I think bitcoin is a really innovative idea (and kicking myself for not acting on my initial instincts when I read about it on HN in 2010 - when mining software said "please don't use your GPU"!) but I don't buy this "people laughed at the internet too, so bitcoin must be important!" line.
Why? Really, I would like to know why you think this. Append-only data structures have existed almost since the dawn of computing. Making it distributed and trustless doesn't seem to solve any real problems, which is why over a decade since they entered the public consciousness they are used for almost nothing interesting, and nothing that couldn't be done better in a centralised system.
Tell that to all the people that are either denied bank accounts, denied loans, have had their Paypal accounts frozen or funds held for apparently no reason, etc.
> which is why over a decade since they entered the public consciousness they are used for almost nothing interesting, and nothing that couldn't be done better in a centralised system
The infrastructure and tools are being developed. And please don't say you've been hearing that for 10 years. Literally everything needs to be recreated from the ground up for a new protocol and financial system. This takes a lot of discussion on proposals, development, and testing. Not to mention that all improvements are being done on a live system so everything needs to be backwards compatible.
If you don't see the current monetary systems as a problem, then I guess you don't really have a way to understand Bitcoin.
I think it's one of the most important innovations of our civilization; a 'next step', if you will.
Personally, it solves my problem of storing value of my work indefinitely.
That's not to say there are none, but a fuck ton of people have tried to come up with cool ideas and approximately zero worked out, like at all.
