Bitcoin is pay day for the old time geeks who built the Internet and have seen this before.

I hear that.

Been working towards this moment for almost three decades (I wonder when bitcoin is going to be called the new-new-new-economy /chortle). Bitcoin isn't going to fix capitalism but at least we finally have a currency not based on trust (as humans generally can't be). Bitcoin is the first digital autonomous and distributed comptroller for the internet, that's a pretty big deal.

Bitcoin uses both people and code to automate and leverage wisdom of crowds without the traditional top down corporate structure. Bitcoin is in many ways an AI that uses our meat computers to make decisions, the same wisdom of crowds that makes reddit valuable just a different algorithm more fit for purpose.

While the internet sill has a long way to go information continues to "want to be free" despite irrationally aggressive and expensive attempts to revert that tendency though brute force, nearly all have failed (torrents for example, though that's just the tip of a unfathomably large iceberg). Only OSS code is capable of being ahead in the security war, and now that it's glaringly obvious many underfunded over relied upon security libraries are finally getting the attention and funding they deserve. The internet is becoming reliable because it must.

Bitcoin is the first information that really does want to be (pseudo)private, and it was only achieved by setting certain other information free as a work around (by reversing SOP, push vs pull). Blockchains are the first "right way" we have discovered to create trustless systems (theoretically). We never had the ablility to do money right, we have been using kludges all along.

Fucking genius hack if you ask me, right up there with Richard Stallman using copyright to not only make a better public domain than public domain, but popularized the concept of law hacking. Using the legal system to circumvent it and/or improve it, despite the intended results of imposed rules implemented by the least altruistic of our race.

Though that is a testament to humanity, we actually did manage to fake until we made it (this far at least). It's also why I don't think bitcoin needs to be absolutely perfect to work, only better, but time will tell.

Every time a new communication technology is discovered freedom expands, backlogs of new ideas are shared, progress happens. Now it's happening all over again, another fundamental form of human communication (markets) is being delegated to the internet at large followed by a great burst of freedom. And developers, shit's hot right now, sooner than later these "dumb ass teens" will be real adults, with real experience, and real power. While a lot of anarcho-capitalists are jizzing their pants right now, I'm looking at a horizon far more interesting as the same process happens to Bitcoin itself. Just wait until Communism/Socialism color coin is a thing, implemented as a DAC, that's when things are going to get really interesting. And then after that, I can't even imagine, something something Star Trek I hope.

I think Winston Churchill summarized best how I feel right now, at this moment of furious technological change, having been around for a good portion of the beginning (cut my teeth on Slack 1, use to BBS and MUD, 4 digit /. UID, "I would like to subscribe to your newsletter", goat.se, yada, yada, yada...) watching us come this far though every little baby step from the Commodore on up has been alienating due to so much FUD like "Y2K was entirely made up", "the GPL is unconstitutional", the SCO group, "Bitcoin is illegal" and so forth. But that's slowly changing (possible upcoming S curve?), as everything is becoming cross corroborated.

"This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning." --Winston Churchill

Things are only going to get more interesting from here on out. But I for one am very excited about humanities future despite the apparently long odds.

TL;DR: Bitcoin is the Internet's IPO, but it's been such a long time coming it's hard to see what's really going on.