the first use-case of bitcoin was as an anonymous currency for illicit underworld/black market stuff on the darkweb. i think only the early nerds and believers in the technology behind cryptocurrency were seeing the wider, society/market-altering potential of the stuff. for most people it was presented as a 'oh, you want to buy drugs or guns? go to this website, buy this anonymous currency at a rate of 20 per dollar, and then go and do your transaction here'. and even those people were a kind of tiny, in-the-know minority. it wasn't exactly obvious how to even navigate and do any of those things to the uninitiated.
for a full 5 years bitcoin was just considered a sort of accessory to the 'silkroad online' type culture. it was for buying drugs at the consumer level and money laundering at the dealer level. a purely instrumental tool in a multi-step process of hiding your tracks. nobody saw it at a ticket to vast speculative wealth except for the egg-heads who had helped devise it.
for a full 5 years bitcoin was just considered a sort of accessory to the 'silkroad online' type culture. it was for buying drugs at the consumer level and money laundering at the dealer level. a purely instrumental tool in a multi-step process of hiding your tracks. nobody saw it at a ticket to vast speculative wealth except for the egg-heads who had helped devise it.
Last edited by uziq (2025-01-15 08:18:42)
