imo, Silk Road deserves the credit for solving Bitcoin's chicken-and-egg problem with network effects.
a single enterprising dealer could have started it off - exchange rate basically didn't matter, as long as someone was buying and selling BTC, it'd work to keep the dealer's identity private. SR tapped into a massive new market, regular people started learning about crypto so they could buy drugs, this created a flow of money through the market. honestly, I was excited to see my friends using Tor and buying BTC for cash - it's the gritty, cypherpunk dream!
whenever there's a real market opportunity like that, network effects don't seem to get in the way. Monero and Zcash got very popular from all the ransomware, though I'm admittedly less exuberant about hospitals being ransomed than drugs.
a single enterprising dealer could have started it off - exchange rate basically didn't matter, as long as someone was buying and selling BTC, it'd work to keep the dealer's identity private. SR tapped into a massive new market, regular people started learning about crypto so they could buy drugs, this created a flow of money through the market. honestly, I was excited to see my friends using Tor and buying BTC for cash - it's the gritty, cypherpunk dream!
whenever there's a real market opportunity like that, network effects don't seem to get in the way. Monero and Zcash got very popular from all the ransomware, though I'm admittedly less exuberant about hospitals being ransomed than drugs.