The Tell of the Proprietary First Movers

This is one of those articles that uses a lot of phrases that sound like they mean something -- "the tell" "proprietary" "killer app" "decentralized" -- but this entire post is almost completely devoid of content.

Email, invented in the early 1970's at the latest, was something that was predicted by the "first movers" AOL and CompuServe? People want to have decentralized banking, but where you can send money to/from anyone? So presumably they would have to invent interoperability standards like SWIFT, ACH, and so on? But those already exist. And there isn't a global central bank, and banking is transnational already. And the middle eastern informal money exchanges have been going on for centuries. And there are credit unions. Also, Paypal exists. Was that the "proprietary" money exchange solution that is the "tell" for the future? Isn't it 15 years old? Wait the "proprietary tell" is Bitcoin?

So many questions. So much obfuscation. This reminds me of the dack.com era internet to be honest.

Of course, email wasn't regulated so it was legal to connect AOL and Compuserve to SMTP. If corrupt developing countries allow their banking systems to connect to Bitcoin at all, I expect the fees will be just as high as Western Union is today. Crypto-hawala may be more promising.

Wouldn't Paypal be the first proprietary mover of sending money over IP, and Bitcoin being like SMTP/POP/IMAP/whatever? Or maybe I misunderstood something