Bitcoin akin to the Internet 20 years ago, digital currency executive says
Bitcoin today is like the Internet of 20 years ago, showing immense promise but in need of much more development, a digital currency executive said Monday, kicking off the Inside Bitcoins conference.
As the first digital system offering the possibility to store and transfer currency value in “a completely distributed manner,” it holds the promise to become a huge, global system, allowing people to securely exchange money through email or some other digital means at no cost, without involving a central bank, said Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle.
“The early technologies were crude, but they served the basis for worldwide commerce,” Allaire said of the Internet, circa 1994. “We’re at this point in evolution. These transformations take a long time.” Overall, it could take Bitcoin about 10 years to posses the full technology stack for mainstream usage.