This is where it's good that the article did such a solid job of explaining the difference between a token and a ledger.
Any ledger which represents value in a purely abstract sense has to start at zero value— and any ledger which represents ownership of some concrete asset has to be kept aligned with reality, which makes it a nonstarter for a trustless, distributed system.
As an aside, the value of "one Bitcoin" is a bit of a distraction: market cap is the relevant measure, as long as we're using an existing currency as the unit of account, and the only market cap at which a distributed ledger could be relatively stable is many trillions of dollars.
So, for a trustless and decentralized ledger to become the next monetary framework through voluntary action, it has to start cheap, and persist for long enough to become expensive. There's simply no other way of doing it.
As for why Bitcoin, and not some other cybercoin: well, jury is out, isn't it? But money exhibits very strong network effects, and Bitcoin's first-mover advantage is considerable. A global marketplace doesn't have any reliable way to communicate other than price signals, and either BTC forms a Schelling point as the new baseline store of value, or it doesn't.
It hasn't yet, but it remains the most credible candidate. If you were a small central bank, nervous about the effect of 2020 USD and EUR printing on the buying power of your foreign exchange reserves, and you wanted to buy a little chunk of some distributed ledger "just in case", which one would you pick? Probably the first one you heard of, and the one with the largest market cap: Bitcoin and BTC, respectively.
Any ledger which represents value in a purely abstract sense has to start at zero value— and any ledger which represents ownership of some concrete asset has to be kept aligned with reality, which makes it a nonstarter for a trustless, distributed system.
As an aside, the value of "one Bitcoin" is a bit of a distraction: market cap is the relevant measure, as long as we're using an existing currency as the unit of account, and the only market cap at which a distributed ledger could be relatively stable is many trillions of dollars.
So, for a trustless and decentralized ledger to become the next monetary framework through voluntary action, it has to start cheap, and persist for long enough to become expensive. There's simply no other way of doing it.
As for why Bitcoin, and not some other cybercoin: well, jury is out, isn't it? But money exhibits very strong network effects, and Bitcoin's first-mover advantage is considerable. A global marketplace doesn't have any reliable way to communicate other than price signals, and either BTC forms a Schelling point as the new baseline store of value, or it doesn't.
It hasn't yet, but it remains the most credible candidate. If you were a small central bank, nervous about the effect of 2020 USD and EUR printing on the buying power of your foreign exchange reserves, and you wanted to buy a little chunk of some distributed ledger "just in case", which one would you pick? Probably the first one you heard of, and the one with the largest market cap: Bitcoin and BTC, respectively.