This is a bit philosophical but the more I understand about Bitcoin the more I think we should see it as a black swan. A black swan as defined on Wikipedia is an unexpected event that has profound impact on society.
The key points
- First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
- Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'.
- Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.
First it was thought to be impossible to have a way to transfer value without trusting a third party. There was numerous attempt that each paved the way to Bitcoin but they all missed something. We had B-gold, smart contract, proof of work, etc but they could not achieve a fully trustless system and they all remained theoretical or failed.
On Halloween eve 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis in an obscure internet forum a previously unknown person published a white paper called "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". Although it was meet with skepticism initially a group of enthusiast would start the network that would later store securely wealth that is now worth several billions of dollars.
Second, it has a tremendous impact, For the first time in history human could store their wealth without relying on trusting banks in a decentralized manner that cannot easily be stopped. The network that started initially as the magic internet money now can threaten well established currencies and erode the power of some of the most powerful entities in the world. Just like religion was separated from the state we could see something similar with a separation between the state and the money.
This invention is the equivalent of the printing press in middle age, it changed the rules of the game. Weirdly because of our inherent selfish nature this technology then trick you into becoming a religious zealot and trying to stack and hold more Bitcoin, start projects around it and ultimately making its network effect stronger. Whoever came up with this idea had a deep understanding of human nature and what kind of incentives were needed to make a project like this successful.
Third, We can rationalize this invention, some might even call it trivial, just a bunch of technologies put together although you cannot deny its profound impact on the world.
A lot of black swan events presented as example in economic books or online are in my opinion trivial or not really ground breaking. For instance we know a big pandemic is possible and periodically it happens, or even the financial crisis of 2008 was not a surprised, those things happen in cycle and will continue.
Just like the invention of the printing press, the discovery of antibiotics, the creation of the atomic bomb, Bitcoin will have a profound impact on our World due to its disruptive nature.
