I was recently chatting with a San Francisco wealth manager about bitcoin. He was eager to invest more of his clients’ assets in the virtual currency, but his colleagues in New York were against it. He asked me when New York would “get” that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were here to stay.  

As a reporter who has covered the tech industry for a long time, I understood where he was coming from. I remember when my editors in New York doubted in 2006 that Facebook would ever make money. And how many times have people asked me if Uber would ever be a business? The story of the disrupted ignoring the disruptors, often until it is too late, is never-ending.