The Internet of Money

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Bitcoin isn’t currency. That’s a really important thing to realize. Currency is an app that runs on the bitcoin network. Bitcoin is the internet of money, and currency is just the first application. Today, there are a thousand companies writing the next app. Those companies are hiring tens of thousands of people in one of the most vibrant industries we have seen in the last two decades. In 2014, bitcoin startups will receive more than $250 million of investment. What’s remarkable about that is that it’s faster than the rate of investment in the internet in 1995. We are ahead of the curve. Bitcoin is growing faster than Twitter did in the first three years. Bitcoin is growing faster than Facebook grew in the first few years. The reason for that is because every misfit, weirdo, freak, or programmer from anywhere in the world can now connect to bitcoin without asking anyone’s permission and take their weirdo misfit idea and build a new financial service. A new banking application. A new shopping application. A new escrow application. And that’s exactly what people are doing. They are building things that are innovative, new, and brilliant. Things that we’ve never seen in banking before. Things that wouldn’t get past the first planning meeting in your average bank because they’d get shot down.