The internet didn't start in "1991" it started in 1966 with ARPANET and it was so hard and expensive to use it would make using Bitcoin feel like using a toy.
The tone of this article gives me Krugman-on-internet vibes: "By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"
What's Bitcoin's excuse? Where is the technical limitation? Do we need nuclear fusion or 100Terabyte internet links for it to become usable? Do we need high speed data transmission to Mars?
The only thing standing in the way of Bitcoin is people finding compelling use cases for it in order to drive adoption. 10+ years and billions of dollars later it's still only useful as a tool for gambling and scams or to buy drugs and other illegal things online.
Also, ARPANET was already very useful by the mid-1970s (it was declared "operational" in 1975, 9 years after its inception). It was not the internet we know today of course, but it wasn't really meant to be. It was a defence project after all.
Existing currency solutions exist. There was no technology or infrastructure displaced by the (early) internet. No industries or governments (who realized they should feel) threatened by the internet.
The internet was backed by nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. Is that really a fair comparison? Just think if there was never a person in the room to say "but what will regulators say?" when cryptocurrency came up.
Finally the internet as we know is unrecognizable compared to its initial incarnation. The network protocols we now have are layers upon layers of innovation that were all required steps to allow YouTube and Netflix to operate. And many or these innovations are solutions to problems the early engineers hadn't even encountered yet.
> Do we need nuclear fusion or 100Terabyte internet links for it to become usable? Do we need high speed data transmission to Mars?
I think it's fair to say that there are unknown innovations in our future that will drive cryptocurrency adoption. I think it's unfair to insist that we must predict those right now or abandon all work on the technology.
This isn't an argument, it's a statement of faith. Innovations such as what? What innovations? What technology? What is missing from society today that would suddenly make bitcoin useful if it existed? What problem exists preventing people from using bitcoin that would be solved with a new invention?
I believe there are unknown innovations in our future that will drive everyone to adopt my toenail clippings as currency, is that a good enough argument for you to start investing in Anarion's Toenails LTD?
If you asked somebody in 1975, "What is preventing people from making mass utility out of ARPAnet?" they would say "a connection to it". Because that's literally all it took: access. When the internet went public in 1993, Ebay, Amazon, Netscape, Yahoo, Altavista, and Geocities were all founded and seeing substantial usage within months.
Come on. Apply that logic to literally anything else and see how that sounds.
>The internet was backed by nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. Is that really a fair comparison
The comparison was made by cryptozealots to begin with to justify the lack of results after many years of development and billions of dollars sunk into them. "How useful was the internet 3/5/7 years after its inception?!". Now that even this incredibly silly comparison fails to justify this waste of resources for so little results, cryptozealots have turned their back on it.
What's next, the timescale of the evolution of life on Earth? Who knows, maybe in a billion years Bitcoins will finally serve a purpose beyond buying cocaine online. HODL!
Bitcoin has already worked as a Store of Value. It can survive on this narrative without other use cases. I think of Bitcoin is a piece in the future money puzzle. We need to find the other missing pieces. One of the missing pieces is inflation. I wrote an article on this:
https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...
Block propagation? Non-shit 2nd layer? If all BTC transactions fees only cost .00001 USD to settle and that was consistent you think it wouldn't be more widely adopted? Fees are clearly a function of technical limitation.
Krugman's prediction is funny because it more or less explains why it's wrong right in the text. Krugman thinks Metcalfe's Law isn't true. But it is! Metcalfe's Law is just the Network Effect, which has already proved itself twice before on a global scale, plus Bob Metcalfe's successful self-branding.
By 1998 when he wrote that, the Internet is already the Network. Its competitors (both other networks using protocols like X.25 and "Walled gardens" like MSN) are dying or have been cheerfully integrated into the Internet exactly as the Network Effect would predict.
Coiners should actually be flattered that people think there's a way for Bitcoin to remain as relevant as amateur radio. There really might not be.
Honestly that's the one thing that I like about it, it hasn't been heavily monetized in a way that's brought in large actors. I don't know if you can say the same of bitcoin.