3 ms·

You don't need a ten-thousand year head start to be widely adopted. Bitcoin is 12 years old now. PayPal was that old in 2010/2011. PayPal was definitely more wi

You don't need a ten-thousand year head start to be widely adopted. Bitcoin is 12 years old now. PayPal was that old in 2010/2011. PayPal was definitely more widely adopted at that age than Bitcoin is now. And besides, claiming that "traditional currency has a ten-thousand year head start" lumps so many wildly different forms of currency into a single category that the category is borderline meaningless.

keiferski 5y ago
PayPal or other online banking apps are nowhere near as big of a leap as crypto is. Not even remotely comparable. The former is simply making a trusted single location for a database of transactions. The latter is making that database global and uncontrollable by any single entity. A vastly more difficult and complex task. And again, the idea that a technology can be deemed useless a mere decade after its launch is deeply historically ignorant. Automobiles, airplanes, he printing press, the list goes on and on. None of these things replaced their competitors in a decade.
- jsiepkes 5y ago
  None of the technologies you name had that big of a negative effect on society while they were maturing. We are a decade in with cryptocoins and 98% of the things that cryptocoins have currently accomplished are a net loss for society. A net loss of which we are currently already "paying" for; Ransomware, waste of energy, people getting scammed with pump and dumps, etc.
  - keiferski 5y ago
    Incorrect. Early automobiles killed so many people that it became a major public health issue. The Printing Press essentially fueled the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion. Airplanes were used in bombing raids during WW1, just over a decade after the successful flight of the Wright Brothers. All technologies have both positive and negative consequences. Edit: here’s a nice quote illustrating this. Serious debate was held in courtrooms and in editorials over whether the automobile was inherently evil. The state of Georgia's Court of Appeals wrote: "Automobiles are to be classed with ferocious animals and … the law relating to the duty of owners of such animals is to be applied ... . However, they are not to be classed with bad dogs, vicious bulls, evil disposed mules, and the like."

keiferski 5y ago

PayPal or other online banking apps are nowhere near as big of a leap as crypto is. Not even remotely comparable. The former is simply making a trusted single location for a database of transactions. The latter is making that database global and uncontrollable by any single entity. A vastly more difficult and complex task. And again, the idea that a technology can be deemed useless a mere decade after its launch is deeply historically ignorant. Automobiles, airplanes, he printing press, the list goes on and on. None of these things replaced their competitors in a decade.

jsiepkes 5y ago
None of the technologies you name had that big of a negative effect on society while they were maturing. We are a decade in with cryptocoins and 98% of the things that cryptocoins have currently accomplished are a net loss for society. A net loss of which we are currently already "paying" for; Ransomware, waste of energy, people getting scammed with pump and dumps, etc.
- keiferski 5y ago
  Incorrect. Early automobiles killed so many people that it became a major public health issue. The Printing Press essentially fueled the Reformation and the subsequent Wars of Religion. Airplanes were used in bombing raids during WW1, just over a decade after the successful flight of the Wright Brothers. All technologies have both positive and negative consequences. Edit: here’s a nice quote illustrating this. Serious debate was held in courtrooms and in editorials over whether the automobile was inherently evil. The state of Georgia's Court of Appeals wrote: "Automobiles are to be classed with ferocious animals and … the law relating to the duty of owners of such animals is to be applied ... . However, they are not to be classed with bad dogs, vicious bulls, evil disposed mules, and the like."