Bitcoin discovery
What is the most important aspect in Nakamoto's invention? This is important to understand, because the progress will surely exploit this discovery. Bit it is far from obvious. Proposed answers include:
collective money - the focus on independent (from any state or central authority) money for p2p payments
cryptoeconomic incentives - digital micro-economy
social scalability - from Nick Szabo, see a (re)interpretation Social Scalability: The Most Important Idea In Cryptocurrency?
useful payment system - not so far, see Bitcoin has no 'Intrinsic Value' and some thoughts on 'Money'
Ultimately, the question is whether any discovery is widely applicable. Compare with AI (unvoidable march of the machines) and with nanotechnology (unavoidable technological progress of getting to atomic scales). What is so "unavoidable" about Bitcoin discovery?