The increase in computational power has been the primary driver of the rapid advancement in technology that we have seen over the past $50$ years. At the same time, the cost of computational power has fallen spectacularly. Between $1980$ and $2010$ the number of transactions per second purchasable for a single dollar has increased:

millionfold

$10$ millionfold

$100$ millionfold

$1$ billionfold