Robert Breedlove
Robert Breedlove is one of the top thought leaders in the Bitcoin community today. Recently her wrote a compelling piece detailing the history of the number zero and its relation to Bitcoin. At the Crypto Asia Summit, Robert shared this piece in video format.
During his presentation, after going through the history and importance of number zero, he relates it all back to Bitcoin and how the number zero is part of Bitcoins ancestry. We took this five minute clip from his presentation which starts out describing how computer programming uses the number zero, which was needed to create Bitcoin.
The focus of the clip however, is how Breedlove describes why Bitcoin can never be replaced. There have been attempts such as Bitcoin Cash which hasn’t really offered Bitcoin much competition as of yet. If take a look at Bitcoin Cash price compared to Bitcoin, it is obvious that it has not had the amount of demand that Bitcoin has had. Not even close!
One of the reasons for Bitcoins dominance is from a term created by Nassim Taleb called Path Dependence. In broad terms this means that the order of events matters and once starting down a particular path, in can become almost impossible to break away from social political inertia. Bitcoin was released when people had no concept of it, giving it the opportunity to grow organically. If a new Bitcoin was developed today it would have low security as the mining network would have to be developed from scratch, low liquidity, and low network effect. These are all factors that give money value. After looking into Bitcoin Cash after it forked from Bitcoin, Robert argues that the discovery of Bitcoin was a one time thing.
You can watch his full presentation here.
