Bitcoin and resonant ideas

I am bullish on Bitcoin, but my reasons are very different from what you may have heard elsewhere. My conviction has to do with what I have learned as a student of the history of technology and my discovery of a class of “resonant ideas” that are ultimately guaranteed to succeed.

You see, there are certain persistent desires and dreams that 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 we as a species have some deep-seated drives that we can only achieve through technology?

Some of these wishes appear in legends or stories dating back millennia. Some, in recent science fiction. They are then seeded into the consciousness of practitioners and engineers in each generation until the science and technology that can realize them comes into being. If you find yourself dealing with one of these primal technological urges that manifest itself over and over again, over time, rest assured that as our knowledge matures and the underlying infrastructure is ready, it will one day exist.

There are countless examples. Flying cars from Aladdin and Star Wars to today’s Wisk and SkyGrid. Mechanical brains (computers) from the Mechanical Turk to the Analytical Engine of the Colossus and now $5 Raspberry Pi’s everywhere. Instant communication from mythological Hermès to pigeons to Morse to phones and now FaceTime & Signal! VR, AI, tablets, holograms, robots and autonomous cars. These are all examples of a historically “resonant idea” eventually coming into being. And Bitcoin is no different.

Twenty-six years ago, in 1996, the iconic BYTE Magazine, which was in many ways the main chronicle of the PC revolution, featured an exciting cover story entitled “Electric Money”. In this story, written by Udo Flohr and the BYTE editorial team, the authors went in-depth to discuss a multitude of use cases that could be fulfilled with safe, secure and private digital money suitable for use on computer networks.

The authors examined “making your own” money and the role cryptography would play in such an architecture. They discussed a simple mechanism where “coupons” could be issued, signed with a key and securely redeemed. If this sounds like NFTs, that’s because it is!

They even covered the many uses for such money, which have expanded considerably over time to include electronic cash, digital checks, virtual bank drafts and card-integrated payment mechanisms. With the benefit of hindsight, they could have added loans, derivatives, futures and much more.

The BYTE team covering this topic emphasized that there was a real need for anonymity because we needed “a way to buy and sell as we want without threatening our basic privacy”. After all, money had been reasonably anonymous throughout history, until we came to computers and credit cards.

Of course, this particular story about “electric money” was not the only discussion about a crypto-based, multi-use, anonymous, secure, instantly transferable, divisible and distributed payment method. There were many attempts to implement digital money. For example, Millicent from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), NetBill from Carnegie Mellon University, David Chaum’s Digicash from 1989, Daniel Lynch’s 1994 CyberCoin, E-Gold from 1996 and many other attempts are well documented and some are well known.

The point is that 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 the history of technology.

Such an idea, one that keeps coming back and replaying in our collective consciousness until it becomes real, is unbeatable, unstoppable…inevitable. The only thing it needs to take permanent hold is the underlying technological infrastructure. With advanced encryption, better algorithms (blockchain, avoid double spending), ubiquitous networks and mobile phones, we now have that infrastructure. In spades. With Bitcoin now a $500B – $1T asset, we also have evidence of adoption. In fact, Bitcoin may well be the ultimate, successful manifestation of “electric money,” resonating through decades of technology history. So while recent price volatility has been the center of media attention, I think the real story here is that Bitcoin is a resonant idea. The long-term potential is still immeasurably large, and it is quite likely, no turning back.