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> Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? The same could be said of the Internet when it w

> Do you have any examples of something which solves a real problem better than mature, scalable technologies? The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. Cryptocurrency is revolutionising delivery of cash. It will take a while to work out the development of it, but we didn't have a ready made plan for the internet either.

zepto 6y ago
> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. I see this repeated often, but it doesn’t seem remotely true. Look back to Englebart and the work done at Parc. The applications were very clear.
- nwah1 6y ago
  People were using the internet for useful things from pretty much day 1, and technology adoption curves have only compressed over time. It may have took a decade or two for the internet to become popular, but it only took a few years for smartphones to become popular, or social media, or for ridesharing to usurp the taxi industry.
acdha 6y ago
> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. This is a standard talking point but it's not an accurate comparison because it ignores the barriers to adoption related to computing in general. Internet adoption in the very early years was constrained by the need to use expensive computers and network connections. Despite that, in the 1980s many people paid for commercial services like CompuServ, GEnie, or later AOL which were popular enough to be profitable despite the limitations of dialup non-general access because those provided useful ways to chat, research, or shop. By the time the Web arrived in the early 1990s, GUIs were becoming common and internet connectivity was still limited in speed and availability (modems weren't just slow, they also incurred long-distance charges if you didn't have a local ISP, which most people didn't) but that situation was improving. By 1995 or so businesses were jumping online because it had already changed how they reached customers, took orders, and provided support. If you weren't around back then, there was tons of popular media discussion about how this was changing everything — news, education, shopping, travel, job hunting, etc. — and while there was certainly plenty of hype there were also real changes affecting all kinds of businesses, not just people trying to sell the technology to each other. People you knew who weren't computer fans would still be talking about checking sports coverage, trading stocks, making travel plans, etc. because it was faster, easier, and/or cheaper. In contrast, by the time blockchains were introduced computers were cheap and ubiquitous, and software was much easier to build and install. Adoption has never been easier — but only if you make something which provides actual value. Bitcoin has been around for 12 years and failed so hard at the original “revolutionising delivery of cash” goals that proponents switched to claiming the goal was being a “store of value” despite having nothing but fiat value. Despite all of that time and money, if it disappeared tomorrow nobody whose business isn't speculating in Bitcoin would have reason to care because it doesn't give any significant advantage for anything. Maybe we could write that off as an early failure except that nobody has come up with a successor which a) does anything normal people want at a competitive rate and b) doesn't share its problems with scalability. The use-cases most people come up with are all better served by other technologies and purveyors have had a hard time making the case that you should spend more to give control of your business to them. This is completely unlike the early web era, where so many people saw an opportunity to make a business which was using the technology to do something else and were able to be profitable against competing industries (e.g. Amazon started selling books in 1995 and was profitable in that sector a couple of years later despite having substantial brick-and-mortar competition).
- zepto 6y ago
  > Maybe we could write that off as an early failure except that nobody has come up with a successor It’s possible that this is actually because Bitcoin. The effect it has had of making early owners rich despite not solving other problems, has made this the goal of most new crypto schemes.
  - acdha 6y ago
    The flood of speculator money definitely hurt: anyone thinking carefully about real problems is going to have trouble getting support or even users in a space full of hucksters yelling about amazing things they can’t deliver.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
So that's a "no".

zepto 6y ago

> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. I see this repeated often, but it doesn’t seem remotely true. Look back to Englebart and the work done at Parc. The applications were very clear.

nwah1 6y ago
People were using the internet for useful things from pretty much day 1, and technology adoption curves have only compressed over time. It may have took a decade or two for the internet to become popular, but it only took a few years for smartphones to become popular, or social media, or for ridesharing to usurp the taxi industry.

acdha 6y ago

> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. This is a standard talking point but it's not an accurate comparison because it ignores the barriers to adoption related to computing in general. Internet adoption in the very early years was constrained by the need to use expensive computers and network connections. Despite that, in the 1980s many people paid for commercial services like CompuServ, GEnie, or later AOL which were popular enough to be profitable despite the limitations of dialup non-general access because those provided useful ways to chat, research, or shop. By the time the Web arrived in the early 1990s, GUIs were becoming common and internet connectivity was still limited in speed and availability (modems weren't just slow, they also incurred long-distance charges if you didn't have a local ISP, which most people didn't) but that situation was improving. By 1995 or so businesses were jumping online because it had already changed how they reached customers, took orders, and provided support. If you weren't around back then, there was tons of popular media discussion about how this was changing everything — news, education, shopping, travel, job hunting, etc. — and while there was certainly plenty of hype there were also real changes affecting all kinds of businesses, not just people trying to sell the technology to each other. People you knew who weren't computer fans would still be talking about checking sports coverage, trading stocks, making travel plans, etc. because it was faster, easier, and/or cheaper. In contrast, by the time blockchains were introduced computers were cheap and ubiquitous, and software was much easier to build and install. Adoption has never been easier — but only if you make something which provides actual value. Bitcoin has been around for 12 years and failed so hard at the original “revolutionising delivery of cash” goals that proponents switched to claiming the goal was being a “store of value” despite having nothing but fiat value. Despite all of that time and money, if it disappeared tomorrow nobody whose business isn't speculating in Bitcoin would have reason to care because it doesn't give any significant advantage for anything. Maybe we could write that off as an early failure except that nobody has come up with a successor which a) does anything normal people want at a competitive rate and b) doesn't share its problems with scalability. The use-cases most people come up with are all better served by other technologies and purveyors have had a hard time making the case that you should spend more to give control of your business to them. This is completely unlike the early web era, where so many people saw an opportunity to make a business which was using the technology to do something else and were able to be profitable against competing industries (e.g. Amazon started selling books in 1995 and was profitable in that sector a couple of years later despite having substantial brick-and-mortar competition).

zepto 6y ago
> Maybe we could write that off as an early failure except that nobody has come up with a successor It’s possible that this is actually because Bitcoin. The effect it has had of making early owners rich despite not solving other problems, has made this the goal of most new crypto schemes.
- acdha 6y ago
  The flood of speculator money definitely hurt: anyone thinking carefully about real problems is going to have trouble getting support or even users in a space full of hucksters yelling about amazing things they can’t deliver.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

So that's a "no".