Nagle?
More or less, yes. I still haven't seen a convincing use case for Bitcoin. The Silk Road and China bubbles only lasted until the relevant regulators could stop them. As a payment mechanism, Bitcoin is mediocre. Bitcoin for remittances didn't go anywhere.
Bitcoin never became the petty cash of the Internet. And Bitcoin is an ever bigger crook magnet than I expected. There's still no Bitcoin exchange with proper auditing, and the failure rate of Bitcoin exchanges is well over 50% now.
I was expecting Bitcoin to become a currency used for little stuff like music tracks and in-game purchases. That would be useful, but it never happened.
Clifford, is that you?
http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306These things take time. A lot more than 6 years. Sheesh.
(you're also wrong about various assertions, but I tire of dissecting your posts)
The Newsweek article is awesome, thanks.
How can one short article be wrong about so many details?
You're welcome. It's easy to forget for how long the internet sucked. Arpanet launched in 1969. Mr. Stoll was writing in 1995, seeing effectively no material influence on society having occurred in the intervening 25 years, despite the grandiose predictions of myriad visionaries.
I'll bet Mr. Stoll wishes he'd waited another 5 years or so before declaring defeat.
The optimists are often right; but it does often take longer than they expect.
And ICYMI, here's the famous "fax machine" quote from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman from mid-1998 (which, unlike Mr. Stoll, is inexcusably late):
By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.
http://web.archive.org/web/19980610100009/www.redherring.com/mag/issue55/economics.html
