By Marko Vidrih on The CapitalOn April 1, Blockstream Bitcoin developer Zack Voell and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin entered into a discussion about Bitcoin:@Daniel_Jourdan @VitalikButerin Nope, digital gold was, is, and will be bitcoin's narrative. — @zackvoellButerin also confirmed his opinion by referring to the whitepaper of Bitcoin, written by Satoshi Nakamoto, which states that bitcoin is a p2p cash for direct online payments, which also allows you to bypass financial institutions.Why are digital gold discussions important?Gold can be considered as a means of mutual settlement of transactions due to the fact that it is scarce. But at the same time, it is more difficult to transfer and share, as well as to use it for micropayments, unless giant banking networks or special payment servers do this. This is a scenario in which high transaction fees inevitably arise.At the same time, p2p cash is exactly what comes to the aid in bilateral transactions and excludes intermediaries between the parties.Commissions in Bitcoin and other networksToday, bitcoin transaction fees have again become the highest in the crypto industry. On March 1, the average transaction fee was $0.40. On March 20, the average commission increased to $1.76 (data from Bitinfocharts).Over the past 24 hours, the average commission for bitcoin transactions turned out to be 617% — 645% higher than in other cryptocurrencies (than in ethereum and XRP, respectively).Bitcoin proponents understand that such commissions are necessary to maintain miners that ensure network security in both small and large transactions.Buterin said on this subject:@Rjected @zackvoell @Daniel_Jourdan It was a controversial pivot executed without many participants' consent. It's certainly reasonable to be upset about it, though yes, now the pivot has happened, and if you don't like it you should just use one of the other blockchains whose community expresses different values. — @VitalikButerinAuthor: Marko VidrihFeatured image credit: U.TodayFintech MarksThe Capitalhttps://medium.com/media/3b6b127891c5c8711ad105e61d6cc81f/hrefVitalik Buterin on Digital Gold and p2p Funds for Payments was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.