Topic: another reason for the possible success of bitcoin - a broad historical view (Read 2048 times)

Except those block rewards 

This is the basic premise that makes Bitcoin objectively superior to every other money accountant methods ever combined that naysayers tend to not fully grasp.

Nice writeup especially the historal part. This is what I would agree the most. One more thing is that nobody can print more money and bring down the value if our holdings

But why do these alternative internet enabled economies need Bitcoin?

Microfinance doesn't need Bitcoin.  Crowd funding doesn't need Bitcoin either.

As a matter of fact.  It would be more cumbersome with Bitcoin because fewer can participate and you have the bad smell of anarcho capitalist libertarian that's associated a Bitcoin.

The only economy I can think that benefits from Bitcoin is darker markets.  And I'm not even so sure after DPR got busted.  The prosecution used blockchsin to link him to Silk Road

my definition of cooperation is very broad. in order to participate at the market as a company the owners/employees/lawyers of that company must agree on thousands of rules about how the game has to be played - they share the same definitions about money, ownership, legal matters, about how to communicate - a tightly woven web of rules and beliefs.

It should be noted that thinkers such as Adam Smith discounted the idea that it is cooperation that brings economic wealth. Rather it is an emergent property of many self-interested actors motivated by profit - the Invisible Hand.

The mechanism is simple everybody wants to maximize profit, if it is more profitable to make shoes (because people demand shoes and not enough shoemakers) then I will make shoes. This adds to the supply bringing down the profitability. Competition also drives selling price down towards cost of production which incentivizes technological change.
If it is no longer profitable to make shoes I exit that business and start making Pizza. By exiting the shoe business there is less competition and less supply normalizing the rate of profit there again.

But this is far from cooperation. Although it has the effect of cooperation - the right amount of shoes and the right amount of pizzas get produced and for the right price.

where i am located, it would be absolutely inconvenient/almost impossible to actually live without a bank account. especially when you are a merchant. bankers are gatekeepers, and they could have gotten along well with society if they hadn't choosen to become so absolutely greedy with it. it is a service to provide, but all they were concerned about was milking their customers. they abused their position and that made the public much more open to competition.

Banks don't exist to be the wealthy, elite organization, it's a consequence of running a very successful business. You're not required to do business with banks. You can keep your money in your home, in cash or gold or some other fungible asset. You use a bank because it's convenient and provides security for you (insurance if your money is physically stolen.)

The same convenience exists within the bitcoin world, see coinbase and other companies that offer bank like services. If these companies do well they will become wealthy. Will this cause you to shun these organizations? Will bitcoin then become the "elite evil' that you see in banks?

How is it not applied allready, just in a much lower scale than what we wish for? You can allready buy pretty much anything with bitcoin, and about 10% lower price than you would pay for if you were paying with fiat.
That is because there are little or no fees for credit/debit card transaction, so its much better for small bussinises also, not having to purchase and setup anything except a bitcoin terminal, which is virtualy free.
The global impact of bitcoin on monetary system as we know it hasnt been made yet, but were going in that direction, and with time...

cheers

This theory is applicable to many historical evolvements. Based on this theory, crypto currency is the necessary tools in the future. But when and how it is applied in our real life is not known yet by anyone!

one of the most important reasons for the development of the human culture is our ability to cooperate with large groups of individuals. the hunters and gatherers of the stoneage had difficulties to get organized when the group reached a certain number of individuals. members of a group had to have personal ties to all the other members. if the number of individuals went over a certain level, the group just split. 

after the neolithic revolution took place humans learned to cooperate not only with individuals that they knew personally but even with strangers. prophets came along and created religions, merchants came along and established rules for trade, conquerers came along and created kingdoms - all of them not possible if man was not able to cooperate in masses with complete strangers, that they have never met in life. (because they believed in the same ideas that some new class of thiefs came up with to justify why they  (the new elite class) is superior, needs not to work on the fields and living of the work the peasants)

basically nothing has changes since then. the elite still tells us why they earn the biggest share of the cake, while contributing nothing to create it. what has changed is that people are able to cooperate in even larger numbers, and this rise of ability to cooperate is a historic constant.  organizations/companies/imperiums tend to get bigger and bigger.

the internet today is a nice invention and radically changed our communication and information processing abilities. it lets people cooperate beyond companies, religions, nation states but it lacks "real" power. to share information can be powerful in an abstract way, but not in an immediate way.
here is where bitcoin enters the playground. we all agree that wealth/funds/money means power. with bitcoin the internet itself becomes powerful, a force that can get things done/funded. even better, the distributed p2p network lets - for the first time in history - people from all over the world cooperate without taking part of the wealthy elite organizations like banks and governments. for example a producer of goods/services/crops can, for the first time ever sell his goods globally while denying the old elite a part of their share.

and since the growing ability to cooperate is a historical constant and one of the driving forces of our cultural evolution, this new tool will get used. it may disrupt a lot more than just the finance sector.