Amazon launched in 1994 with Bezos parents help. Company went public in 1997, this means it was floating without profits for 3 years. Going public gave it access to funding (this is literally the market - the same market that would exist on the bitcoin standard, maybe not as generous). 

Obviously investors saw potential, or they wouldn’t buy Amazon’s shares (I don’t know if index funds / passive money was a thing in 1997). 

According to my handy AI prompt, it became full-year profitable in 2003. So it was floating on market sentiment for 6 years, not quite a decade. 

The big unknown for me is exactly how mucH VC money Amazon raised, but it sounds like it wasn’t much. ChatGPT seems to think it was 8 million from one VC (not a big deal if you ask me - especially if they understood Bezos’ vision). 

I don’t buy the idea that the bitcoin standard would basically humble any company trying to achieve scale because those companies would still have access to the same markets (perhaps more conservative, but still ready to fund the right companies). We have to also assume that on the bitcoin standard, bitcoin is not going to be ripping 40% year over year. In bitcoin terms, the yield would be much less, and investing in companies would still make sense if they can achieve scale. 

Is Amazon and the likes destroying competition? Sure. But are they destroying value? I am not so sure. Insane profit growth seems to indicate they are providing much more value than any single smaller business could. I also don’t see why it would not provide equivalent value on the bitcoin standard. It’s not like smaller companies would be all the wiser all of a sudden to do just as good of a job or better. If they could, they would be. They too had the same access to VC funding at that stage yet here we are.