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I'm surprised the author didn't complete the analogy -- if Bitcoin and ham radio are both "clunky and old-fangled," what was the internet at its inception? The

by amasad 6y ago

I'm surprised the author didn't complete the analogy -- if Bitcoin and ham radio are both "clunky and old-fangled," what was the internet at its inception? 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"

vvanders 6y ago
Except that ham radio has been around for much longer(1909!) and hasn't exploded like the internet. 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.
simias 6y ago
It's pretty easy to see why ARPANET took a while to develop and turn into the internet we know today. Youtube didn't exist in the 1960's not because people though that streaming video was a dumb idea but rather because it was simply technically impossible to do at that time. In order for the internet to develop it required massive progress in hardware and infrastructure. To this day many places in rich countries still have crappy internet access. 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.
- j2kun 6y ago
  Didn't Doug Engelbart do video streaming in the 60's?
  - dole 6y ago
    ob https://m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
  - justin_ 6y ago
    The video streaming technology used in NLS was based on analog CRT television technologies. Later, videoconferencing was done digitally over dedicated phone connections/calls. It took a while before doing real-time video over the packet-switched internet became feasible.
- dnprock 6y ago
  > What's Bitcoin's excuse? 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-the-world.html https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...
- ballenf 6y ago
  > What's Bitcoin's excuse? 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.
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    > I think it's fair to say that there are unknown innovations in our future that will drive cryptocurrency adoption 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.
  - simias 6y ago
    So basically you're saying that cryptocurrencies don't work currently because there are established solutions that already solve the problem it attempts to solve but it's totally going to work eventually due to unknown unknowns and it's unfair to point that out somehow? 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!
- lmpostor 6y ago
  >What's Bitcoin's excuse? Where is the technical limitation? 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.
noxer 6y ago
If Bitcoin is ham radio the ILP (Interledger Protocol) is arguably "the internet" then. ILP is for money what TCP/IP is for data. Whatever the internet want to do with data it does so with a protocol build on top of TCP/IP. If you want to do something with money/balances/escrows/swapping/path finding etc. etc. that could be build on top of ILP. Its completely independent of a currency because its just a protocol it doesn't care what you send over it just like TCP/IP doesn't.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  I'd suggest also taking a look at the Blocknet Protocol which is similar.
  - noxer 6y ago
    Sadly its focused on communication between blockchains. Its one of these projects that I think is completely lost in the crypto bubble^^ ILP however is for the real world, where almost nothing is running on a blockchain and in the future most likely communication will be required between legacy systems and blockchains to integrate them.
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      It's not just between blockchains, it also supports communication with off-chain. I know the documentation doesn't directly reflect that now but they're in the process of redoing and expanding the website, docs, and content in general to more accurately reflect and better explain all this.
tialaramex 6y ago
This article doesn't make a claim about the future that you can prove wrong retrospectively. It could make a claim about how much impact Bitcoin will have by some specific moment in some measurable way, but it doesn't. 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.

by amasad 6y ago

vvanders 6y ago

Except that ham radio has been around for much longer(1909!) and hasn't exploded like the internet. 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.

simias 6y ago

It's pretty easy to see why ARPANET took a while to develop and turn into the internet we know today. Youtube didn't exist in the 1960's not because people though that streaming video was a dumb idea but rather because it was simply technically impossible to do at that time. In order for the internet to develop it required massive progress in hardware and infrastructure. To this day many places in rich countries still have crappy internet access. 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.

j2kun 6y ago
Didn't Doug Engelbart do video streaming in the 60's?
- dole 6y ago
  ob https://m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
- justin_ 6y ago
  The video streaming technology used in NLS was based on analog CRT television technologies. Later, videoconferencing was done digitally over dedicated phone connections/calls. It took a while before doing real-time video over the packet-switched internet became feasible.
dnprock 6y ago
> What's Bitcoin's excuse? 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-the-world.html https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...
ballenf 6y ago
> What's Bitcoin's excuse? 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.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  > I think it's fair to say that there are unknown innovations in our future that will drive cryptocurrency adoption 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.
- simias 6y ago
  So basically you're saying that cryptocurrencies don't work currently because there are established solutions that already solve the problem it attempts to solve but it's totally going to work eventually due to unknown unknowns and it's unfair to point that out somehow? 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!
lmpostor 6y ago
>What's Bitcoin's excuse? Where is the technical limitation? 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.

noxer 6y ago

If Bitcoin is ham radio the ILP (Interledger Protocol) is arguably "the internet" then. ILP is for money what TCP/IP is for data. Whatever the internet want to do with data it does so with a protocol build on top of TCP/IP. If you want to do something with money/balances/escrows/swapping/path finding etc. etc. that could be build on top of ILP. Its completely independent of a currency because its just a protocol it doesn't care what you send over it just like TCP/IP doesn't.

hanniabu 6y ago
I'd suggest also taking a look at the Blocknet Protocol which is similar.
- noxer 6y ago
  Sadly its focused on communication between blockchains. Its one of these projects that I think is completely lost in the crypto bubble^^ ILP however is for the real world, where almost nothing is running on a blockchain and in the future most likely communication will be required between legacy systems and blockchains to integrate them.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    It's not just between blockchains, it also supports communication with off-chain. I know the documentation doesn't directly reflect that now but they're in the process of redoing and expanding the website, docs, and content in general to more accurately reflect and better explain all this.

tialaramex 6y ago

This article doesn't make a claim about the future that you can prove wrong retrospectively. It could make a claim about how much impact Bitcoin will have by some specific moment in some measurable way, but it doesn't. 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.