[samhw]

Yeah, Arpanet was definitely a wide-area network, but the Internet Protocol was standardised in '82 and that was what created the Internet: a public network that was capable of spanning the globe. (I used the words "became publicly available" advisedly!)

Aside from that, I very much agree with you. I think digital cash has great promise - I can't imagine Visa and Mastercard still being a thing in 20-30 years. Some implementation of digital cash - I happen to think Bitcoin and its current siblings are not fit solutions - seems highly likely to proliferate in actual means-of-exchange usage. (In plain English: for buying stuff at supermarkets.)

But I think people like the commenter above are the obstacle to progress. We need motivated but rational innovators, who can analyse solutions through clear eyes, soberly and without dysfunctional ego investment in one technology or another.

These weird crypto stans are not technologists, they're fanboys, they make real innovators look bad, and they retard real progress by dementedly screaming at anyone who makes cogent criticisms of a given implementation. Those critics are our greatest asset and friend, not our enemy.

[autoexec]

> I can't imagine Visa and Mastercard still being a thing in 20-30 years.

You think the blockchain is going to give you a credit limit?

[samhw]

There’s a reason I’m saying ‘digital cash’. I carry no water for current cryptocurrencies or blockchains. I’m interested in the goal, not any implementation (and what frustrates me about these crypto stans is their ego fixation on the implementation and the culture/brand/Lamborghinis over the goal).

As for credit limits: first off, Visa and Mastercard are payment systems - they don’t give you credit limits. Your card has ‘Visa’ or ‘Mastercard’ written on it, but it’s your bank that lends you the money to spend via V/M. I’m not proposing that the bank be replaced - I’m proposing that the payment system be replaced. Your bank will lend you money, and you will spend it using [tbd].

(BTW, I developed the lending algorithms at a unicorn startup bank. Billions in credit was dispensed by my code [and that of my reports]. I’m intimately familiar with that ecosystem. It’s not my central point here, but I do believe there’s substantial room for modernisation in that respect at almost every point in the chain: the CRAs, the lenders, the collections agencies, etc. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to expand, but right here I don’t want to distract from my actual point above.)