Bitcoin arose as a pretty high-minded idea, engendered in specialized cryptography forums. In its early days, its merits have been discussed by communities like the LessWrong forums.
Bitcoin Gained a Bad Reputation in its Early Days
Crypto assets and Bitcoin, in particular, gained a public image of being a simple-minded Internet coin, used by gamers and gamblers. Later, when finance moved in and big money rolled into the markets, BTC was seen as a model for financial trickery, a Ponzi scheme, or merely an investment fad.
But hedge fund manager and Bitcoin, crypto proponent Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch), believes eventually, after a long time, intellectuals will finally see what the BTC network stands for.
As the founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington (@arrington) saw the promise of the internet early, went all in, and became the most important tech journalist of the Web 2.0 era.
Today, he’s all in on crypto. He explains why — and why it will take years.https://t.co/0lJtjCDDv8
— Nakamoto (@nakamoto) January 4, 2020
Arrington has started to contribute to Nakamoto, a journal exploring the deeper features of distributed networks, analyzing the issues of technology, but also politics and philosophy. He believes the rise of crypto has been treated in the manner of early Internet startups, which were initially viewed as little more than gimmicks or hobby projects.
“Crypto today is like the Internet in 1995 (a tired argument, I’ll admit), or like YouTube in 2005 (very cool, but perhaps doomed). Very few of us take it very seriously. Obviously, I take it seriously. I’m not just armchair prognosticating, I’ve staked my career on it,” Arrington wrote.
But simply evangelizing about crypto will not make intellectuals agree on its aims and spirit. Arrington believes the community will have to show the project stands on its own before it is accepted as legitimate.
BTC Pushes the Idea of Sound Money in a Fiat World of Unlimited Liquidity
Bitcoin will face the challenge of presenting the idea of hard money in a world that is not only used to fiat, but to regular injections of liquidity to stave off market fears. This way of guiding and guarding the world economy is vastly different from Bitcoin’s aim to reintroduce hard money, similar to the gold standard of the past.
Arrington is part of the Nakamoto magazine’s viewpoint that the multitude of crypto communities essentially supports new social and financial mechanisms. He is aware of the risks of scams and failing projects, but also of the potential for some of those projects to succeed and prove disruptive and more productive.
So far, science and economists enjoy being skeptical of BTC, as they have been over the years.
Wow: Mining $1 worth of Bitcoin entails almost $0.5 in human and environmental costs. This new paper on the environmental and health impacts of cryptocurrency mining is amazing. https://t.co/NcJOtWFcVo (via @syllabus_tweets) pic.twitter.com/PdJyDOfp1I
— Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) October 5, 2019
But Arrington remains certain some crypto projects will change the world in unimaginable ways, much like the early tech projects on the Internet.
What do you think of BTC acceptance and the chance of crypto to change the world? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images via Shutterstock, Twitter: @evgenymorozov, @nakamoto
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