Let me set the stage for a minute. Back in the early 90s, during the dial up days, you couldn't make a phone call AND surf the web (or send an email through AOL) at the same time. And because of that, it was way easier to just pick up the phone and call whoever it was you were emailing anyway. But the technology was still cool and exciting and new.
Back then, Alex Mashinsky figured out that our voice, our phone calls, would become an application on the internet. He knew that connection times, and the method of connecting to the internet would all change so that our phone calls could be packaged and transmitted through the internet.
He was right. He has over 30 patents to prove it. And he founded an extremely successful business that led the way for VoIP to become what it is today. Now 3 billion people all over the world use VoIP for free.
These days he says that the internet we use today… the whole internet… will become application on the blockchain.
Sound crazy? So did VoIP about 25 years ago.
The way he sees it, he says “the largest, fastest network always wins”. And right now, he sees that as the Ethereum blockchain. He says, “it’s the largest supercomputer on the planet”.
Will Ethereum be the ultimate killer app or THE blockchain that the internet will exist on top of? Who knows? But Alex Mashinsky has been right in the past and he seems to have great insight into where the technology is headed.
He talked to me on the Speaking of Crypto podcast and he has some incredible insights and perspective. Another one of the most interesting things he talked to me about was Bitcoin as an asset.
When you look at Bitcoin from the perspective of a traditional asset, if you chart its growth for the 10 years that it’s been in existence, Bitcoin has outperformed everything else.
Mashinsky says, “You have to remember that the Bitcoin started at zero, so if you plot in the chart of the Bitcoin versus the Dollar, the Dollar has lost 99.99% of its value since the Bitcoin was created – 99.99% of its value by definition, because of Bitcoin started at zero. So, looking at the last few ups and downs is completely irrelevant in the context of how much the Bitcoin has done better than any other asset class. There’s nothing you could have invested in the last 10 years that performed better than the Bitcoin – nothing, not a single asset class.”
Whether the Bitcoin blockchain or Ethereum blockchain or something else becomes the next network, like the internet is now, that we stack everything else on top of is unclear. But I’m banking on Alex Mashinsky’s prediction. I think the internet will become an application on some giant blockchain.
Alex Mashinsky on the Speaking of Crypto podcast
http://speakingofcrypto.com/049-mashinsky/