The Rome we know has come from Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance to today’s Modern time.
Hello dreamers, doers, men, and women,
I am super excited to write this to you.
Last week in my first newsletter, I introduced two theses on how to be Financially informed, Technologically agile, and Socially connected. If you haven’t read it yet, you can do so here.
I got an overwhelming positive response, and I want to say, Thank you to each one of you. This is the journey we all take to be better humans and make our world a better place to live.
In this week’s issue, I want to take you to one of the most important(at least in some aspects) inventions in the history of our human civilization and another one that might follow similarly.
But before that, I want to remind you that great things take time to build. Whether building a city, starting a company, building a career, or finding your true love, it takes years.
In some cases, it even takes centuries to thousands of years.
This was what Rome looked like some 2000 years ago.
And here is how Rome looks today.
We all know that Rome wasn’t built in a day. The Rome we know has come from Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance to today’s Modern time.
But it has stood the test of time, wars, destruction, conflicts, and political chaos. Rome stands beautifully today. (Hey, I have never been to Rome, it is on my list though).
Coming to one of the most important inventions of our time. The Internet.
Today more than 5 billion people on earth use the internet.
But internet was firstly invented back in the 1960s by the US government for military use in response to the cold war.
And the first ever message was delivered on October 29, 1969, by ARPAnet, between a computer in a research lab at UCLA and Stanford.
And the email that we use today was invented by computer programmer Tomlinson in 1971.
He put an “@,” which we still use today.
By 1991, we have the world wide web, the first web page that helps to broadcast and read information.
After some 20 years of Internet usage, people in the US still don’t know what it is. Look at this short video where three people discuss what the Internet was in 1994.
In 1998, Google launched a revolutionary search engine. The world of information and online content has changed since then.
But today, the internet is vast and already part of our everyday lives.
We pay our bills, buy anything and everything, connect and socialize with people, play video games, and much more all on the internet.
Living in urban towns or cities makes it hard to imagine life without the internet.
This is what the internet is today; more than 60% of all individuals on our planet earth are using it.
That is one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind.
I said one of the most important because other inventions like fire and the electric bulb are equally impactful and have pushed the human race forward.
Coming to the second invention, which I believe will be as impactful as the Internet is to humanity.
This invention hasn’t yet proven to be one of the most important inventions of human civilization, but because of its philosophy, its fundamental, and the fact that it is open and distributed just like the internet, where anyone from anywhere can use and own, makes it the most interesting invention or innovation of human history.
Before I introduce that invention or innovation, I want to take you back to this video in 1999 where Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman discusses the idea of a digital e-cash, peer-to-peer transactions without the governments or any third parties knowing it.
Hey, you must be tired or think it’s too much to process all this information at once, it okay if you need a break; you can save this on your email or bookmark it on your browser if you are reading on the web and come again later.
If not, let’s continue.
I guess by now you know what I am talking about, the second invention or innovation that might have a similar impact like the internet; after all, we are living in an online world full of information.
The second and might be one of the most important inventions or innovations of human history is: Bitcoin.
I used the term “innovation” for Bitcoin; I will tell you why at the end of this newsletter.
On 31st October 2008, during the aftermath of the Economic recession and exactly 45 days after one of the biggest banks in the United States, Lehman Brothers collapsed, a pseudonymous by the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine pages whitepaper, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
The 3,219 words whitepaper solves one of the biggest problems of our time and turns out to be the most innovative technology ever invented in the 21st century.
Ever since then, the end of what we know as money has come about.
Everything comes to a point of permission-less, trustless, open ledger book where anybody can read, write and own it.
Bitcoin in itself is not money but a technology that powers the concept of money.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article about Bitcoin; if you want to know more about it, please do read it here.
I won’t be going into details about what Bitcoin is, as it is beyond the scope of this newsletter.
And to explain what is Bitcoin, first, we need to understand History, Socio Politics, Finance, Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics, Geo-Politics, and much more. (I will surely explain most of them in the upcoming issues; we will progress weekly, my dear).
But for now, just know that Bitcoin is a concept of money that is built on open, distributed, decentralized ledger technology, scarce with a limited supply of only 21 Million, and fulfilled all the criteria of what money is.
Look at this chart; it shows the price of Bitcoin and Active Address.
Unlike internet platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc., which count the number of users, Bitcoin counts the number of active wallets. A single user can have multiple active wallets (more on this in the coming issues).
Bitcoin already has more than 1 million active wallets in just a span of 10 years.
If we compare the growth of Bitcoin with the Internet, it looks like this.
Notice where it is written, “We are here”?
Now, look at the top where the years for Internet growth are mentioned, and the bottom where the years for Crypto growth are mentioned.
Yes, that’s where we are; still in 1998 of the Internet growth in the case of Bitcoin, Google had just got launched.
So if Bitcoin were to grow like the Internet, we are still very early for this revolutionary invention or innovation to see its full potential.
I take Bitcoin as both an invention and an innovation; Invention because, for the first time, we have sound money that is scarce, immutable, and verifiable; Innovation because it combines previously solved cryptography problems using a timestamp to a double ledger entry book creating blocks of information forming a blockchain. (This might be too technical for you, don’t worry, it’s not important.)
Just imagine you discover the Internet before Facebook, YouTube, or even Google back in the days; you might have created some website so popular today. Or what if you were one of the first writers on the Internet?
Opportunities are just endless.
Hey, this is not about convincing you to buy or invest in Bitcoin or any cryptos for that matter.
I don’t do financial advice; I am here only to inform and help you to be financially informed, technologically agile, and socially connected. So treat this only as information and maybe knowledge to learn.
This is a long one; I am sorry if it’s too long for you to read all at once.
I will try to write shorter next time.
If this information serves you a purpose, please consider sharing it with your friends.
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Do check out my friend Vini Zhimomi here, who is helping me edit all this content for you. She has been an amazing friend to me.
That’s it for this week, and I can’t wait to write to you again next week.
Hey, if we are meeting for the first time, I am Kuzote Lohe (Akuzo), a web3 and blockchain researcher. I help simplify the concept of Web3 and Blockchain for you.
Please feel free to subscribe to this newsletter designed to help you financially informed, technology agile, and socially connected.
Cheers and have a great one ahead.
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