Opinion: BTC is now not only 'digital gold', but also a part of the global financial infrastructure.

PANews reported on November 1st that as BTC celebrates its 16th anniversary of the White Paper release, Rena Shah of Trust Machines pointed out that BTC is now not just ‘digital gold’ but a core part of the global financial infrastructure. By 2024, the BTC ecosystem will reach a crucial turning point, including the expansion of Layer 2, the widespread adoption of Ordinals, and the accelerated entry of institutions. The BTC ETF promoted by financial giants such as BlackRock has attracted over $1.5 billion in capital inflows, marking widespread recognition of BTC within the TradFi system. At the same time, Layer 2 networks such as Lightning and Stacks’ sBTC protocol bring Decentralization Liquidity and stronger scalability, further integrating BTC into Decentralized Finance and TradFi systems. Innovations such as BitVM and OPCat’s Programmability features are also enhancing BTC’s application potential, expanding its use cases in Smart Contract and digital identity. Shah believes that the future development direction of BTC lies in its core underlying structure as Decentralized Finance, facing the influx of institutional capital, BTC’s Decentralization principle still needs to be upheld.