Are Bitcoin and Crypto Really Like the Early Internet?

[Renampun]

...

I see it that way because so many people are skeptical of Bitcoin like when the internet appeared in the beginning...

people are still afraid of Bitcoin because of the lack of education they get, but the US is different because the data is more than 30 million people in the US already have Bitcoin. from time to time people will definitely not see Bitcoin the way the internet in the early days. people should have started to see Bitcoin as a potential investment.

[Shasha80]

Are Bitcoin and crypto really like the early internet? Yes but it depends on the area the question was related to for internet/web was once sees as danger to human nature during the early stage cause people only focus on the danger it will cause rather than the benefit and so is Bitcoin either.
Some naive people said a lot of things that Bitcoin and other crypto were uses for the illicit transaction but the shocking revelation Is that only 1% of all illicit are done through crypto while 5% are done through USD alone.

Indeed, when Bitcoin first appeared, many doubted it and like the early internet. Then most people focus on the negative side more than the positive
side, so few people own Bitcoin when it first appears. One of them is that some people think Bitcoin is widely used for illegal and prohibited activities,
when in fact fiat is mostly used for illegal activities. This can actually be an afterthought for all of us, don't judge something new only from
the negative side. We have to compare the whole, so we judge fairly and will not make the wrong decision.

[cr1776]

I wouldn’t say the early days of the internet, but maybe the early days of the web.

People didn’t know what a domain name was, said people wouldn’t use credit cards online, etc. Bitcoin was certainly like that in 2010. And 2013. And 2016. Maybe today it is like the web in 2005.

[Bitstar_coin]

In a way yes because even at this time that btc is more than a decade not up to 1% of world population are into btc (just my assumption) so I feel anyone who is in crypto at this stage can be considered early, cryptocurrency is still at the early stage compare to other economic sectors, there is more development and accomplished to be made as time progression which means the future is bright in a way.

[swiftbits]

Both are different technology, the Internet is a free or easy access tool, and everyone can get involved, differentiating it from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is also something we can't redesign; I would compare the internet to cryptocurrencies in general.
They have more similarities, as we see more apps with different purposes are being developed under blockchain technology,
Just like how the internet grows vastly due to variations of sites offering entertainment and convenience.

[gundala]

Both are different technology, the Internet is a free or easy access tool, and everyone can get involved, differentiating it from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is also something we can't redesign; I would compare the internet to cryptocurrencies in general.
They have more similarities, as we see more apps with different purposes are being developed under blockchain technology,
Just like how the internet grows vastly due to variations of sites offering entertainment and convenience.

In the past, the internet was also considered taboo, and at the beginning of its appearance it was not immediately easy for us to enjoy, wasn't the internet tariffs also expensive? but with the development of technology and changes in lifestyle, the internet is increasingly desirable and effective for completing various tasks effectively, the price is getting cheaper. maybe this analogy is what TS wants to convey.
bitcoin and crypto in general are still in the early stages of adoption, there are still many pros and cons, but more and more people know about it this year because many influential influencers and well-known companies are starting to adopt bitcoin. somehow in the future, the important thing is that we must be able to make good use of this.

[suzanne5223]

Are Bitcoin and crypto really like the early internet? Yes but it depends on the area the question was related to for internet/web was once sees as danger to human nature during the early stage cause people only focus on the danger it will cause rather than the benefit and so is Bitcoin either.
Some naive people said a lot of things that Bitcoin and other crypto were uses for the illicit transaction but the shocking revelation Is that only 1% of all illicit are done through crypto while 5% are done through USD alone.

Indeed, when Bitcoin first appeared, many doubted it and like the early internet. Then most people focus on the negative side more than the positive
side, so few people own Bitcoin when it first appears. One of them is that some people think Bitcoin is widely used for illegal and prohibited activities,
when in fact fiat is mostly used for illegal activities. This can actually be an afterthought for all of us, don't judge something new only from
the negative side. We have to compare the whole, so we judge fairly and will not make the wrong decision.

To be honest about this issue, it normal for people to feel skeptical about an innovation that's seems complicate to them but the government FUD and stance toward Bitcoin because of it decentralization in nature is what influence the negativity.
I just love the potential of Bitcoin because in the end the same people that said negative statement about Bitcoin will later say it a miracle and better than gold.

[temple]

To get a better conclusion, i would suggest to change the concept "Crypto" by the term "Blockchain" so we can make a fair comparison. As crypto impact are somehow limitd to financial use while the blockchain revolution may be more huge than the internet itself aat it's early years .
Actually, and even by this mass adoption for cryptocurrencies, i think it's somehow similar to the Amazon at its early days with the same number of users actually crypto has, as described in the second Tweet mentioned in OP .

And I would probably substitute "blockchain" for "decentralization movement". A blockchain can be centralized and be nothing more but a database with a single point of failure. What we are seeing now is decentralization as it was never achievable before. True decentralization means that actually there is nobody who can shut a system down. Obviously, Bitcoin accomplishes that.
It is similar to the early Internet in the sense that the potential for technological transformation inherent in Blockchain might be comparable to the transformational power of the Internet itself. I guess that is what people mean when they say it.

[willhuber]

I would rather say ‘not really’. When the internet came it was completely new and it was one of the major advancement of technology. The volume of tech savvy people at time was less as compared to the time when Bitcoin and crypto came into existence. So, I believe it would not be like the early internet but some similarity is certainly there.

[aprilnot]

when the internet was first used publicly there were a lot of people who were against it. consider the internet as something that is not really needed. many articles that discuss the internet related to energy issues. bitcoin and crypto looks the same as the internet. This technology was initially rejected, even banned in some countries. bitcoin has always been associated with environmental issues and electrical energy. basically it looks the same. what is happening to bitcoin, has happened in the past, when the internet was introduced to the public. in the future we will see bitcoin become a part of life. just as the internet is now an important part, bitcoin will also be like that.

[Tumanggor]

in general rejection and skepticism on Bitcoin of course it's like the early internet
but the enemy of Bitcoin is the bank and the government, it is a formidable opponent, unlike the early internet

here our struggle as Bitcoin users must be tougher against FUD and the hatred they will continue to spread on Bitcoin
proud of the Bitcoin community which is getting stronger every day against FUD, let's make Bitcoin shiner

[sapnu]

If you’ve been following Bitcoin and crypto for more than a few months, you will have almost certainly heard someone comparing cryptocurrency — and blockchain — to the early internet. Well, there are many parallels between cryptocurrency today and the internet at the turn of millennium, not least in terms of both resulting in bullish market activity that skeptics regard(ed) as a bubble. However, it’s still far too early to say just how impactful cryptocurrency will be, and it’s arguable that the data comparing crypto to the internet has been misinterpreted and exaggerated.What are the similarities and differences between the two.
Some tweets comparing cryptocurrency and the Internet:
https://twitter.com/CoinCornerDanny/status/1408342142657892355
https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1408134902130917378

Well, at some point we can really compare the two based on what they went through before they become regulated all over the world. The early internet has been seen as a threat at first and many people are against it, likewise with crypto wherein there are countries that considers it as an economical threat and the government is against it cause if not, then it would have been legalized already and there are no countries that are banning the mining and the services of it. It's natural to people to fear something new that could make a huge impact someday since they are not yet certain if it would be in positive way or the other.

[thecodebear]

Crypto is obviously not AS BIG as the internet because....it's the internet! Crypto is literally just part of the internet. Nothing will ever be as big as the internet.

But crypto is an entirely new technology that represents a bold new step for money technology for humanity - it is a major technological revolution, similar to the development of the internet. Bitcoin is the driving force of this new technology, and Ethereum and a few others will likely play major roles as well. Also just like there was a lot of hyped up useless things on the internet in the 90s and early 2000s, 99%+ of cryptos on the market today (and since the advent of the altcoin) are utter trash, even major ones - just look at stuff like XRP and Doge, these are the hyped of internet stocks of the 90s that crashed into oblivion. But the internet endured and grew far larger, just as 99% of coins will go towards zero against Bitcoin and Ethereum, but a few that are around today will grow massively and new ones will be made in the future that will also become major forced in crypto.

I'd say Bitcoin is like email. It was the earliest and most obvious killer app of the internet. It's simple and has remained simple compared to much more complex things that have been built on the internet in the past 30 years, but email remains as relevant as ever and a cornerstone of internet usage, even as more advanced text and chat apps and social media and video chat have all sprung up since then, none of them actually replace email. Then smart contracts are like http - they're the web. There isn't really a good comparison of smart contract platforms in the internet universe. I mean I guess maybe you can kind of compare them to the way AOL (for a time), Google, and Facebook have become large internet platforms that cover a range of uses but that doesn't quite capture it, because Ethereum and whatever other smart contract platforms will end up becoming important in the future, are closer to the pure infrastructure of http than the application-infrastructure of Google/Facebook, also in the fact that smart contract platforms are more open for anyone to build on than something like Google/Facebook.



So yeah in summary, I'd say blockchain is like the internet but obviously not AS big, as blockchain is literally a subset of the internet itself. And Bitcoin is like email, not a specific email platform but email as a technology itself, but you can actually invest in this fundamental technology. And smart contract platforms are like halfway between the http protocol itself and application-infrastructure companies like Google and Facebook, which again you can invest in these smart contract platforms ever since they came online rather than after they've IPO'd. 99% of altcoins, even plenty that are today in the top 10/20 cryptos, are the dotcom stocks of the 90s that are only worth anything because the crypto investment space is still immature and finding it's legs so plenty of money has been thrown at trash that will eventually go towards zero, and many already have over the years. So yeah bitcoin/crypto is sorta like the internet except one in which you can invest in the base layer technologies from the moment they come online. And in this comparison crypto is still definitely 90's era internet, though in the next few years I think we'll see that analogous crossover from 90's era to 00's era internet in crypto as Bitcoin becomes more normalized in banks, wall st, and as payment through finance companies, and once Ethereum completes it's upgrade to 2.0 and is able to vastly expand it's usage. Perhaps by 2025 I think we'll be in the Amazon, Google, Facebook era of crypto, in which major uses for crypto is normalized and we'll see rapid expansion of crypto on the order of hundred of millions of people per year for a few years - the vertical slope on the S-curve.