Sure, but that was really the beginning of the smartphone era. In 2009, the iPhone had ~15% market share for smartphones. [1] Counting 2007 and 2008, Apple sold

Sure, but that was really the beginning of the smartphone era. In 2009, the iPhone had ~15% market share for smartphones. [1] Counting 2007 and 2008, Apple sold ~15 million units, about half of those in the last quarter of 2008. So when the Bitcoin paper was first published, Apple had sold something under 10m units. And that paper was of course based on earlier work. My point is that conceptually, the peer-to-peer, proof-of-work thing was much more suited to the desktop era, a sort of SETI@Home for money. It wasn't until a few years later that we truly began to see what the mobile era would look like (e.g., Venmo was August 2009, Uber was May 2010). The peer-to-peer aspect is basically a failure, as the rise of mining pools and centralized exchanges demonstrate. As do the relatively small transaction volumes for Bitcoin compared to things that are actual modern cash substitutes. If somebody were inventing cryptocurrency today, it would not look like Bitcoin. [1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_was_no_3_smartphone_in_2009_with_14_4_of_market https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/04/idc_apple_iphone_...