Confidence is more important than code: The 15-year-old warning from Bitcoin core contributors still echoes

Fifteen years ago, early Bitcoin core contributor Hal Finney stated that Bitcoin could not be easily copied or replaced, and this judgment still accurately aligns with the development logic of the cryptocurrency market today.

As early as May 30, 2011, Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney and Jon Tobey engaged in a debate on the Bitcointalk forum about "early speculators' returns."

The issue arose from a discussion on the Bitcointalk forum, where someone questioned whether it was fair that early participants had obtained large amounts of Bitcoin through mining or trading before most people were aware of the network.

In response, some market observers believed that early participants had profited excessively due to their first-mover advantage and that the blockchain protocol should be restarted to achieve fairness, but Finney directly rejected this idea.

Finney emphasized that Bitcoin's core value has never been the open-source code itself, but rather the user base, miners, infrastructure, and trust network built over many years. The code can be copied, but network effects and the trust foundation cannot be replicated.

Finney's argument is very clear: if Bitcoin can be easily replaced just because early users profited, then any alternative coin would face the same trust dilemma, because new coins will inevitably create new early beneficiaries.

If this logic is accepted, it would lead to an infinite cycle. Because subsequent users could always demand a restart for the same reason, and investors would never be able to be sure whether a new coin would be abandoned again, causing the trust foundation of the monetary network to completely collapse.

Moreover, Bitcoin has accumulated over many years to build a mature system supported by the world's largest hash power for security, a massive user base for liquidity, and a complete ecosystem for support.

Even if a new coin has better technology, it will inevitably face multiple cold start challenges in security, users, and ecosystem, which is a key reason why Bitcoin is difficult to surpass.

In summary, the foundation of a monetary network lies not only in code and technology but also in market confidence, industry development continuity, and resilience against arbitrary changes.

Therefore, the reason why Bitcoin is difficult to be simply restarted or replaced is entirely because once trust is damaged, it cannot be easily repaired solely through technical means.

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