eBay proved strangers would trust strangers, as long as the system remembered who kept their word.

On September 3, 1995 Pierre Omidyar put up a site called AuctionWeb, later eBay, on a hunch that people would buy and sell with total strangers over the internet. Everyone assumed they would not. Everyone was wrong.

What made it work was not the technology, it was the feedback rating, a crude reputation score that let good behavior compound and bad behavior stick.

I have watched this same lesson play out in every market I have touched since. People will do business with someone they have never met, in a country they will never visit, as long as the system remembers who kept their word. Reputation is the oldest currency. The web just made it portable.