Bitcoin is considered to be too sacred when it comes to critisism in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin minimalism has developed a cult culture where anything that comes remotely close to taking away the dominant position from bitcoins in cryptocurrency is hit with criticism. While I don’t disagree with the BTC dominance, it is hurting the growth of ecosystem. Altcoins also known as shit coins have diluted the space but they’ve a reason to exist.
My involved in the industry span over 7 years & have witness bitcoin narrative being sold shifting from transfer of value to store of value. Ethereum was at one time referred to as bitcoin 2.0 though the function & use case was totally different. As much as I love bitcoin, matter of fact is that bitcoin wont’ work with security tokens & there has to be a different chain to accommodate this use case.
Here are few of the reasons why Security tokens have a different trajectory from bitcoins.
- Decentralization
Bitcoin is decentralized & there isn’t any restriction on who can own, transfer or mine bitcoin. There is absolutely no KYC or filter to censor any one. With STs, there is a set of regulation that gets tagged along & impossible to be imposed with bitcoins. If some thing can’t be audited & controlled, it won’t fly with regulations.
- Perception Issues
Bitcoin till date have kind of stigma attached to that which has refrained multiple brand names and status quo to stay away due to additional risk that may have a bad reward/risk ratio in their books. For STs, blockchain should come clean with no prior baggage
- Non-Recoverable
There is a sizeable quantity of bitcoin that are lost forever due to one reason or another. Similarly there has been incidents of hack or private keys loss. In traditional world, if you lose your certificate you can get a duplicate, but in blockchain if it’s gone once, it’s gone forever. STs must have a mechanism to reverse & fix these transactions
- Limited Functionality
Reason why Bitcoin is now referred to as storage of value is due to limited functionality. There is very little which you can do with your bitcoins. Yes there has been forks to improve some of the desired features or sidechains, but overall it’s like running a bullet train on existing track. You’re losing efficiency. STs need creative functionalities which will need an entirely new chain
- Lack of KYC
With STs every stakeholder is identified, and this process is enforced. With BTC that’s not possible and there isn’t any discrimination between any of the participants.
This list isn’t exhaustive but just gives a rough overview why there would be a new chain(s) that will serve the next layer of Security tokens. Once this has been realized among the industry, there would be more R&D into developing those protocols.