Bitcoin is Worse is Better
EXCERPT
The genius of Bitcoin, in inventing a digital currency successful in the real world, is not in creating any new abstruse mathematics or cryptographic breakthrough, but in putting together decades-old pieces in a semi-novel but extremely unpopular way. Everything Bitcoin needed was available for many years, including the key ideas.
However, the sacrifice Bitcoin makes to achieve decentralization isโhowever practicalโa profoundly ugly one. Early reactions to Bitcoin by even friendly cryptographers & digital currency enthusiasts were almost uniformly extremely negative, and emphasized the (perceived) inefficiency & (relative to most cryptography) weak security guarantees. Critics let โperfect be the enemy of betterโ and did not perceive Bitcoinโs potential. However, in an example of โWorse is Betterโ, the ugly inefficient prototype of Bitcoin successfully created a secure decentralized digital currency, which can wait indefinitely for success, and this was enough to eventually lead to adoption, improvement, and growth into a secure global digital currency.
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