Cryptos Too Slow. Can’t Scale, Too Hard?

ituglobal

Master Trader
Apr 17, 2013
515
31
69
“Everybody knows there’s no money in the Internet.”



That’s what Marc Andreessen was told when he founded Netscape.



He was in his early 20s and, by all accounts, starting Netscape was like sending coal to Newcastle. (That’s oldspeak for ‘a fruitless task.’)



Consider what Netscape was up against.



Until 1993, online commercial activities were illegal. You couldn’t do business online.



There was no trust. No money. No economic incentives.



Netscape set out to make the Internet a commercial medium. Because it utilized encryption, it was actually labeled as munitions by the U.S. government.



Congress believed that only the baddies would want to use encryption. Andreessen said: “Well, no, we’ll need encryption for credit cards online, for example.”



Their response: “Nobody’s doing that! Nobody will ever trust the Internet with their credit card numbers or any private information!”



Everyone thought it was a dumb idea.



During this time, Bill Gates went on David Letterman’s show and got made fun of for calling the Internet the “next big thing.”



It didn’t take long until Andreessen was vindicated. Today, he’s a billionaire tech investor through his fund a16z.



He’s also a big crypto bull.



During a recent podcast interview, Andreessen talked about the similarities between the early days of the Internet and crypto.



Here are three major points:



1.] All of the problems we see in crypto today are the same problems we saw with the Internet in its early days.



The fight against encryption was just the tip of the iceberg. There were many obstacles to mass-adoption of the Internet.



2.] Most saw problems. A few saw opportunities.



The early Internet was slow, couldn’t scale, and was hard for the average Joe to use.



Most people said “This won’t work.”



They were mostly right at the time. In its current state, it wouldn’t work on a mass scale. But that was beside the point.



Turns out, every single one of these problems were multi-billion dollar opportunities.



3.] In less than thirty years from now, the entire global economy could run on the blockchain.



This is why crypto is perhaps the greatest asymmetric bet in all of human history.” – Chris C





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HeavenLeighGill

Active Trader
Aug 5, 2021
389
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It's interesting how things like this come about. Back then, people had no idea how much we'd utilize the internet today. I think that to make money as an investor, you have to think the way big dogs like Bill Gates think. Can't just follow along with the crowd, because sometimes the odd man out has the right advice.