Current discussions about the future of cryptocurrency often focus on blockchain technology. However, we believe the true future lies in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), with blockchain merely solving the problem of liquidity. Its core value lies in providing transparent “trust code.” Bitcoin is not simply a blockchain application, but a pioneering example of CAS in the digital world, whose internal mechanisms foreshadow the future direction of cryptocurrency.
Blockchain technology enhances the liquidity of digital assets through distributed ledgers and consensus mechanisms, and builds trust through transparency. Public chains like BSC and TRON are typical applications in solving liquidity. However, blockchain is essentially a centralized trust transfer and is difficult to directly map individual rights and perceive complex reality.
Bitcoin’s uniqueness lies in its emergence as a CAS, composed of three key elements: the UTXO model, P/NP asymmetric perception of reality, and the consensus ledger. The UTXO model achieves a direct mapping between digital assets and individual rights, truly embodying individual sovereignty. Specifically, PoW miners perform complex distributed computations in the network to find a Nonce value that meets the difficulty target (an NP problem), a computation-intensive process requiring significant electricity. Meanwhile, nodes in the consensus ledger network only need to simply verify whether the submitted Nonce is valid and whether transaction signatures are correct (a P problem), which can be completed in polynomial time. This computational asymmetry allows the Bitcoin network to perceive and confirm real-world transactions in a unique way. Behind this lies the injection of real electrical energy into the distributed network, forming a closed loop of energy conservation through energy consumption and verification, ensuring the immutability of transactions and anchoring of value. The consensus ledger acts as a centralized notary of trust code, recording and verifying transactions to achieve liquidity and transparency.
Therefore, emerging fields such as DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), DID (Decentralized Identity), and GameFi should actively explore the direction of implementing CAS. They need to draw inspiration from Bitcoin’s innovations in UTXO mapping to individual sovereignty, P/NP asymmetric perception of reality, and building trust through the consensus ledger, in order to construct human-machine symbiotic systems that can perceive broader real-world information and more directly protect individual rights. Only in this way can cryptocurrency break through the current framework of DeFi and truly penetrate all aspects of the real economy and digital life, creating more diverse and valuable application scenarios. Blockchain is only one component of CAS, but the future vision of cryptocurrency based on CAS will be far more expansive.
