https://medium.com/@nic__carter/bitcoin-at-12-f6fce39cb9bb"Twelve years ago today, on Halloween 2008, exactly 491 years after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, the idea of Bitcoin was born. More accurately, you could say it was baptized. The network itself wouldn't exist in a truly live and peer-to-peer fashion until the following January. Block 1, the first 'true' block, was mined on the ninth, and digital cash pioneer Hal Finney received the first transaction on the tenth of the month."
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"Bitcoin has often confused people. It's perhaps one of the most misunderstood phenomena of the last decade. If you lack sufficient ideological and historical context, you most likely consider it a complete boondoggle or a bizarre, unnecessary waste of computing power and effort. This is the default position. Most people in the West rarely give any thought to monetary policy or banking why should they? Their currencies depreciate at a slow, barely perceptible rate. Their bank arrangements work fairly well, and they don't find themselves frozen out of the financial system too often."
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"Recently, the great monetary historian George Selgin pointed out that Bitcoin was unlikely to displace the dollar anytime soon, because monetary network effects are incredibly powerful and enduring. And I fully agree. The difference between us is simply one of time horizons. I am willing to be patient. I believe Bitcoiners have this in common. They recognize that they have undertaken a near-hopeless task. Creating a global, neutral, apolitical settlement medium and standard of value will not happen overnight. We have barely begun the project. We are only twelve years in. But we have made some great progress so far. So we push forward.
What's the measure of a healthy society? Arguably, it's a willingness to undertake long term projects, whose completion their originators will never live to see. Virtually anything worth building takes time to build. Enduring institutions don't come easy."
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Great read from Nic Carter 2 years ago.
