[acdha]

The early internet or web are often used in cryptocurrency sales pitches to excuse the lack of demand, but the comparison falls apart as soon as you learn any of the history. When the internet dawned, computers were incredibly expensive and slow and networks were even worse – but people went to great lengths to get online because it offered something immediately of value which was unrelated to the business of making or selling internet access. By the 1980s, people were paying for connectivity even at telephone monopoly rates because there were things like email, Usenet, IRC, file transfers, etc. which made your life better. When the first TV station opened in the 1920s, ordinary people went to buy sets because it gave them something they’d never had before.

In contrast, Bitcoin has been available globally since it launched and it did so in an era where much of the human population had everything they needed to use it - very much unlike the early internet, or radio, or TV. Tons of speculative money poured in hoping to find demand … but nobody really cares about it because for most it’s not better than what they had before. It isn’t cheaper, faster, or safer and it is much less convenient to use, so even the few people who hold it don’t. The few businesses which accepted it have generally reported very little consumer interest and many have stopped. That just isn’t like the demand curve for those other technologies: as soon as Marconi had his first radio telegraph demo, he had businesses and governments interested and the primary limit was the difficulty of making the technology available, not lack of public interest – anyone could see how it could let them do something they couldn’t do before.

That last part is key: I’m all for changes to the financial system, I’ve followed this space since David Chaum was writing in the 90s, but you have to base it on an advantage over the status quo. The problem is not just that they picked an unsuitable data structure but also that it became the community identity, preventing attempts to learn from the mistake.