> Blockchains reached a valuation of $0.5 trillion and attracted all the biggest financial institutions (Goldman Sachs yesterday)

You know how bubbles work, right? What I mean is that what you've described is compatible with the "bubble" hypothesis just as it is compatible with the "disruption" hypothesis. I need to see the thing solving problems to believe the thing.

This is just me though, I'm not trying to convince you. The point I meant to make in my previous post was not a case for/against Bitcoin, but against the idea that "Bitcoin is nothing like Second life". It is in some important sense: there is a reasonable case for both and it's still too early (now for Bitcoin as at the time for SL) whether they can deliver on their promises of disruption.

EDIT: But if you want to talk about the credibility of Bitcoin, I notice you didn't respond to my observation. I don't care if it's $0.5tr or $500tr: there's still a backlog of 250k transactions. The thing is unusable right now. Now, this might be solved, yes. But right now it's a serious concern. Do you not agree?

There definitely was a virtual world craze, with tons of VC money, the like of IBM investing, and Second Life clones popping up left, right and middle. Putting "Virtual World" in your pitch was a near-guarantee of raising funds. Gartner was predicting that "80 Percent of Active Internet Users Will Have A "Second Life" in the Virtual World by the End of 2011" [1]

And yet here we are.

It's easy to dismiss in hindsight. If crypto-currencies turn out a fad it will have been so easy to predict that people will wonder how anyone could be tricked into buying. And if it eventually succeed, people will wonder why anyone could be this stupid not to have invested, since success was so obvious.

[1] https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/503861

I'm wondering how usable they actually are for normal people in stable countries. They have shown to work very well for darknet markets and things like that but I wonder if there really is a use case for most people.

I live in Sweden and I can buy something from the US in minutes over the Internet and the fees are pretty reasonable. Would a crypto currency have any advantage over the current situation?

Have goldman made another announcement or are they still just acting as a clearning house for futures?