>> The word “equivalent” is doing a lot of work here; because if what you purchased was the nominal rights to a URL that may or may not 404 at any moment, you haven’t done anything worthy of jealousy.
Maybe I'm not explaining it clearly enough. The jealousy isn't that you've been rich enough to buy a picture of a monkey. It's that you have so much 'money' that you can spend it on something so stupid and not even care. And the fact that you've gotten that money by doing something so seemingly stupid and worthless in the first place. That's pretty infuriating for a lot of people.
I also didn't mention 'regular joes'.
"You're just jealous" is something you'd say to another 8 year old, not a solid defense of crypto. It's quite telling you had little else to point to.
It wasn't supposed to be a defence of crypto. I have no need to defend it and there are plenty of reasonable criticisms of it. I was just trying to explain the kind of unsubstantial attacks on 'crypto' we see frequently (e.g. this post). "You're jealous" may sound childish but that doesn't make it untrue.
The word “equivalent” is doing a lot of work here; because if what you purchased was the nominal “rights” to a URL that may or may not 404 at any moment, you haven’t done anything worthy of jealousy.
Also, at the risk of breaking the HN rules on allegations of astroturfing: the whole narrative of “regular joes got super rich off this” is as turfy as it gets. I’ve looked at wallet balances, I understand a handful of these people exist. But I’ve never met one, and I doubt you have either. Some people win the lottery, too; I’m not losing sleep over it.