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Comment by inteleng | Hacker News Reader

Just because something new-ish exists doesn't mean it's the root of something society-changing. Bitcoin might be a steam engine.

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> Bitcoin might be a steam engine.

I think it's fairly safe to say that steam engines revolutionised society (the industrial revolution and all that), arguably more so than those engines that replaced it.

Sure. But they never worked on airplanes, and they're only a distant ancestor to the jet and rocket engine. You don't see people investing in steam engines these days.

> Just because something new-ish exists doesn't mean it's the root of something society-changing. Bitcoin might be a steam engine.

this is a great comment, i can interpret it at least two entirely different ways.

by "might be a steam engine" do you mean that bitcoin might be one of the key drivers of a major process of economic/industrial revolution?

I mean it might be completely obsolete in five years. It has caused a great deal of innovation, even if much of that doesn't come to fruition.

Bitcoins are tulips.

Or Cabbage Patch dolls

Cabbage Patch Kids and tulips wear out and disintegrate like any other organic matter. We will be lucky if bitcoin wallets from a decade ago are able to be cracked a thousand years from now.

How original. I imagine you can show how the tulip craze fomented great innovation in the floristry field, and spawned a few actually good products despite being inherently misguided?

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