Given that, blockchain may be in a similar state to the early-middle Internet. It's out there, you can play with it, it's neat and seems useful even if for most people that practical purpose is elusive. Maybe someone has yet to create the Netscape that turns it into a must-have tech, but it might be happening as we speak.
(Edit: TCP/IP came out in 1983, and HTTP in 1990. In 1995, the year of the Netscape IPO and when everyone "knew" the web was a big deal, there were 40 million Internet users. Now there are about 32 million Bitcoin wallets. I think some of the other answers are remembering things a bit later in time, or more colored by hindsight.)
On the other hand, quantum is much farther out. The percentage of people who have used a quantum computer at all is minuscule. When it does become useful, it may be too expensive to see mass adoption for decades.
Wow, what a throwback in time! I had completely forgotten that. Thanks for the sweet memories!
Also, I agree with your take. One key difference re. cryptocurrencies might be legal context however. Internet wasn't stepping on governments toes, more like disruption of the telco sector (which was already focused on emerging mobile at the time, a decade prior to smartphones). I'm not so sure the road is wide open for alternative currencies, because central banks and, oh, stability of the economy etc. It's a much tougher sell.
Blockchain itself however, the tech, may have killer-apps and uses — either as an evolution of currencies, or decoupled entirely from 'currency' (trustless secured distributed databases may fit many needs IMHO, notably for social purposes like contracts or unhackable communication).
The immediate benefits of the Internet were obvious, and much more interesting than any theoretical "take over the world" growth story. People were willing to tackle slow connections, bad UIs and device configuration hell so that they could get chatting on IRC or posting on Usenet or downloading files from weird/shady FTP servers.
With cryptocurrency, there's nothing new or interesting you can actually do, no meaningful human connections to be made. It's just speculating on a made-up growth story, like penny stocks you can trade 24/7 — but we already had penny stocks and boiler room scams.
You really should look into that tech (Blockchain, DLT) a bit deeper. This sounds exactly like the "It's just a toy it's never gonna change the world." that people said about literally anything that changed the world. Yet that toy is here since 10+ years and it's not going away anytime soon. (Not talking about Bitcoin that could still end anyday)
The speculation/trading/scams etc. are the "kids" playing with the toy. One day value will move like data and people will question why it took so long to implement this. Exchanging data for value will be normal and young people will ask how it ever could work without that. Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data. The internet really works backwards because we do not yet have the "internet of value". The whole internet runs on ads instead.
As always when it comes to this topic I suggest David Schwartz's speak at We are Developers - World Congress Berlin https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI
How is this different from using a credit card to e.g. purchase a streaming movie? Is it just more seamless? Or does the fact that there isn't a centralized bank behind the transaction somehow significant for the consumer or business?
(I'm really just trying to understand this btw)
> Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data.
If I understand correctly, the current situation is that there are free services where you can upload/insert data, free services where you can download/consume—and there are paid services for both too.
Could you elaborate on what the difference would be there? Anyone who creates/hosts content does so for free, and the people who consume it always pay?
1994 Internet let you talk to people and exchange information around the world — things that you couldn’t do before.
2019 cryptocurrency lets you pay for something, sort of, not really, but will be very clean one day — never mind that millions are already paying for things and sending money because “it’s a dumpster fire”.
You could. There were phones and snail mail after all, weren't there?
They were slow an expensive just like wire transfers between US and EU bank accounts are: 2-3 workdays and a $35-45 fee to move around a few bytes in existing financial messaging systems. Pure madness.
In Europe, transfers between all banks are becoming instantaneous starting Jan 2020: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...
The cost is pennies.
No need for a crypto-anything solution.
Also a Tx taking hours and costing 25 bucks is absolutely not going to allow the Internet of Value to show it's possibilities. It may be acceptable to buy something and let it be ship to you. but what about services? instant services how could they be paid with such a system.
Watch the youtube video linked above if you want to get an idea of the IoV. It's on a completely different scale. Value streaming a fraction of a cent at a time. Instant and basically free.
They even provide a nice built-in feature called "chargeback" in case the service isn't what I expected. Cryptocurrencies don't seem to care about that part of customer experience at all.
(Btw, when you say "just watch this YouTube video about an amazing business opportunity", what I hear is: "I believe you're a sucker".)
>Cryptocurrencies don't seem to care about that part of customer experience at all.
The idea which again is described in the video which you don't want to watch makes "chargebacks" something you do not need in many cases. The data/value streaming just stops if one side stops hence you don't need any agreement or contract. You pay for what you get and if you stop paying the other will stop as well. Some services obviously don't work that way and there will always be use for a third party middleman who takes the risk, guaranties service/money for both sides. The idea isn't to destroy all the business agreements that exists and then start them all again but use some fancy new way to pay each-other that does the exact same thing just differently. The idea is that a whole new sector of services will become possible because of that new tech.
I don't feel the need to convince you into anything I just think you aren't aware of the fundamental changes the new tech can bring because all you saw is Bitcoin. I suggested the video purely because he explains the vision of the IoV very accurate. He's not gonna tell you to buy shitcoin XY or trow money into companies that try to build stuff with that new tech. If you watch it and think that this all will never happen, that's fine who knows. At least we talk about the same Idea then.
Here is the link again https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI Should be quite interesting for anyone in the tech/IT space even if one completely disagrees with his vision.
I receive a lot of payments from the US and I have never seen a wire transfer that takes less than a few days to arrive. This is consistent with the info given on Bank of America's website: the fee is $35 when sending foreign currency, $45 when sending USD, time 1-2 workdays. https://www.bankofamerica.com/foreign-exchange/wire-transfer... Chase: fee $40, time 3-5 workdays. https://www.chase.com/digital/wire-transfer
Even $25 for that is absolutely insane price, as instantaneous and free transfers within the European SEPA system demonstrate. Nothing comparable to SEPA exists for dealing with rest of the world. Express delivery services like Fedex deliver physical items faster from the US to Europe than payments move over digital channels.
The situation is even worse for businesses that deal internationally with larger sums of money and may have to take significant hits from currency fluctuations during slow transactions. There are billions to be saved annually with systems like RippleNet (xRapid).
Internetworking realized the vast potential of all the computers in the world. They could do so much more if talking to each other.
Crypto via "proof of work" takes all the unused computing capacity everywhere and creates an incentive to waste it.
What it seems like to me is a hybrid virus that uses both human minds and machines to spread and suck up resources.
You just made a string of assertions without explanation, so why do you think these things?
Yes there are people telling that PoW and Bitcoin is the best and all other systems are flawed. They are called Bitcoin Maxis, their arguments usefully fall flat when you apply logic. They don't even agree with each other about which Bitcoin is the real Bitcoin.
>BTC is still the most successful cryptocurrency
How do you measure success of a cryptocurrency? Also being the first gives huge advantage for "success". Like Whatsapp which is probably the most successful instant messenger but does that mean it's the best? It takes time to dethrone something like Whatsapp or Bitcoin just having the better tech isn't enough to instantly make everyone switch.
>You just made a string of assertions without explanation, so why do you think these things?
You have any specific question? I don't really know what I should explain. If you are interested in alternatives to PoW you should lookup XRPL Consensus (Federated Byzantine agreement) a variant of this is also uses by the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Then there is PoS which is the most known alternative. DPoS is building on top of that idea. Then there is PoWeight, Tangle, Hashgraph and some other less popular and/or not (yet) working ideas/theories.
For the consumer, streaming value doesn't need any kind of subscription. It doesn't even require a contract. You do not need to stream from netflix because that's what you already have an pay for monthly. You pay whoever gives you what you want. It's kinda like if you could use cash without the obvious downsides of physically moving coins and with the ability to split it in whatever fraction you'd like. Please watch the youtube video. He explains this way better than I could. It goes down to the level of IP data packages. Something similar could be made (is being made) with value.
>If I understand correctly, the current situation is that there are free services where you can upload/insert data, free services where you can download/consume—and there are paid services for both too.
Most of the content people access on the internet is "free" as in no need to pay for it other than pay for the internet access. Same is also true for "inserting" as in upload it somewhere. However physically inserting it (hosting) isn't free even if you find a free host it's just paid by someone else. Hence hosting (inserting) costs while pulling is mostly free. Every other market works exactly the opposite way. You can't get an apple for free at any store. There is no way someone else is gonna pay the apple for you if you just look at some ads.
If the internet would work more like a store, some people would insert data and other people would access/download and they would pay for that directly not let someone else pay in exchange for horrible userexperiences, horrible privacy, huge additional traffic waste etc. All of that could really only turn successful because data started moving freely over the internet and it grew exponentially while moving value basically has not changed at all.
Instead of cashing the debt out you can just send that debt to someone else. This is called transaction but as you already know there is nothing to move. It just adjust balances of debt. You tell the bank that a part of what they owe you should now be owed by someone else. If its someone is using the same bank then this is super simple. If he is form another bank the 2 Banks must work together to update the balances over 2 systems. If the 2 Banks do not have any relationship with each-other then they need to find corresponding banks and create a chain of trusted relationships to move that debt around. This is why Tx from account to account of the same banks is super simple fast and cheap/free but the further you go the longer it takes and the more Banks in between want some kind of fee for the service. It comes to the point where you simply can't make a transaction anymore because either the fees are way to high or there just isn't a bank to bank to bank chain that could move the debt. Or of course there are billions of people who do not have a bank. There are payment companies who fill in that gap where you can input a bank transaction (debt) and they deliver cash etc. It's sill expensive and slow in most cases and it absolutely does not work with small value(debt) Tx. There is no way to send 1USD from USA to Mexico for an acceptable fee and in an acceptable time.
If you could send value instead you could avoid literally all these problems. Value is value everywhere it doesn't matter where you send it from and where you send it to. There is no need for cooperating banks. It's like if you could pay cash but globally (without the different currencies of course because value is currency independent). Imagine if value would be represented by gold. I buy gold worth 1 USD and send it anywhere in the world and the person who gets it sells it for his local currency. Now replace the gold with crypto because gold can not be send over the internet but cryptos can. Everywhere, very fast/cheap (not with BTC) and without any chain of trusted entities in between the endpoints.
It's also final unlike debt Tx which can be reversed by the banks and payment provider in between. Which is bad for the endpoints but also for the corresponding bank chains since they all have to take the risk of reversed Tx which leads to higher fees.
You're proposing a scenario in which all banks collapse and FDIC insurance fails, but also one in which my computer continues to be a productive member of the bitcoin network and my neighbor will sell me access to his bunker for 3 bitcoins. And my ISP won't be upset that I can't pay them in USD.
If I was worried about the collapse, I think I'd want to store my money in something with real value, not imaginary internet coins that none of my neighbors have ever heard of. Maybe gold, to be cliche. Canned food?
You can trust your bank you choose the one you want to trust. But what about a companies who hav to deal with foreign banks or what about banks who have to deal with other banks. what if the best choice is still bad and should not be trusted. Value Tx can solve this because they are trust less.
In terms of "who pays," well, I doubt people who currently don't pay will somehow decide to pay while free services remain available (even if at the cost of getting targeted ads/loss of privacy). If anything, right to be targeted is the real "value" that is being (and presumably will continue to be) exchanged.
If you ever watch "The Graduate" and the guy gives the college grad advice to go into "plastics" because it's the next big thing, that's computers in the 80's and the Internet in the 90's.
People were quick to latch on to the web because it facilitated things they really wanted to do like keep in touch with friends and buy things easily. Cryptocurrency doesn't do that for most of the population. PC's were a hobbyist thing at home and more akin to cryptocurrency, but at the same time they were completely taking over how business operated.
The web had a similar impact on small businesses too. Having a web presence exposed small companies to a much larger customer base than they could have ever hoped for before.
Cryptocurrency doesn't really solve real-world problems like this. Most people are perfectly fine using traditional currency and wouldn't see any benefit to replacing that with Bitcoin, et al.
Edit: I think the most recent change that you might have been around for was the introduction of the iPhone and the smart phones that followed. Huge paradigm shift for the general population.
1991 - I am 8 years old and am learning to program BASIC on a Vic-20
1992 - My family gets an XT-class machine (640kB of RAM!)
1993 - NCSA Mosaic is released.
1994 - An Internet Cafe opens in my small town of 35,000. Using library books, I manage to find cool software to download onto 5 1/4" floppies and bring home.
1995 - I get my first C compiler (Power C) and start programming my own games (still on my XT). I start spending time at a local LAN gaming place, wishing for a better computer.
1997 - my family gets a Pentium 133, dial-up Internet, and shortly thereafter I discover Linux. I also build a 386 from parts that I scrounge up.
1999 - I get a job working at the LAN shop as a tech. The company has shifted to being a PC Hardware and repair shop.
2000 - I get 1.5mbit DSL at home, build my own Celeron 433, and dive way deeper into programming.
Crypto-currency first showed up around, what, 2010 or so? In those 9 years, I don't think there's been anywhere near the kind of (pardon the pun) quantum leap we had technology- and utility-wise in the 90s.
The other thing is that governments are greatly hindering growth. Enterprises really want to get involved but are forced to take it slow and be careful of all their actions for fear of legal reprocussions. Of course governments aren't happy and don't want to support it because it puts government currency at risk, as noted by US representatives.
Need Magazine articles and TV shows at the time were hyping the internet and the web. I think they were about right. Mainstream media didn’t really catch on until the 00s.
I was anticipating a complete revolution that would change everything. I remember repeatedly telling my parents how it was going to change the world. They weren’t dismissive but also didn’t think it was really going to be something for them. Eventually they relented and I got a modem - so I could surf the small number of websites available.
In retrospect I was incorrect in that it has changed everything more than I imagined it would. I didn’t see mobile phones as the main access point, for example.
As for the comparison with crypto and quantum, only quantum has the potential to make a comparable impact on our lives and it would likely be totally different in that quantum will be indirectly impactful, at least for the foreseeable future, whereas the internet was and is most impactful when actually used by the individual. It feels a bit silly to compare crypto (a clever but relatively simple idea for electronic currency that is currently producing a lot of CO2 and suffers from other huge problems) vs quantum computing (a revolutionary technology that has and will require major breakthroughs in theoretical physical and engineering, vast sums of investment and some of the smartest minds working for generations to enable previously unrealisable control of the physical word and paradigm-shifting computation). Real quantum is also a long way off.
If you want a more near-term tech that I am as excited about now as I was about the internet in the 90s, it is without a doubt VR. It’s going to change everything.
Computers were very much about creativity and doing work.
I used an Apple Macintosh in 89/90 to access Usenet and it was a whole other world and the flood of information that came with the web took it to another level.
Crypto/Quantum don't really have the same impact for the average person. Quantum is just different hardware to do the same thing (though make some calculations feasible to execute in hours/minutes rather than the users lifetime)
Crypto will probably stay niche like other alternate payment methods like barter cards or the technology becomes part of the underlying mainstream infrastructure that no one sees along with all those billions of lines of COBOL.