I’m bullish on Bitcoin but my reasons are very different from what you might have heard elsewhere. My conviction has to do with what I’ve learned as a student of technology history and my discovery of a class of “resonant ideas” that are eventually guaranteed to succeed. (1)
You see, there are certain persistent desires & dreams we humans have; things we need technology to do for us. And we don’t give up until we get them, even across generations. Why? Perhaps, as a species we have some deep seated urges we can only achieve through technology? (2)
Some of these desires appear in legends or stories from millennia ago. Some, in more recent science fiction. They are then seeded in the consciousness of practitioners and engineers of every generation until the science and technology that can realize them, comes to be. (3)
If you find yourself dealing with one of these primal technological urges manifesting itself over and over, across time, you can be sure that as our knowledge matures and the underlying infrastructure is ready, it will one day exist. (4)
There are innumerable examples. Flying cars... from Aladdin and Star Wars to today’s @ehang and @skygridai. Mechanical brains (computers)... from the mechanical Turk to the analytical engine to colossus and now $5 @Raspberry_Pi’s everywhere! (5)
Instant communications.. from mythological Hermès to pigeons to Morse to telephones and now FaceTime & @signalapp! VR, AI, Tablets, holograms, robots, autonomous cars... all examples of a historically “resonant idea” eventually coming to be. And Bitcoin #BTC is no different! (6)
25 years ago, in 1996, BYTE Magazine put “Electric Money” on their cover. They went in depth and spoke about many use cases that could be fulfilled with a digital money suited for use on computer networks, safely, securely and even privately. (7) 
Interestingly enough, they spoke about “minting your own” and of the role cryptography would play in such an architecture. They discussed a simple mechanism by which “coupons” could be issued, signed with a key and redeemable securely. #NFTs (8)
They covered the many uses of such money, which have expanded considerably over time... electronic cash, a digital check, a virtual bank draft and card-integrated payment mechanisms. They could have added loans, derivatives, futures and much more! (9)
BYTE stressed that there was a real need for anonymity because we needed “a way to buy and sell as we please without threatening our fundamental freedom of privacy”. After all, money had been reasonably anonymous through history, until we got to computers and credit cards! (10)
Of course, this “electric money” story wasn’t the only discussion of a crypto based, multi-purpose, anonymous, secure, instantly transmittable, divisible and distributed form of payment. Millicent from DEC, NetBill from Carnegie Mellon, David Chaum’s Digicash from 1989... (11)
Daniel Lynch’s 1994 CyberCoin, E-Gold from 1996 and many other attempts are well recorded and some, well known. The point is the idea of a digital monetary network, a digital store of value, a private means of economic exchange is one of the “resonant ideas” in tech history. (12)
An idea like that is unbeatable, unstoppable... inevitable. The only thing it needs to take permanent hold is the underlying technological infrastructure. With advanced encryption, better algorithms (blockchain, double spend avoidance), ubiquitous networks and mobile phones (13)
we now have that infrastructure. In spades. With a $1T asset, we also have proof of adoption. Bitcoin is the ultimate, successful manifestation of “electric cash”, resonant through decades of tech history. It was written & it has come to pass. And there is no going back! #HODL!
@threadreaderapp unroll
The BYTE article I referenced in the thread above was written by the brilliant Udo Flohr @frogblog.
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