At TechCrunch Disrupt in September, a panel brought together three voices to examine Bitcoin's future. Xapo CEO Wences Casares, BTCC head Bobby Lee, and New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper sat do
At TechCrunch Disrupt in September, a panel brought together three voices to examine Bitcoin's future. Xapo CEO Wences Casares, BTCC head Bobby Lee, and New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper sat down to debate whether Bitcoin would endure or fade as banks and other players built alternatives.
Popper opened with a sharp question about what Bitcoin's role might be. Does it resemble TCP/IP, the foundational internet protocol that enabled everything built on top of it, or DARPANET, the predecessor that got superseded? "If it succeeds, is it like the Internet or is it like DARPANET?" Popper asked. "That's the big question. Is it the predecessor to the thing that matters or is it the thing that matters? People are going to find ways to use blockchain technology in exciting ways. The question is: Are they going to use Bitcoin's decentralized spreadsheet or a different spreadsheet that they or somebody else builds?"
The core disagreement centered on a scenario many in finance contemplated: banks building their own blockchains without Bitcoin. Popper sketched out how multiple banks could operate a shared ledger, offering more resilience than today's infrastructure. Casares objected. He contended that permissioned blockchains controlled by banks lack novelty. "That's called a private database, and it has existed for a long time," Casares said. "What's new about Bitcoin is that it's a decentralized, trustless ledger. The second you do it yourself it's called a private database, and they have existed for a very long time. There's nothing revolutionary about that." Even if banks ran the ledger together, Casares saw minor progress at best. "Instead of running a database yourself, you run it in a joint venture with others. It's a slight innovation, but I think it has nothing to do with a blockchain."
Bobby Lee brought another dimension to the debate: access and participation. "The difference is that in the existing banking system and Visa — the so-called private ledger — is the rest of us cannot elect to join the party," Lee said. "It's a boy's club. Whereas with Bitcoin, anyone can join and become a participant within the ledger." This permissionless architecture separates Bitcoin from traditional finance. No one fills out applications for wallet access or needs authorization from any authority. Developers building on Bitcoin also operate without asking permission from corporations or governments.
The panelists addressed one widespread contradiction in finance: bankers who expressed enthusiasm for blockchain technology while dismissing Bitcoin. Casares saw this as incoherent. He compared it to praising the browser while rejecting the internet. "If you're a Visa executive, Bank of America executive, or Wells Fargo executive, it has become fashionable to say, 'I really like the blockchain, but I'm not interested in bitcoin,'" Casares said. "That's the equivalent of saying, 'I really like the browser, but I don't like the Internet.' Those people don't want to be the ones who didn't see the Internet coming. They want to say something nice about it without saying something nice about it. They don't realize that the blockchain does not work without bitcoin. It's the first decentralized, trustless database because miners maintain it, and miners do so because they get paid in bitcoin. Even though there are many nice use cases on top of that, none of them work without the miners being paid with bitcoin."
Whether permissioned and permissionless blockchains coexist over time remains uncertain. But the term blockchain itself deserves scrutiny when applied to bank-run ledgers, a question separate from the broader debate. For now, one constant stands: demand exists for a decentralized system that resists censorship and control, one that allows people to transact across borders and regions without seeking permission from any intermediary.
