Who You Gonna Believe, Them or Your Lying Eyes ...
Do you notice many blue dots above? Of those who have been exposed to Bitcoin over the past year, most weren't expecting those dots to be there.
Bitcoin received its first burst of publicity from a post on Slashdot nearly a year ago. The chart from Google Trends shows this July, 2010 event. That is the point at which the Bitcoin train left the station.
Some of the comments from the Slashdot community in response to that post include:
Is there some actual upside to this system which I'm not getting?
As it stands now it sounds like an extremely bad idea just from an economics standpoint, never mind any technical arguments.
The system is secure as long as honest nodes [control 50% of the network]: Good luck with that..
The second major Slashdotting showed that this audience of technical people was no more ready for Bitcoin by December, 2010 either: "I just don't understand how one gets from worthless digi-bits online, to something I can buy groceries with."
The the third Slashdotting had occurred when Bitcoin first hit parity with the Dollar, in February, 2011. Bitcoin was obviously not going away and by now had reached the "Then they laugh at you" phase:
"...I only accept payments in Beenz or Flooz" was one reply, for instance.
In March, 2011 the fourth Slashdotting yielded some who were slightly more curious: "It's a nice hobby and probably someone is enjoying programming it" yet a defensive stance was maintained: "I just don't see it ever gaining traction".
By the fifth Slashdotting one might think that this decentralized and anonymous digital currency's growth would start to win over the community. For the most part, that wasn't happening. The comments do show however that at least some from the community were starting to think through the issues though: "Deflation is a really. really, bad idea" and "That won't scale".
You weren't supposed to see blue dots today because the blue dots represent individual transactions flowing through the bitcoin network and "they" either didn't want this day to come or didn't see how a decentralized currency was such a game changer. They believe the currency is deflationary and as such will remain a novelty and there will not be all these blue dots. Bitcoins are not backed by anything so they believe these digi-bits are "worthless" and thus trading and exchanging for them would be nonsensical. These dots, according to them, simply should not be there.
But look for yourself those dots are there and they represent very real transactions.
Today there are more blue dots than were there yesterday. And yesterday there were more blue dots than were seen for the day before.
The uptake Bitcoin is seeing is not unlike the relatively stealthy track that the web took in its early years until 1995 when Netscape IPO'd and Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates could dismiss the web no more: "The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules" he wrote.
Days ago Jason Calacanis launched a flare alerting his readers and suggesting they begin studying up. "Bottom line," he concluded, "the world is going to be turned over by bitcoins".
Bitcoin is open and universal. It can be called open because it is built with open source software and transacts through an open and transparent protocol. It can be called universal because the currency is identical everywhere -- from Kansas to Korea, from Sweden to Sydney. Mass collaboration on Bitcoin is occurring globally.
Do those doubting Bitcoin know what happens when the concepts of open and universal take charge?
There will be plenty of opportunities for the doubters to change their opinion. Perhaps these blue dots tell us way more than these doubters' words ever will.
