# Explaining The Blockchain

By [Paramendra Bhagat](https://paragraph.com/@paramendra-bhagat) · 2022-04-26

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Apples to apples, [the blockchain is like the Internet](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QNMBXDD). It is not one company, one technology, it is an entire paradigm. It is a broad canvas. If I had to put a number to it I would say the blockchain is going to be at least 100 times bigger than the Internet itself. The tricky part is that the blockchain stays at the back end. You still interact with the good old Internet. 

The Internet has been the continental shelf. The Blockchain is the deep ocean. The Internet democratized media. Every person who wants to can publish. The Blockchain will democratize money. The Age Of Abundance is upon us. 

But a technology, any technology, is but a tool like your thumb is a tool. The slot machine in Las Vegas does not know right from wrong. It only knows to move when you push the levers. Questions of right and wrong stay in the spiritual domain. 

There is a famous diagram from more than a decade ago that shows the numerous billion-dollar companies that got built each tackling just one tiny niche of the classic website [Craig’s List](https://mirror.xyz/0x065e533120b87e5b4F5bfBF0802EB6428c237487/v-CxO0lWuQUXbQDpdOKW80NBR_yKg8-kJ-gHuni0xg4). Looking to rent a room is not even a full phrase on Craig’s List webpage, but that one alone has spawned numerous large, profitable companies. And Craig’s List is just one website. It is not the Internet. 

Bitcoin is not a company. It is just a fundamental layer of Blockchain technology. But it is like it went IPO at launch. It would be an error to think the Blockchain is just digital money. Google is not just a digital version of your local library. It is a whole new animal. Cryptocurrency is a whole new animal. Unimaginable new financial services are on their way. Numerous large companies will get built along the way. 

The early birds do seem to sit on big nest eggs. But I think the impact will be broad-based and bottom-up. This prosperity is going to everybody and everywhere and it is unstoppable. 

Bitcoin will displace the dollar, yet the most enthusiastic supporters of Bitcoin happen to be American citizens. Nobody really cried when the Internet turned the paper copies of the New York Times into a tiny sideshow. The dollar today is like the New York Times of 1993. Gold ran its course and ran out of steam. The dollar has also run out of steam. 

Bitcoin is the best thing to emerge out of the 2008 financial crisis. The Blockchain for the first time allows us to try and tackle the largest problems faced by [humanity](https://www.netizen.page/2022/04/the-masses-not-mars.html). When the dot com bubble burst around 2000, a lot of froth vanished, but nobody serious doubted the future of the Internet. News around crypto will throw up plenty along the way that you will not like: gaudy parties, scam attempts, heists, greed playing out in its many forms. But the fundamental trajectory of the technology is sound. And for the first time, plenty is right around the corner. 

The revolution will be tokenized. 

[crowdfund://0x4C2380d1548bbf533F0336225Bb9A7784BCDF2f8?features=overview,editions,podium,backers](https://etherscan.io/address/0x4C2380d1548bbf533F0336225Bb9A7784BCDF2f8)

[crowdfund://0x2F2A3D020cfbD506AE64D31421231187b92963b1?features=overview,editions,podium,backers](https://etherscan.io/address/0x2F2A3D020cfbD506AE64D31421231187b92963b1)

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*Originally published on [Paramendra Bhagat](https://paragraph.com/@paramendra-bhagat/explaining-the-blockchain)*
