Gemma Knight: Edison's Blockchain

Edison's Blockchain: Understanding a True Paradigm Shift

By Gemma Knight | November 18, 2025

Imagine the world before electricity. Humans needed light and heat, and the match was a highly effective technology to achieve that. People were perfectly content with matches because they served the key purpose in life: the immediate creation of fire.

Now, think of the concept of electricity being sold to them: **Copper wires strung out all over the country with special generating plants needing to be built?** To someone thinking in the traditional paradigm, the fair response might be to judge the new technology by the standards of the old:

"Why do I need electricity? It sounds ridiculous! I have a candle, and can you imagine how long it will take for that copper wire to get hot enough to ignite the wick? I could light hundreds of candles with a box of matches in that time!"

This is the core error the traditional financial system makes when assessing decentralized finance. The aim of **money** is to be a means of transferring value from point A to point B. The established system is efficient at its job, just as the match was efficient at lighting the wick.

The concept of blockchain being the commodity, the means of transferring that value, and the new infrastructure all at once is understandably alien to fathom. It's difficult to grasp a technology that doesn't just improve the old function; it replaces the function entirely.

● The Crucial Nuance: Infrastructure vs. Asset

While the analogy is near-perfect, a technical distinction must be made for precision in macro analysis. Blockchain is not the commodity; it is the infrastructure.

Analogy Component	The Infrastructure (The Grid/Ledger)	The Asset (The Flow/Stored Value)
Electricity Parallel	The Electric Grid (the copper wires, power stations)	The Electricity (the power/energy commodity)
Crypto Parallel	The Blockchain (the immutable, decentralized ledger)	The Cryptocurrency/Token (the digital asset/value)

The concept that is truly hard to fathom is **Cryptocurrency (the commodity)** being simultaneously the **means of transferring value (via the Blockchain)** and the **reward that secures the network**. This self-sustaining economic model is what makes the paradigm shift so disruptive.

✓ The Final Takeaway

"Blockchains do not light candles as a match does. It does away with the need for candles and matches when it is used."

The fundamental comparison of the paradigm shift is accurate. We are not looking at a better match; we are looking at the invention of the lightbulb. The challenge for traditional finance is to stop asking how the copper wire can light the candle and start building the new infrastructure entirely.