I saw this short the other day and it really resonated in a way that is rare these days after so many years of research into crypto. For the most part I've already covered a lot of the psychology and philosophy of crypto adoption, but this analogy seems to hit different.
Saifedean is an OG Bitcoiner who published The Bitcoin Standard. I can't say that I've read it but I know it's quite popular. He also recently schooled Saylor in a podcast 20 days ago when Saylor tried to claim that he could get "risk free yield" by lending his BTC to JP Morgan. Whoops!
People think of it like Apple iPhone adoption.
Yeah smartphones are cool and everything, and most people in developed nations have them, but you don't NEED a smartphone. People without a smartphone are not defenseless. They don't starve on the street or get attacked by others for not having a smartphone. In fact we don't even know if that person has a smartphone or not, it's just assumed that they do because everyone has the thing.
Even the most hardcore investors tend to view the [crypto] product in this way. They see Bitcoin and friends as number-go-up technologies and nothing more. It's simply a number on the screen that hopefully makes money... that money being measured in dollars.
I do not see it this way at all.
Did the French army have a choice whether to adopt gunpowder or not?
As Saifedean retorts this is not a fun sparkly technology that people may or may not adopt. Such sentiment may apply to memecoins or NFTs with zero utility, but not for networks that are creating actual value and building on that value over time. Of course Saifeddean is a maximalists and wrongfully believes that only Bitcoin will ever do anything of note, but I've already written a dozen posts on that topic so I don't need to get into it here. Everything he says translates to the rest of the industry. Not only can Bitcoin do very little: its power resides in the fact that it has this niche and will not expand further, instead opting for maximum security and lowest risk.
You either adopt this tech or get bulldozed by it.
And this is another reason why gunpowder is such a damn good example. Does anyone know how gunpowder was invented? It was discovered by accident (as many technologies are) by Chinese alchemists whose original intent was to forge the Elixir of Life to stop aging and discover immortality. How crazy is that? I wonder how many people died drinking those concoctions.
Wild.
The Chinese initially used gunpowder for fireworks and magicians' tricks. However, the Mongols spread gunpowder to the rest of the world through their conquests and invasions. By the 13th century, gunpowder was used in warfare in weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance.
Why is this such a fantastic example?
Because much like crypto today it was originally used as some kind of magic trick for multiple generations. How many years have we been calling it "Magic Internet Money"? The use-cases of crypto today will look like a very unserious joke compared to what it will do in the future. Luckily crypto was not discovered by accident and solves a very big problem within society. Unlike gunpowder, it will not take hundreds of years for indisposable infrastructure to be invented. That being said we are currently over a decade into this journey and it still remains a largely unserious asset to the world on aggregate.
Crypto defies the entire establishment
Many of the naysayers out there that only see this technology as a scam will ask questions like why, if crypto is so important, hasn't Big Tech adopted it yet? Why isn't Oracle the biggest producer of cryptocurrency if it's so special? Isn't it all a database in the end? Surely it can't be the most important technology of the century if literal tech companies aren't adopting it!
Anyone who understands crypto can shoot down nonsense logic like this in an instant. If Bitcoin had been invented in the 80's with the rest of the Internet... Big Tech would not even exist today. The entire world would be completely different. The only reason the Internet is so heinously centralized right now is that there literally wasn't any other way of building it. Humanity is decades behind where it could be if we had solved the Byzantine Generals Problem with it was initially posed. Too bad so sad.
So of course the tech companies would not immediately embrace a technology that takes their power away by design. But that hasn't stopped them from trying to build enterprise blockchain garbage that is now being rebranded under the CBDC moniker. "You know what would make this technology great is if we unilaterally controlled it!"
Laughable.
Others still like to make claim that if crypto disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't be that big of a deal, while if smartphones or the Internet were deleted we'd be completely screwed. Again, this is just salad talk ignorance. Just ask Bill Gates.
THE INTERNET IS A PASSING FAD
So many people out there with such conviction saying this stuff as if they'd bet their life on the outcome. Blows my mind honestly. And with crypto it all stems from the never-ending stream of scams that crypto creates. As if somehow (let's call it magic) there's no value at the core of the crypto bubble but it can still spin up an infinite amount of scams that continue to capture the capital of the ignorant. It should be obvious that there is something real at the center of it all, but people on the outside only see a polished turd.
Conclusion
People think crypto is optional when it is anything but. In these early stages we play with our magic tricks and our fireworks and our internet money as the reply-guys wrongfully assume it won't evolve into something greater. Even as the entire debt-based Ponzi crumbles around us into ruin and the system cries out for superior forms of collateral we continue to go completely unnoticed.
The end result will be nothing short of explosive.
Someone, who lived alone in the woods could avoid bitcoin.
And barring us all returning to the stone age, decentralized technology will rule the world, it is that much better.
Why will bitcoin replace the dollar, because it is that much better!
Like the ease of credit cards, but without the fraud… and more.
(you can see your transaction, you know where the money has gone, they know where the money came from, they can see the transaction, and it can't be stolen by dishonest cashiers.)
It is only a matter of time.
If someone explained all the advantages of accepting crypto to a store owner, they would probably throw you out for lying. It is just too good to be true.
Now do gunpowder
A person alone in the woods can also avoid gunpowder, and yet those types are the most likely to have a gun for defense and hunting. This person also finds themselves largely defenseless in other ways and can be killed in a thousand times over due to not having access to medical care, like getting taken out by a bacterial infection.
At the end of the day the hermit in the woods didn't avoid society at all and existed at the mercy of the current system in charge. Just because that system might ignore the hermit because the hermit doesn't have any resources that anyone wants doesn't mean they magically avoided the powers that be. As pointed out in the original example: the bigger the organization in question the more forced they are into adopting disruptive technology. The individual in this case is largely irrelevant; just like I have never personally owned a gun. This is why I find the analogy to be so compelling.
I totally should have added all the stipulations, like the hermit never goes to town, doesn't interact with anyone but other hermits… for if he did any of those things, he would run into bitcoin.
This is one of those paradigm shift that will be, "grandpa, what did you do before the distributed ledger technology?"
I think it's even more interesting to look at religious Luddites such as the Amish due to the community aspect.
They don't use technology but are still surrounded by it.
And when the bill comes due on property tax they can still lose everything.
That's the main reason most corrupt persons won't like cryptocurrency because the transparency is sick and mad
I remember when apple came out with their computer and it had a mouse, but most PCs didn't. My dad said mice are just for people who don't know how to use the keyboard. We still give him a hard time about that...
That's a really quotable line.
The cynical part of me thinks that it’s mass adoption is being delayed until greater advances in AI and control can be implemented. I’m torn on that part because we know there are tyrants every which way we look and the tyrants of old would collapse at the thought of the tools we have now they could have used then, but the optimist is also present hoping that we can keep fighting back with sheer information.
A tale as old as time it seems, freedom versus tyranny. Sound money versus fake money.
Guns can be used for tyranny or freedom just as well as AI can.
But yeah I see what you mean.
Nice analogy.
It reminds me of the Borg on Star Trek, prepare to be assimilated. The Borg travelled the Universe Assimilating cultures, plantes and species, to constantly improve their technology. They defeated everything in their path for a long time.
History shows that technological standstill is akin to death, and the fall of the Chinese to the British and the Japanese to to the Americans visa vie Commander Perry show that technology will overwhelm even huge numerical advantages in War and everything else.
We must assimilate new technology and new / better / ideas or we will be surpassed technologically and defeated either economically, militarily or both.
The end result will be nothing short of explosive. This guys are ready to take the explosives as long as power doesn't shift.
They've noticed bitcoin n crpto actually, they are looking for ways to coin the its entire decentralized nature to their favor. Till then, they keep ignoring.
They certainly have been looking to centralize the decentralization.
And every time they've tried it's an abysmal failure because all the power lies within the decentralization.
Notice how nobody talks about Enterprise Blockchain anymore?
The same thing will happen to CBDC.
These are not real products with an actual use case.
Exchanging power for value can be one difficult thing
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@danzocal(10/10) tipped @edicted
Imagine writing has always been about taking a stick and scratching letters in the dirt, then you invent the library and try to sell people on it.
"You mean I have to go to some building, and hold one of these 'book' things just to read?
Bro, I can read any time I like, by just glancing down at my feet".
That turd just needs a bit more polishing. That's all.
When it's glowing, anyone who possesses it will be like royalty.