Historic-Philosphic interesting article about the 'black swan phenomen'
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/11784/bitcoin-black-swan-event/
The basics tenets for his Black Swan Theory come in three major criteria. We’ll list the criteria and evaluate whether bitcoin meets the criteria.
1. The event is a surprise:
Before Bitcoin, there were no examples of a currency unbacked by a nation that could be transferred to anybody in the world without trust. Before the introduction of the internet it would have been impossible. Outside of a handful of extreme fringe Cryptologists the idea was ridiculous for governments and banking institutions to comprehend. There were no plans to control it or stop it, let alone take it serious enough until it was too late to kill it.
Number one qualification: Yes.2. The event has a major effect.The currency has thus far reached at its peak about 12 billion dollars in total worth. It was only about 2.5% of the value of Google the search engine company. However now most, if almost all countries in the world know of bitcoin and many have issued warnings or bans for its banking systems to not use it. Bitcoin has created a swell of world-wide supporters and a tight-knit community. It has politicians, bankers, regulators, investors, and scientists scrambling to understand it, control it, profit from it and use it as a catalyst to change the world.
Number two qualification: Yes.
3. After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected.If we look back at two widely recognized Black Swan Events, we can evaluate the hindsight rationalization. With the Internet, we can now see that because of all the personal computers that were purchased in the 80s and early 90s…it was OBVIOUS that they were going to eventually going to be connected to share in in electronic mail and read the news. For 9/11 afterwards, “experts” suddenly connected the dots of rising anti-Americanism in the radical parts of the Muslim world. They suddenly “remembered” the bungled attempt to bring the World Trade Center buildings down with a car bomb in the underground parking lot a few years earlier and it was “obvious” that this same kind of thing was going to happen again.
Is bitcoin yet being analyzed and rationalized using a lens of history? Are we at a point yet where we have enough data available for businesses to create risk mitigation programs? Perhaps the jury is still out on this one. It’s still in the beginning stages and history has yet to decide where this bitcoin experiment will sit in the annals of history.
Number three qualification: – Undecided.
Bitcoin may be that Black Swan we’ve been waiting for.
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