The Lindy Effect

The Lindy Effect is an idea from the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, later popularised by Nassim Taleb: for non-perishable things — ideas, technologies, institutions — the longer they’ve been around, the longer they’re likely to continue.

A book that’s been in print for 100 years is more likely to still be in print in 50 years than a book published last month. A business that has survived for 50 years is more likely to survive another 50 than a startup founded last year.

The mechanism is survival selection. Everything that has persisted for a long time has already been tested against most of the threats that would kill it. The threats it hasn’t faced are the known unknowns. Its survival is evidence of robustness.

Applied to Bitcoin: every year that passes without Bitcoin dying makes it more likely to continue.

Bitcoin has survived:
– Multiple exchange collapses (Mt. Gox, FTX, dozens of others)
– Multiple government bans (China, multiple times)
– 90%+ price crashes (three of them)
– Existential technical debates (the block size wars of 2017)
– Protocol attacks and bugs (all fixed without changing core rules)
– Persistent mainstream dismissal

Each survival event is evidence. Not proof — nothing is certain. But evidence that the system is more robust than whatever tried to kill it.

At 15 years old, Bitcoin is still young by Lindy standards. Gold is 5,000 years old. The internet is about 35. Bitcoin’s durability test is still running.

But each year it runs adds to the case.

Tomorrow: network effect — why Bitcoin’s lead is harder to close than it looks.

— The Daily Bit