The Greatest Value of Bitcoin
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Hint: It’s behind the launch of Web 3.0
Back in the early 90s, while working for one of the earliest internet companies, I remember enthusiastically encouraging business people to migrate onto the online world using DOS prompts and modems. My advice back then was that the internet would, one day, change the world of business with its valuable tools like email, Telnet and FTP, so they should become early adopters of this emergent technology to stay one step ahead. It was until a few months later that the first web browser Mosaic was announced by Marc Andreessen, marking the launch of Web 1.0. This first ever ‘graphical user interface’ (GUI) browser was a huge deal, and made the newly-created World Wide Web accessible to the non-technical world. Today’s youth can’t fathom a world without ‘Googling’ any question, ordering takeaway food at the push of a button or spending their pocket money online in the e-commerce world of Web 2.0.
Now we’re on the brink of another critical ‘technical turning point’. We’re witnessing the birth of Web 3.0, built on a blockchain foundation, that will change our world in ways we’re only beginning to fathom. The most important benefit Web 3.0 brings to society is that the human frailties of greed and dishonesty can at last be kept in check like never before in history.
What is Web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is the term for the creation of a superior, digital infrastructure being built with blockchain technology, which has already brought unparalleled improvements in transaction transparency, speed and operating costs for all commercial, financial and legal activities that take place each day around the world. And new applications for this technology are being uncovered and developed every week.
So what is the technical innovation that, like Mosaic, has officially launched the new Web 3.0? Bitcoin. While Bitcoin was not the first attempt at creating a digital currency, it was the first decentralised and encrypted means of transferring value directly between two parties that didn’t know/trust each other. Since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, blockchain developments have exploded from single use as crypto-currencies into a multitude of innovative, real world applications that utilise encryption and unchangeable (immutable), decentralised ledgers for any…
