people should adopt a different coin for other use cases:

“It was a controversial pivot executed without many participants’ consent. It’s certainly reasonable to be upset about it, though yes, now the pivot has happened. If you don’t like it, you should just use one of the other blockchains whose community expresses different values.”

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