Sunday Summary, NOV30
A week in review from the Editor
In 1999
a friend drags you to a clunky beige computer to show you something called “electronic mail.” He logs into a Pine client, types a message in plain text, hits send, and waits thirty seconds for a confirmation beep.
You glance at the heavy plastic fax machine humming in the corner (the one that prints your bank statements on thermal paper in only two minutes!), and you think: Why would anyone trade convenience for this mess? Just put your message in an envelope and let the mailman take it away! Geeze!
Yet,this “electronic mail” is sort of better—
no stamps, no envelopes, instant delivery, but the interface feels like a punishment. Fast-forward a quarter century, and the only people mourning paper mail are the ones who never learned to attach a PDF (I know a few).
Bitcoin is living through the same awkward adolescence.
The core invention, digital scarcity enforced by math rather than men with guns, solves a problem most people don’t yet feel acutely (obviously?): the slow, invisible theft of purchasing power through monetary inflation.
In daily life, however, swiping a card or tapping a phone is frictionless. By contrast, custody, seed phrases, transaction confirmations, and the ever-present specter of typing one wrong character and kissing your savings goodbye is not a gentle on-ramp.
This mismatch is what makes Bitcoin simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting.
We want to talk about the separation of money and state, the first time in history that a bearer asset can move at the speed of light without permission, the quiet revolution of a system that can’t be printed at 3 a.m. by a panicked committee. Instead, dinner conversation stalls on “but Grandma can’t use a twelve-word seed phrase.”
In truth, the critics are right about the interface and wrong about the importance of the problem being solved. Yet, the arc of disruptive technologies bends toward simplicity (always later than the pioneers wish and sooner than the skeptics predict).
The same way Netscape turned into Gmail.
The same way dial-up modems gave way to fiber; the scaffolding is already being erected. As freelance writer and researcher Gwern aptly noted in the 2011 essay, Bitcoin is Worse is Better,
…the ugly inefficient prototype of Bitcoin successfully created a secure decentralized digital currency, which can wait indefinitely for success, and this was enough to eventually lead to adoption, improvement, and growth into a secure global digital currency.“
Today, lightning wallets now open with a click. Custodial solutions from publicly traded companies let institutions hold keys they’ll never touch. Stablecoins ride on Bitcoin’s security while offering dollar-like ease. Strike sends remittances to Africa cheaper than Western Union ever dreamed.
In El Salvador, a teenager buys a pupusa with a QR code and doesn’t know (or care) that the settlement layer is a teenage protocol forged in the aftermath of a financial crisis. Inevitably, the interface advances.
Convenience (and innovation) are finally achieved.