币界网报道：This is a snippet from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read the full version, please subscribe. When Satoshi built Bitcoin, they were standing on the shoulders of giants. Bitcoin could only come to life in 2009 after the advent of the World Wide Web in 1989, which became so ubiquitous because of the advent of the microprocessor in the early 1970s. All three of these innovations echo the telegraph. I’m here to tell you that Sony’s Walkman may be just as important. The launch of the first Sony Walkman wasn’t exactly today. Yesterday, in 1979, Sony began selling the TPS-L2 in Japan — a blue, pocket-sized, portable cassette player that became a global cultural phenomenon in just two years. Legend has it that Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka had asked Sony’s recorder division to design a device for listening to opera on long-haul flights. A secret team of engineers got to work. They took apart the Sony TCM-100B, aka the Pressman, a portable cassette recorder that could be operated with one hand and had been released just a year earlier. The Pressman had become popular with journalists and businessmen for recording voice memos and could play recordings from the built-in speaker at 1.5 times the speed. Bank of America’s innovation chart pinpoints the place of certain inventions in human demographic history. The chart compares Bitcoin to polio vaccines and DVDs, but the Walkman is not among them. Within four months, Sony’s team, led by engineer Kozo Ohsone, replaced the Pressman’s speakers and recording circuitry with a stereo amplifier, producing a prototype in the same chassis. A portable stereo cassette player with a pair of lightweight headphones. Despite protests from disbelieving voices within Sony, the first 30,000 Walkmans sold out in Japan in just eight weeks, and by the end of 1980, 2 million units had been sold worldwide. While there had been previous iterations of portable music players, Sony’s Walkman quickly became a must-have across industries. The New Yorker described in September 1981 that they saw "diplomats in Washington, stewardesses in Chicago, cable car conductors in San Francisco, and toddlers in Seattle, all wearing Walkman recorders or imitations of them." Common Cog wrote about the Walkman: "To understand the situation: in the 1970s, it was impossible to have a personal soundscape that you could carry around with you. It was not a very complex technical challenge to build a device that could do that... but there was simply no proven market." Sound familiar? Before the Walkman, being your own DJ simply wasn't feasible, at least outside of your home and away from your stereo. The Walkman changed social behavior, and for the first time people isolated themselves with headphones in public places, on trains, buses, and airplanes. The real question, from Reddit. It's an older slogan, but Bitcoin also makes it possible to be your own bank, at least outside of hiding cash under your mattress or in your wall. Bitcoin has changed the way people behave economically, offering an alternative to a financial system that has never worked for everyone. Both the Walkman and Bitcoin faced resistance from society, with critics calling personal stereos self-indulgent and antisocial, accessories for the “me” generation. Bitcoin has done little to shake off its cultural connotations with criminals and fraudsters in other ways, though that’s unfounded. Through a certain lens, the Walkman may have prepared the culture for Bitcoin’s arrival 30 years later, allowing us to gradually accept that we can be anything we want, wherever we are. But here’s how Bitcoin beat the Walkman to the punch: It took the Oxford English Dictionary a full nine years to include “Walkman” as a mainstream English term. Bitcoin did it in half that time, along with “twerk” and “emoji.” Get news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters: The Breakdown: Decoding cryptocurrencies and markets. Daily. Empire: Crypto news and analysis to kickstart your day. Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macroeconomics, and policy. 0xResearch: Get Alpha straight to your inbox. Lightspeed: All about Solana. The Drop: Apps, games, memes, and more. Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.