Ninjastic
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Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Bitcoin won't ever become Mainstream. It's just a Prototype.
by
profitofthegods
on 06/03/2014, 14:34:40 UTC
Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 05, 2014, 02:46:21 PM
Quote from: Joshuar on March 05, 2014, 02:43:03 PM
Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 05, 2014, 02:39:16 PM
TCP/IP will never go mainstream.  It is just a prototype.  The idea that a protocol that was state of the art in the 1970s will be used by billions of people in the 2010s is just stupid.  By 1979 the internet hadn't become mainstream so obviously it was never going to happen.  Something more efficient than the internet will come along and we will use that instead.  

So you want to go that road huh? Compare Bitcoin to any other successfull sites since the year 200. I could name Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Spotify, the list goes on etc etc and want to know what all those sites have in common? They became successfull within a very short time and Mainstream. Bitcoin is supposed to be this new, next generation, of money handling, but has is a very long way off being adopted by the general public, who aren't programmers and tech guys. It's simply never going to get any higher in terms of popularity, too many flaws.

Bitcoin isn't a website, it is a protocol.   Facebook, myspace, and twitter are still running on the flawed and ancient protocol that was around at the start of the internet.  

The internet circa 1969


The internet circa 1977


That is right it took almost a decade to build it out to just a couple dozen nodes.

The internet circa 2000
http://mountpeaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/1069646562-lgl-2d-4096x40962.png


Its true that there is a difference between sites and protocols, and that a protocol is usually much harder to change, but I don't think Bitcoin is any more like TCP/IP than like a website. Its easy for people to change the websites they use because any individual can change any time they want without any problem, whereas an individual website can't change the protocol they use - either everyone agrees to change or nobody does with something like that. Something like a digital currency is halfway between the two really, because there is an ecosystem of services which re-enforces the status-quo, but at the same time any individual merchant can switch to a different payment protocol or currency (of which there are already tonnes to choose between) any time they want and its not really a big deal for people to still be able to use the service. In a way Bitcoin is probably closer to the website example than the TCP/IP example in actual practice.