Bitcoin Q&A: Bridging the gap between geeks & mass markets

Keywords/phrases: Building a bridge to the mass markets. This is a ‘New Thing.’ It is the fifth iteration of money. It took a long time to go from precious metals to pieces of paper to pieces of plastic. If we can get bitcoin to the masses in twenty years, we will have greatly accelerated the pace. When you change these fundamental technologies, it takes a while for society to change with it. We have all this new terminology and nobody even really knows what “blockchain” means anymore, because there’s a lot of marketing behind confusing us about what it means. It’s going to take time to understand how this technology works, why it works, how it’s different, and what benefits it gives. There are 4 billion people who have nothing in terms of financial inclusion and access to technology. Money is an empowering technology; we bridge the gap by making it easier to use, easier to secure, explain what the words mean, simplify some of the words, simplify the experience, code better user interfaces — and gradually as people need it, they will choose to use it. In 1989 it took me two hours to compile the Unix mail program in order to send an email that would take three days to cross the internet. Twenty years later, my mother replicated this experience by swiping her finger on a new iPad. When we get Bitcoin there, the mainstream will be ready to do it.

This is part of a talk which took place on September 20th 2016 at the @SFBTCMeetup in San Francisco, California: https://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Bitcoin-Social/events/228473660/

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