Five years after the closure of the Silk Road, bitcoin has changed dramatically. No longer does society see it as an underground currency used by addicts, dealers and pornographers. Today it is the third pillar of futurism alongside Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Not only is it the digital cash that will power the online economy, but it is developing entirely new business models and economic systems. One thing that hasn’t changed from that day is that the creator of the Silk Road is in jail for the rest of his life.
In a few ways, bitcoin is still in the same place it was before the Silk Road shut down. It is still looking for its killer app that will get the masses on board. But it now has multiple avenues from where that can come from. Ideas that were previously pie-in-the-sky futurism are now either in use or just around the corner.
Rather than Bitcoin being the realm of technologically inclined criminals, it is now thought of as the realm of any business that is forward looking technologically. Like the internet in 1998, every company of note has a “blockchain” plan, even if their company has no need for one. They are still considering its possibilities and don’t want to be left behind.
The government, meanwhile, is finally taking bitcoin seriously. Five years ago, and even more so before the Silk Road’s closure, it was largely seen as a technological anomaly, destined to be shut down the same way eGold was a few years earlier. Today, while most government officials don’t understand bitcoin, they at least understand that it can’t simply be turned off. And the regulators have begun to understand that Bitcoin isn’t the big bad anonymous wolf it was hyped-up to be.
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