Sheesh, there really is no pleasing some people.
>For the Internet I could have sent you thousands of examples of such things a few months after the first public ISP appeared. DARPAnet and the other predecessors of the Internet were immediately useful in countless ways...
As stated in the previous thread, I strongly disagree. Nerds like us found it useful, nearly everyone else found it clunky and boring [0].
Here's further context, with the benefit of hindsight:
> ... in many ways, Cliff Stoll wasn't wrong. The Internet really did suck then, and it really was a huckster's paradise. But the fatal flaw in his argument was his assumption that it was never going to get any better. [1]
Sound familiar?
I'm not equating Bitcoin with the early Internet. That's apples to oranges. I'm only disputing your emphatic (based on the previous thread) claim that the early Internet was useful or interesting to anything beyond a relatively small group of people. That was true up until the late 90's (internet "age" at that time ~ 16-17 years).
I lived through that era.... the way you're describing it sounds a lot like revisionist history to me.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... [1] https://www.newsweek.com/lets-talk-about-1995-newsweek-piece...
The bar was _three_ useful, practical, ideas.
I lived through the era too, and while critics we saying how it won't be a panacea of anything, many of us were actually _living_ it.
Why does currency have to ALSO do all this other stuff? Why can't it just be... money?
My dream for crypto is to one day have a safe place to put my money where it:
1. Can't be lost or stolen
2. Can't be tracked or taxed without consent
3. Is stable and holds its relative value globally, regardless of government or private influence
4. Is instantaneous to transact
5. Can handle millions of transactions per second, so it can truly operate on a global scale
6. Is free to use
7. Can be easily and cheaply converted into other currencies
As far as I know, there are zero crypto projects that meet all of these requirements, but there are a number of them that have been iterating towards these goals. I believe we will eventually end up with the dream being realized, but these are all hard problems to solve and it might take a while.
The insanely deflationary nature of these currencies makes them prone to wild swings in value, which is not something you want in money. It also attracts a lot of Ponzi schemers and get rich quick types.
That doesn’t mean all crypto coins are scams though. There are a number of stable coins that are in development that look really interesting, but a lot of them suffer from various faults. We still haven’t figured out the perfect coin yet, but I do believe it’s only a matter of time.
Trustless, decentralized DNS with pretty much perfectly fair auctions. No messing with registrars, or having it taken away or censored by a government, or being front-run by GoDaddy.
It was always one of the coolest uses I saw, and an example I always give to explain why smart contracts are useful.
The volume of actual commerce could probably support no more than 10% of current valuation and cost, and that is generous. I suspect the number is more like 2%. The valuation wasn’t that unreasonable until 2017 when all hell broke loose. Current valuation is batshit insane.
Some of the tech also has value and does contain some novel ideas. Some of these could be useful elsewhere.
(1) not just the original simple payment use case, as that was always there.
(2) is not self-referential to the crypto ecosystem, but something useful for doing things entirely outside it.
(3) is not a vehicle for speculation, gambling, or other kinds of fluff or fraud.
I’ve asked this for years on many other forums and have yet to see a single thing that meets all those criteria that I or anyone I know would actually use.
It’s been 13 years since Bitcoin. Show me something I should care about.
For the Internet I could have sent you thousands of examples of such things a few months after the first public ISP appeared. DARPAnet and the other predecessors of the Internet were immediately useful in countless ways that were not self-referential.
Self-referentialness is a huge general bullshit red flag of mine. It’s also a characteristic of pseudoscience and pseudo-profound bullshit in the realm of philosophy. Real things look outward from themselves. Bullshit is self-referential.
Edit: a lot of conventional finance outside basic banking and venture investing also fails the above test. I am not defending financial capitalism. On the contrary I see cryptocurrency as a vector allowing the financial capitalist cancer to infect tech.