At least according to Brian Kelly of CNBC's Fast Money.

In a statement on Friday, Kelly said that he used to think that Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency boom was similar to what happened in the mid to late 90's relating to the internet.

Saying things like this:

“I think this technology is going to work, it’s going to be game changing, but it’s very early days, so we can have this massive volatility.”

(Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/cnbc-fast-moneys-brian-kelly-bitcoin-is-like-the-internet-in-the-1980s)

However, upon traveling around and talking to a lot of the developers in the industry, he now thinks that the situation is morely closely related to the internet in the 1980's.

What does he mean by that?

Well, in the mid to late 1990's there was a major tech boom, referred to as the dotcom tech bubble, you may have heard of it.

Basically, it happened around an underlying technological revolution known as the internet.

Any company that was doing anything relating to the internet suddenly had money being thrown at them from every angle as investors wanted exposure to this revoluationary technology.

The net result ended up being sky high valuations for companies that really had nothing more than a way to possibly generate eyeballs but not much else.

When profits proved to be much harder to come by for most of these companies, the air was let out of the space, and all the company's market values came crashing down.

Similarities to now?

Many people refer to what is going on now in the crypto space as very similar to what happened back then. The only debate has been what part of the cycle we are in.

Whether that be 1995 or 2001.

However, with Kelly saying that we are currently much more similar to the 1980's related to the internet means that we are still very early in the adoption cycle.

In fact, we are so early that the rules are still being written.

(Source: https://www.interfacett.com/blogs/comptia-series-a-technology-timeline/)

If that is the case, could the resulting timeline be sped up?

I am not sure I totally agree with him that we are that far back, but he makes some good points.

The difference perhaps could be that now, if we are closer to the 1980's in terms of adoption, things will reach their peak much faster than they did in the late 90's.

Meaning that yes we could be earlier in the adoption cycle, but once it starts progressing, it won't take 15-20 years to hit it's euphoria moment like it did back then.

Perhaps once that snowball gets rolling it will happen in a matter of a couple years instead of decades?

Interesting to think about...

Stay informed my friends.

Image Source:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/cnbc-fast-moneys-brian-kelly-bitcoin-is-like-the-internet-in-the-1980s

Follow me: @jrcornel