Bitcoin has all the benefits of every type of money that has ever existed with none of the draw backs of any.

There are two types of money that have ever existed.

Ledger money and bearer money.

Ledger money is money that exists by way of publicly recording transactions of who owes what to whom. An example of ledger money would be rai stones used on the island of Yap or a cave wall enscribed with a tally of favors owed and paid off.

Bearer money is money that exists in the form of a commodity that can be held privately and that has universally recognised utility for storing value and paying out value society wide. An example of bearer money would be gold coins, cigarettes used in a prison environment, or a fiat balance in a bank account.

Ledger money cannot be held privately and bearer money is not recorded publicly.

The main downside of ledger money is that you need to trust a corruptible authority figure to maintan the accuracy and integrity of the public ledger. The main downside of bearer money is that you cannot transparently audit the legitimacy of transactions (ie counterfeiting) or the accuracy of the total supply (ie inflation).

Bitcoin has all the benefits of ledger money as it is publicly recorded and audited by all users making the system transparent all while achieving this without a corruptible authority figure. And it achieves this feat by simultaneoulsy having all the benefits of bearer money where only the users of the bearer instrument can update the public ledger.

Bitcoin is essentially ledger money where only the holders of the native asset are entitled to update the ledger instead of a corruptible and fallible authority figure.

On the flip side a fiat bank balance is the opposite. It is bearer money with none of the benefits of bearer money because you are still trusting a corruptible and fallible authority figure to maintain the integrity of your private transactions and the total supply of money.

So while bitcoin is the best of both ledger and bearer money, fiat is bearer money with all the draw backs of ledger money.

Bitcoin is the first money in human history that is both ledger money and bearer money simultaneously. It has all the benefits of ledger money with none of the draw backs and it has all the benefits of bearer money with none of the draw backs, making it superior to all forms of money that came before it.