> My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. ... All great things start like that.

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

-- Carl Sagan

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sagan_163043

“First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world.” - Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes, who is currently on trial for fraud charges for covering up the fact that her magic blood testing machine was too magic to work in the real world.

I think that was the joke (although admittedly sometimes you can’t tell on HN).

I can confirm that that was the joke :)

It's not exactly same but the quote credit goes to https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi_103630

That's the joke.

I don't think she is the original author of this quote.

Going to share another quote, which I think is relative here -

“Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.” - Steve Jobs

If Jobs had been just a little less crazy, he might still be changing the world.

She's not, that's the punchline!

The irony is that she was a Steve Jobs fangirl, or copycat if you will.

Sadly those you think are too crazy to change the world, usually are

s/Sadly/Thankfully/

I feel like the "usually" is pretty important here.

Did he actually write that piece of the commercial? Or any Apple commercial becomes a Steve Jobs quote.

But they were right to laugh at Columbus. He was right for the wrong reasons.

Of course, if you don't ever try it, you can never be right for any reasons.

Bitcoin is IMO likely somewhere in between. It kickstarted a new concept in IT but money is a really simple (although powerful) usecase. I'm more interested what will be done with the concept in the future.

> But they were right to laugh at Columbus. He was right for the wrong reasons.

He wasn't even right. He was wrong in his estimation of the earth circumference, and lucky that America was there between both oceans...

He didn't say he was a genius. He seemed to imply he's the one laughing at people with all his well-earned money now :)

It's a little ingenuous to use the word 'genius' for people who put gas money into a meme currency 9 years ago

We were talking about being genuine, and here you come implying I brag that I was smart.

That's really rude.

You're rich now, so you have to get used to this.

Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense. It can't be used for purchases in most contexts and you can't use it as a stable store of value. It is also controlled by dubious actors and mining is a horribly destructive practice, both in terms of environmental waste and the constant nuisance of people stealing CPU time. But you were saying?

If you're saying "Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense" you simply just haven't used Bitcoin. It works absolutely fine, even great most of the time, and accomplishes what I personally see as its purpose.

In what way?

* Mining has become highly centralized, the opposite of its original intent.

* Transaction fees are too high to justify its use in every day transactions and small transfers.

* Very few merchants accept it for every day transactions, and the number has decreased over time.

Yep. Perfectly fine as tech beanie babies.

As a POC of an alternative medium of paiement.

As an idea, a hope, the starting point for iterating on the future of money.

As a way to make the society think and debate.

And as all that, I think it had been successful.

What exactly are your measures for success?

It can be used for purchases via services like Bitpay which can automatically give a fiat value for the cryptocurrency amount, hence shielding you from price volatility.

Generally though, merchants wouldn't bother accepting it. Alongside the fees and whatnot, adoption is too low, fees are too high, time to confirm is too high, and it can complicate some legal stuff (like issuing VAT invoices).

Mining is the most harmless use of botnets.

It does not really matter how it started but how it is now. I would bet that all these selfless visionary nerds who believed in bitcoin from day 1, now are less than 0.1% of the people who deal with bitcoin today. The rest 99.9% are there for the easy money. At least, this is what I see from my surroundings and the feeling I get from the internet. It might have started great, but it got alienated along the way.

You’re quite noticeably not answering the parent’s question, while simultaneously proving their point.

20 years ago marvel declared bankruptcy because of major missteps following a speculation bubble in the early 90s.

Despite being a dominant force in film, they're selling poorly today.

BTC will always be banana money.

I disagree, one day it will be a footnote in a history book about banana money. Sooner than some think.

Let's add this to the list of Bitcoin obituaries that countless people have declared over the past 9 years. Every year that goes on and the network is still kicking is just building its base value. Bitcoin network will out live Hacker News.