“The biggest mistake I made in the last decade was getting too late and too little into Bitcoin.”
This sentence is not mine, although I consider myself to have taken far too long to fully understand the incredible potential of Bitcoin. But after all, that is what all Bitcoiners think. This sentence is from Peter Thiel himself.
You know, the same Peter Thiel who founded PayPal alongside Elon Musk among others in 1998. The same Peter Thiel who is a billionaire entrepreneur and ultra respected venture capitalist.
In a book that has just been published and entitled “The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley”, Peter Thiel is interviewed by the author Jimmy Soni. And it is in this context that Peter Thiel uttered the sentence I put in the introduction.
Peter Thiel's biggest regret over the past decade is that he did not seize the Bitcoin opportunity as he should have
Peter Thiel explains that he was able to invest in Bitcoin in part from 2014, but he had already had the opportunity to be exposed to it in 2010 and 2011. But at the time, Peter Thiel didn't buy Bitcoin, because it didn't fit into any of the models he was following:
“With Bitcoin, I was somehow programmed to not to see it as much as I should have.”
This is something that comes up frequently in the mouths of people who end up embracing the Bitcoin revolution after having missed the opportunity several times in the past. There comes a time when you realize your mistake. By the time you take action, the price of Bitcoin has risen sharply from your initial contacts with the king of digital currency, but you are finally paying the Bitcoin at the price you deserve.
Peter Thiel is not trying to complain, but simply to warn those who would make the same mistake he did in the early 2010s today.
Peter Thiel popularized the notions of 0 to 1 and 1 to n inventions
This admission by Peter Thiel reminded me of something he discusses in his bestseller “Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future”. In this book, Peter Thiel explains that there are two ways to be successful in creating your product or service. There is the 0 to 1 approach, and the 1 to n approach.
The 0 to 1 approach is to invent something unique that changes the world you live in. In the Tech field, you can think of Bill Gates who invented the consumer operating systems with Microsoft Windows. You can think of Larry Page and Sergey Brin who revolutionized the world of search engines with Google. Even more tellingly, you can think of the invention of the Internet.
This is the hardest approach.
On the other hand, you have the 1 to n approach, which consists in starting from an existing revolutionary technology to go further and build on it to be very successful. It's easier, although it's all relative, to build on Windows to create video games that will reach millions of people already using Windows than to start from scratch with a new operating system.
When you want to create online products and services, you are going to use the Internet and the layers that already exist. You are not going to try to reinvent the TCP/IP layer. That would be useless.
A parallel can be made with Bitcoin which is a 0 to 1 invention
I think you can draw a parallel with Bitcoin here on two levels.
The first is as a user who wants to buy Bitcoin. By going from $0 to $1, the famous parity with the U.S. dollar, Bitcoin took a giant step forward. It was so hard at the time to convince people that a digital currency invented only a few years earlier could revolutionize the world. Once Bitcoin hit $1, things started to accelerate on their own.
Today, with the price of Bitcoin above $40K, it will be much easier to reach $100K and then $1 million someday. Why? Because the world's attention is focused on Bitcoin, current events show how essential Bitcoin is to the world of the future. Going from 0 to 1 was the hardest part. Going from 1 to 100 or more will be easier, although it will take time. It's something less risky too.
That's why it makes sense that those who took the risk to support Bitcoin initially are more rewarded today by the increase in its price.
The interest with Bitcoin is now to rely on it for 1 to n inventions
The second parallel is in the products and services you might be able to build in the digital world. The work has been done to go from 0 to 1 with Bitcoin. The hardest part has been done. There is no need to try to reinvent Bitcoin as some of the founders of Sh*tcoins wish to do for their gain. The best thing to do in this area is to build on Bitcoin to go from 1 to n in a whole bunch of areas.
This is exactly what is being done with the Lightning Network, which will allow tens of millions of people to use Bitcoin daily as a payment method in the future. It will be the same with all the products and services that will be built for the masses in the future and that will be based on the Bitcoin Blockchain.
So rather than fight it unnecessarily, the best thing to do is to embrace the Bitcoin revolution and take full advantage of it. Either as a user, like those who use Microsoft Windows daily today or as a creator, like those who rely on Windows to offer their software to users around the world.
Just as the Internet has been massively adopted because it has made users' lives easier, so will Bitcoin in the future. So the next step is to take advantage of Bitcoin and build products and services based on its Blockchain as has been done with the Internet for over two decades. With the success that we know.
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