Is Blockchain Really Dead? An insight Into History

On January 3 2009, the first Bitcoin was ever mined by a person with a pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto as a revolution against the banking system by creating the first peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency. Although the prospect and idea of a decentralized ledger and digital currencies have been discussed since the late 1990s, this was the first ever successful implementation that took off and led to one of the biggest financial revolutions in history. This has spawned many to follow on this track and create other blockchains and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin.

The huge popularity of such technology led to a rise of Bitcoin from basically nothing to a peak of around 70,000 USD, creating a frenzy in investors looking to make a quick buck from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have surfaced since then. This frenzy led to another development frenzy while anyone with some coding skills wanted to create an ICO (initial coin offering) to raise funds for a “project” that does not actually make sense. In this article, we will not go over the history of cryptocurrency and blockchain which has been dived into deeply in multiple articles and books, but we will go over the history of technological and financial revolutions and how sentiment around it switched within the years to understand whether the recent downtrend of cryptocurrency and the loss of faith means an end to this technology as just a ponzi scheme or a fad.

The Internet

First of all, to not go too far off, let us look into the rise of the internet and what led to the Dot Com bubble. Was everyone really positive on the internet? Today Internet is probably considered the best invention in human history after fire, and I, personally, could not agree more, but let us see the sentiment from experts at that time to understand human biases and when does a technology really become revolutionary.

First of all, let us start with one of the best predictions. In 1995, Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet), predicted that “the Internet will soon collapse like a spectacular supernova.” The reasoning behind his prediction was that more and more networks were connecting to the Internet, and that the complexity and traffic would overwhelm the protocols at that time. Similarly, a lot of opponents of blockchain believe that current protocols and blockchains are not scalable and that the traffic is way higher than the blockchain could handle… Pretty close.

Another prediction on the Internet in 1994 which I like is that “internet is a fad, and there is no real commercial use for it.” By none other than Bill Gates. Bill Gates, after realizing that his statements were way off a couple of years later, retracted his statements and tried to erase any evidence of it. He then changed his thought on the internet in 1995 and recognized the use cases of the Internet.

A tech columnist for Newsweek in the 90s, also did a lot of “stunning predictions on the Internet”, with quotes such as “The truth is that no online database will ever replace your newspaper” and “So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?” You can see that these quotes are pretty similar to what you hear about cryptocurrency these days.

You can do your own research on more of such quotes, but one difference is that before the Internet, well… The Internet did not exist and not everyone had an opinion they could share to millions online.

Airplanes

If you have ever travelled via air, you would understand the marvel behind the airplane and how it helped economies, trade and shipping thrive. Back then, when the Wright brothers initially came up with the idea, it could be safely said that the experts back then thought that it is just a really stupid and dangerous ideas. Scientists described the idea as "crazy” and the US army (which is the biggest user of this invention as of today) thought it was just impossible and useless to try creating.

They tried to discourage the brothers from flying and trying to build their invention. Think where the world would have been if they even listened to them.

Light

Even if we look at very old creations that are just “common sense” today, we see that skepticism to new creations have always existed. The lightbulb, when created by Thomas Edison, was considered a scam, dangerous and without any potential long term use. It is nearly impossible to find quotes as that was a very long time ago (1800s) but some books such as "The Invention of the Light Bulb" by Bill Beatty and "The Electric Light: A History" by Jill Jones give more insight into the skepticism that evolved back then.

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