| I hear many influencers in the space (mainly in podcasts from a16z and Laura Shin) claim that crypto is matured to the equivalent of the mid-90's internet, but I'm skeptical it's anywhere close to that far along. Thanks for sharing these ARPANET milestones, it puts the situation in a better perspective. NCSA Mosaic was released in 1993[1], so I think "mid-90's" is convenient for people who can't easily grasp what the internet was prior to the web. The TCP spec was published in 1974 and became a standard in 1983[2]. Consider these milestones in the crypto space[3]... > 2008 bitcoin whitepaper published > 2009 first bitcoin transaction sent > 2010 Mt Gox bitcoin exchange established > 2011 BTC market cap exceeds $1 billion (indicates activity and liquidity) > 2015 ethereum launched > 2017 crypto market cap exceeds $100 billion We're still seeing early protocols contending to become standards. The analogy isn't perfect, but Bitcoin and Ethereum seem more likely to be analogous to ARPANET than to TCP/IP. It will be a couple more years before blockchain interoperability platforms (like Cosmos[4]) are fully operational, and another year or two after that before we get a killer app that's as widely accepted as the first web browser. Returning to your final point, the amount of utility already derived from Bitcoin and Ethereum is fairly impressive considering their young age. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
[3] https://cryptotimeline.com/
[4] https://cosmos.network/ |