> Bitcoin has unquestionably provided folks looking to work outside traditional financial systems (and governance) value. You can see it in the black market use

> Bitcoin has unquestionably provided folks looking to work outside traditional financial systems (and governance) value. You can see it in the black market use and its use in ransoming everything from Game of Thrones to hospital records. It was used this way almost from day one. Yes, I covered that when I said the blockchain gave us bitcoin, and that's all it's done as far as unique value. > Also, the use of smartphones as this "instant remote communication" doesn't begin to describe where the technology led, which was to the smartphone which is some type of multimedia device capable of far more than its initial concept. So what? My point is that "instant remote communication" was a communication revolution that did not need to hunt for use-cases, the technology itself was inherently useful and it developed into something more because its ubiquity (a result of its near universal utility and appeal) created a market for competition between selling this device that literally everyone wanted. The blockchain is not at all comparable to this. Most people can't even understand what the blockchain is (and that includes many technical people) and those who can at least understand what the blockchain does mostly come to the conclusion that they don't really have a use case for it (including the large majority of enthusiasts who don't do more than shuffle bits around between arbitrarily delimited distributed spreadsheets). > you don't make a stronger point by downplaying the difference in value between when cellphone launched and what cell phone technology offers today. You're incorrect. The two have nothing to do with eachother. "Smart devices" like palm-pilots existed for a long time but never took off because most people couldn't justify the purchase (since it really didn't do much for them). Fast forward to a time when everyone is already carrying around portable network computers because... and here it is again... they were clearly useful in their communication capability... it was a clever but natural opportunity to replace these "dumb phones" with computing devices that resemble computer systems that were already validated by the desktop market.