Comment by MacsHeadroom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MacsHeadroom | Hacker News Reader

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Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin). It took nearly all of those 184 years to get to a point where a majority of people had a regular use for telecommunications.

Calling it "tech" misleadingly groups it with a category of things which largely tie into existing "tech" in every obvious and specific ways; most of which were created very recently.

This is the wrong way to think about "tech" as fundamental as one which gives every person 'the ability to transfer real world value over photons in the form of IP packets', which is the essence of Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency generally). A better comparison for Bitcoin is something like telecommunications.

Banking on regular use cases in the near term is probably a bad idea. But what is far worse is dismissing, much less prematurely regulating or banning, something fundamentally comparable to the advent of telecommunications.

> Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin).

Western Union started doing wire transfers in 1872.

Western Union doesn't transfer value, it creates and settles credit.

What is the difference?

It creates risk and slows things down because you can’t trust your counterparties

So it is transferring value just somewhat different?

Not exactly. Credit creation creates an asset and a liability. The creation of credit facilitates the ability to create liabilities in excess of the underlying asset (e.g fractional reserve banking).

By introducing the ability to transfer a scarce asset globally you resolve the requirement for credit, as no one ever needs to redeem.

Credit is a hack, Bitcoin is the fix.

That still sounds like you are transferring value just in different ways.

You could entrust a messenger to deliver a message long before electronic telecommunications.

But a trusted mail carrier and direct end-to-end encrypted video calls from/to anywhere on the planet are not even in the same ballpark. Trusted wire transfers and trustless peer-to-peer value settlement are potentially just as dissimilar.

I don't think it will take nearly 200 years for the scale of the difference to be as substantial as the difference pre-victorian mail and modern video calls. But it will take substantially longer than 13 years, that is pretty clear.

Even still, it is obvious to me (and many others) that this eventual future is inevitable-- and no amount of price fluctuation, scamming, or environmental concerns can shake that belief because these things simply don't even remotely address the core of what a foundational change this "tech" is in any way.

> You could entrust a messenger to deliver a message long before electronic telecommunications.

That is not what a wire transfer is.

> I don't think it will take nearly 200 years for the scale of the difference to be as substantial as the difference pre-victorian mail and modern video calls. But it will take substantially longer than 13 years, that is pretty clear.

The first electronic value transfer happened somewhere around 1872 so it is already at 150 years which is far nearer to 200 than to 13.

> Even still, it is obvious to me (and many others) that this eventual future is inevitable-- and no amount of price fluctuation, scamming, or environmental concerns can shake that belief because these things simply don't even remotely address the core of what a foundational change this "tech" is in any way.

It would be nice to hear arguments on this topic than proclamations of belief.

EDIT:

Just noticed that in your first post you said:

> It took nearly all of those 184 years to get to a point where a majority of people had a regular use for telecommunications.

At first I read it as it took 184 years for telecommunications to become widely available, which would be a reasonable comment. Your claim isn't reasonable since even far before 1832 majority of people had a regular use for telecommunications but the technology wasn't there. Bitcoin technology is here but majority of people have no use for it.

> That is not what a wire transfer is.

I didn't say it was a wire transfer. I said it was a mail carrier and made an analogy. You seem to have misread this part and misinterpreted my entire reply, as the rest of your comment makes little sense as a response.

> The first electronic value transfer happened somewhere around 1872

No, wire transfers are data, not value, transfers. The humans and institutions on either end of the data transfered "over the wire" are then entrusted to transfer yet more data to a central bank which eventually completes a physical value transfer of assets to perform settlement of the balance.

Central banks move around ships filled with gold and other precious assets-- that is the value transfer. Direct non-physical electronic value transfer, i.e. settlement, did not happen until 2013.

until 2009*

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