Instead of finicky phone calls between glorified calculators, digital networks now whisk transactions to huge farms of mainframe computers that handle each one in a fraction of a second, essentially 100% of the time.
And then, with the advent of the steam engine, it was suddenly possible to process the same amount of sugar in a single day that used to take an entire decade to produce.
One digital payments company reported that in the first six months after it began offering digital gold last April, it processed about $18.4 million worth of sales.
They said the processor, or chip, will lead to quantum systems performing better than traditional computer systems at some tasks within the next two years.