There’s a key difference: ML was solving real problems from day one - not everything, not as well as some boosters claimed but real products did useful work. Bitcoin a decade in has … ?
What are you implying exactly: that there are no problems with present day currencies, or that Bitcoin doesn't solve any of those problems?
> ML was solving real problems from day one
No, machine learning developped slowly over decades before it could be fit into practical applications.
Bitcoin's launch was more than the launch of a product, it was the first time the ideas in its paper were actually put together. If we put cryptocurrency on the ML R&D timeline, we'd be in 1970 right now.
Of course, in the present day it solves more niche problems than ML which everybody uses through Google, but the fact that it's already used by real people at all is remarkable.
My point was that Bitcoin could disappear tomorrow and nobody other than speculators would have any impact on their lives.
Note that the ML comparison was specific to the last decade mentioned by the person I replied to, not a history of the field. It’s possible that in the future we’ll look back at this period similarly to the first AI winter but I think even that would be disappointing to most participants because whatever succeeds won’t make them rich the way everyone in the space is hoping.
