It’s no small irony that the simplest answer is the right answer here: you can’t force consumers to use your product. They need a reason to use it, and none of the current ones are sufficiently compelling.

Also, if the ecosystem was rooted in scams, it infects any sort of idea that would come out of the ecosystem... The very basis of money that relies on computers, computer networks, and related infrastructure when all of these aspects of our lives fail on us regularly even now in the year 2022 just seems plain scammy in general with all of the other societal and environmental risks we are dealing with.

In crisis, only the most adventurous ones of us gamble, any grow addicted to it, and most lose... A lot.

The traditional rule books are key to survivability in tough business times... Tangible goods and services, a deep focus on quality, reasonably paced sales growth, customer support, low dependency on external factors and suppliers... Crypto and Web3 represents none of those things, and that's why a lot of the time it is based solely on marketing vapor, and also why many don't want to invest in it (unless perhaps they are addicted to gambling or unless they want to promote a particular aspect of it for their own personal financial gain).

I've always wondered why consumers seem to lack foresight though? Like the foresight of governmental / corporate dystopias due to information asymmetries.

or foresight that exclusively buying goods manufactured abroad will eventually affect your home price as your neighbors one by one lose their local jobs...

Do we know why people act in such a way?

Edit: I'm quite shocked at the deep presumption of negativity. I was genuinely trying to discuss and explore the phenomenon of choosing long term detriment for short term gain.

That's not foresight, it's out-of-hand speculation. But I guess people who don't wildly speculate would never invest in crypto in the first place, heh.

There are very few incentives for long term (meaning multigenerational) foresight. Cryptocurrencies embody this: they're either planet-torching (PoW) or encode neofeudalism (PoS) into their consensus schemes.

Your comment reads as incredibly tone-deaf, but I'll give it an honest answer.

Hierarchy of needs. Maslow is obviously not accurate, but people focus on basic survival and prioritize themselves and their families first. You do not even reach the level of contemplation of politics until you have food, shelter, comfort and a degree of safety. Most Americans struggle to satisfy all of these consistently.

If you want more people to care about privacy, solve their basic needs first. Then they will care about big picture items.

fair enough, so your claim is essentially that people likely would, but are struggling to survive in the short run and therefore the long run is basically presumed to not matter?

It does matter, but first things first. If you struggle to breathe your first priority won't be finding food, but your entire energy will go into solving the most urgent problem.

Yeah I get that, I guess for me I just see it like . Imagine some town with lots of manufacturing jobs and so many people are shopping at walmart for foreign made wares. How does it not click "If people dont buy local our local made wares, how will our factory stay open?" . I'm not saying so much like right right now, it's obviously too late in many industries to go back any time soon. But like in the 70s-90s, why didn't people working in these industries have the foresight to realize if we dont buy local made wares, there's no need for factory workers here, and if there's no need for factory workers here, there's no need for manager, and if there's no need for managers, the company could just be entirely in the foreign nation. And if if it's in the foreign nation, how are we going to get money to feed ourselves and pay our mortgages (keep the property values at least level) ...

It seems like it was more like "Well I could have a TV now, or a TV + Microwave now" and that was the micro decisions that lead to a hollowing out of the labor force.

I'm just armchair speculating here, happy to learn more in a concise way (ie doesnt require me to go get a degree on the subject) .

Humans almost always and almost everywhere in almost every context make the short-term choice with immediate consequence with very little concern for the long-term effect which is usually much more diffuse.

Person A going out to buy a Chinese-made microwave from Walmart today isn't going to lead inexorably to decreased property values, but it is going to give Person A something in which to stick their microwavable popcorn tonight. In fact, many Person As have been buying Chinese-made microwaves from Walmart for many years now, and still property values are going up!

Eventually, sure, enough people making those choices on a macro scale leads to factories closing close by, and if there's no corresponding rise in other industries, that will lead to negative economic consequences for the entire area. But that's a far off problem with a lot of uncertainty, and this popcorn isn't going to pop itself tonight!

Of course, it is also true that Person A could go out of their way to shop at a local store and buy a microwave made by an American company, but that the American company decides that there's much more profit to be made by moving production overseas, and the negative economic consequences happen anyway. Not because of the short-sightedness of Person A, but the greed and short-sightedness of CEO B. That's even more reason for Person A to not be too worried about their individual purchase.

Tone deafness of your comment aside, this is just like... your opinion man. We don't know this will happen for sure, neither do we know this will not happen. People are not going to spend their time worrying about something that might not happen. There are enough bad things in everyone's life which are certain.

Having the supposed foresight, I can tell that cryptocurrencies are definitely part of the dystopia.

trying to spark a genuine dialogue...

> definitely part of the dystopia.

How so?

I rather see a dystopian future from unregulated asset flow with no limits and no taxation. Cash for me is a good tradeoff between freedom and necessary control. I would e.g. opt into any equivalent digital currency that does not allow speculation , accumulating or transfer of amount greater than 10k per year or natural person.

Normal people is afraid of think and openly discuss things that are too bad to be considered feasible. Hence a compulsion to silence the messenger downvoting your comment in this case.

It's very immature (or complicit with what you categorized as dystopian there).

There is a diff between people not anticipating possible bad outcomes and acting on it. Since forever, people have complained about bosses, governments etc. still, to a large degree the easiest way wins and some people just need that ‘ease’ to survive their life. The needle of capitalism. And many that do see it as a big problem, disagree on the solution.

Maybe people are just like peasants and don't know any better. Maybe someone needs to do the Narodnik thing and go to the people [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_to_the_People

That was a famous fiasco.

> How easy is it - for both sides - to get set up?

I suspect this is a huge sticking point. The last time I tried to pay for something using bitcoin, I failed. I tried again with monero and, once again, failed. Zelle worked just fine.

> So you're left with things which are (rightly or wrongly) illegal. Or incredibly taboo.

While I mostly agree with what you wrote, I take exception to this. Wanting more privacy can be an ends in itself.

Of course, as I said, I agree with you, this doesn’t really broaden the pool of people who need Monero by a meaningful amount ;)

The problem is that Monero doesn't guarantee privacy. X bought something from company Y. Company Y makes Z. X bought Z. How does whoever wants to know know? Because it was shipped by a major carrier.

> Wanting more privacy can be an ends in itself.

People who are willing to jump through hoops to marginally increase their privacy and the companies willing to similarly jump through hoops to cater to these people are a subset of the overall population. Gotta break out of this subset to achieve the wide adoption OP was talking about.

Yes, I mentioned that in my 2nd sentence.

> So you're left with things which are (rightly or wrongly) illegal. Or incredibly taboo.

I presume giving money to Canadian protestors is the former?

Strong disagree. There are two reasons.

1 - A tiny percentage of crypto holders regularly use crypto as a currency, most people just use it as a store of wealth (ie digital gold) or a way to speculate/gamble.

2 - You can't buy it on Coinbase, because the US government can't track its usage so Coinbase would lose their regulatory advantage if they allowed it on their exchange.

So that means it's more difficult for the average person to acquire, and at this point most people are using crypto more like stocks than currency so they'll just speculate on something that's easier to get their hands on.