Years before Bitcoin came out, someone had a similar vision:
Will CELL be a resolution to solving the bottleneck you mentioned?
Kutaragi: Exactly. CELL will transform the fundamentals of the network topology. The old mechanism functioned by reading memory data into resistors and rewriting the arithmetic into memories. In short, it was just a repetition of loading and storing. Because each cash memory differs in time of access and capacity, it worked out in such hierarchical structure as primary cache, second cache, etc. On the other hand, CELL might completely transform the concept of cache as it would drastically accelerate the speed of networking. What comes into reality is that each of the astronomical number of computers around the globe could unite to form a CELL and operate by one operating system. Each CELL would be the broadband network itself. Just to give you a picture, it is like 1,000 units of computers at one company functioning as one server. In such a networking world, one would only see the overall strength of power decline when one computer drops out and vice versa. It sounds like a human society.
It's quite reminiscent of the Bitcoin network with ASICs and hashing difficulty adjustment...
What are your views on the world's confusion to the appearance of such services as Napster?
Kutaragi:It was an innovative event that a Peer-to-Peer software has debuted in the network. But the network became the current tropology when TCP/IP appeared. Going back to the time five years ago, it could have been easy to predict the form of P-to-P. When looking back, it seems that even I could have worked out the model of P-to-P out if I had given a serious thought to the matter during the New Year holidays. It was the negligence of the Japanese networking engineers that they did not come up with the idea. There are too many watchers who criticize other people's technologies and there are too little who really are giving everything a good thought. Those mere criticizers claim they are engineers, but alas, they are salaried workers. They think they understand their stints by reading NIKKEI ELECTRONICS, for instance. It is nothing if the magazine knows more than the field in which you specify. Don't you think?
Some, of course, claim that Satoshi Nakamoto was indeed Japanese! 😀😀
There was once a code specifically for Cell/PS3 that did BTC mining:
I should mention that in 2001 when the interview was conducted, not only was there no Bitcoin, but not even ADSL in most parts of the world!
Most people had dial-up up to 56 Kbps (really no more than 48-50), with incredible latency, and a lucky few had ISDN 64-128 Kbps (1-2 channels).
Charged 60-120 dirh (0,17-0,35€) per hour (night vs peak hours), without the cost of the ISP subscription (separate one, a couple of €20/month) and even if you had 2 ISDN channels (for double speed) you had to pay double the rate to EPAK (120-240 dirh)! Plenty of strokes on OTE's bills. Angry
ADSL originally came in 2002 from IntraConnect in a few areas (Nea Ionia) with speed 256/128 Kbps (down/up) and price €44/month
In 2003 by OTE in tiers of 384/128, 512/128, 1024/256. The 384 tier started at €150/month (we're talking about the hard euro of 2003, with pytoyro at €1.2 and gold lira at €74) and the 1024 tier went up to €600/month! (the basic salary was somewhere around €450 back then)
The old adslgr regulars remember them (and probably want to forget them)! Cheesy
I think it is now understandable why bitcoin came out in 2008-2009 and not earlier. Somewhere in 2009 ADSL really started to become mainstream.
Dial-up is not always online and I don't know anyone who has set up node/miner behind such a line.
Why am I writing the above?
Because we need to look ahead and try to guess the next step of evolution:
Theoretically symmetric 10 Gbps:
Of course due to the EETT ratio (10:1) I expect at worst 1 Gbps once the 10 is given. Initially, they said they will give up to 2.5 Gbps.
Think what p2p applications we can see with 1 Gbps upload and more...
I personally never trusted cloud services, not even the promises of "lifetime", but a corresponding encrypted p2p network would seriously bake me (not only as a user, but also as a participant to set up a PC with 20 HDDs). Cool
Probably other applications I can't imagine right now...