3 ms·

> it was evident that it was going to change the world That's easy to say in hindsight, but the utility of the internet was debated as hotly back then as the u

• masswerk 4y ago
  It isn't so that the Web wouldn't have gone from boom to bust rather immediately (it really began to surface and become known to a broader public in around 1996 and about 4 years later, there was already the burst of the dot-com bubble), but it was immediately apparent that the Web still had use and that there were plenty of undeveloped use-cases. Not sure, if this applies to the crypto market, as well.
• danaris 4y ago
  The difference is that many, many people who were not directly financially invested in the internet in, say, 1997 could easily see that it was revolutionary. Most of the people who pooh-poohed it were those who were not highly technical and did not understand the technology that well. (Krugman's an expert in his field, but his field is not technology.) Today, effectively the only people still saying cryptocurrency is revolutionary are those who are directly financially invested in it—and there are many, many highly technical people who understand the technology very well who say it's nothing but a scam.