🤖 DALL-E 2 and Bitcoin | An Economics Lesson

A few weeks ago I generated a bunch of images (basically for free) using an AI text-to-image generator called DALL-E 2.

For additional reference of what DALL-E 2 is capable of, visit my very professional art gallery at rhett.blog/art

Prior to DALL-E 2, I was artistically incapable of generating art of this quality.

Now that DALL-E 2 exists, the cost of image generation very close to zero and available to everyone.

To understand what this means to the future of graphic design, let's see what has happened in previous industries that have had their production costs driven to zero.

In the graph above we can see the number of hours of video uploaded to YouTube over time.

We can see that the graph goes parabolic between May 2013 and November 2014.

What was happening around that time that could have led to such a drastic takeoff in the amount of video being created?

In September of 2014, the iPhone 6 was released and everyone got access to filming 1080p HD at 60 fps using the device that they carried around all day.

Obviously the iPhone 6 wasn't the definitive catalyst - but around the time the iPhone 6 released, it became technically possible to post HD video using the camera in your pocket.

Prior to this era of phones, if you wanted to upload HD video you needed a standalone camera - with the release of the iPhone 6 (and that era of smartphones), the cost of filming an HD video had dropped to effectively zero.

DALL-E 2 might not be the iPhone 6 equivalent for graphic design, maybe it's still only the iPhone 3 - but we're heading in that direction.

When the cost of something is driven to zero and democratized (the barrier to entry of creating something meaningful falls drastically) a lot more of that something gets created - AND the overall quality of that something increases.

So who cares and what does this have to do with Bitcoin?

Bitcoin and the lightning network have already driven the cost of international remittances and wire transfers to zero.

But again, we might still only be in iPhone 3 territory in terms of the usability of applications built on top of Bitcoin

But when we reach the mass market iPhone 6 level greatness (in terms of ease of use and market penetration of Bitcoin apps) - the fact that the cost has been driven to zero will cause the same parabolic increase in usage

If you want to learn more about the lightning network and how it drives the cost of sending Bitcoin to zero check out this video here: