Both forms of payment have their advantages and drawbacks, and most people resort to a combination of the two in their economic transactions. Before the invention of Bitcoin, intermediated payments included (though were not limited to) all forms of digital payment. The nature of digital objects, since the inception of computers, is that they are not scarce. They can be reproduced endlessly, and as such it was impossible to make a currency out of them, because sending them will only duplicate them. Any form of electronic payment had to be carried out via an intermediary because of the danger of
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