I’m sure this is going to make you laugh and/or annoyed, but what about Bitcoin is exactly “wrong?” Curious if after all these years you’ve found the words.

Well, I wouldn't say "what bitcoin got wrong" but rather "what people who were overly hyping bitcoin got wrong"

It hasn't totally played out yet, but it doesn't seem like it is on track to be a currency, and the underlying tech hasn't proven to have a ton of uses beyond crypto currencies.

Not trying to straw man here, just trying to honestly reply to your comment.

That’s fair and I appreciate your response! While I’ve seen things that hint that Bitcoin might be starting to gain traction in high inflation nations commonly located in Africa and South America, we are a long ways out from seeing a Kroger accept Bitcoin.

Regardless, crypto bros are the worst and I hate how every bull run we see an avalanche of new coins that all claim to be the solution to all our problems when they are really just a Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the only two that I feel are worth investing in long-term, but that’s just me.

I can't really argue with investing in BTC or Eth, I probably should have for some portion of my portfolio!

It’s never too late :]!

It's not, but with the volatility of the assets I would only be comfortable putting a few % of my investments there. Unfortunately, that's a really small $ value, and the odds of my investment going up 100x+ is so low where it's not worth my time to invest in crypto :(

I can promise that it won’t go 100x, but 5-10x is still possible and would be outstanding.

I don't think 10x is worth the small amount of $ I'd be comfortable putting into it.

> what people who were overly hyping bitcoin got wrong

Did they? It's the best performing asset in the last decade. I think they got it right.

The people who were hyping it said it will be the next major currency. Right now it's literally no different to people getting excited about beanie babies - sure those beanie babies have appreciated in value by 1000s of percent, but at the end of the day they are still just stupid toys and nothing more.

So no, people didn't get it right. If anything they got it catastrophically wrong and the entire premise was hijacked by people who saw it as an excellent investment/scam opportunity.

> The people who were hyping it said it will be the next major currency.

Why do you think this prospect have failed? Do you think such a huge shift on the reserve global currency would happen in just 10 years? In the meantime, the market is pricing the likelihood of this scenario with increasing optimism.

No one said crypto should have displaced real currencies by now. But you'd think it would be used as a currency somewhere - and it just isn't, outside of extremely limited cases. Not to mention that Bitcoin specifically just can't work this way due to the way it's designed - it's destined to always be a shitty "investment" asset and nothing more.

>>the market is pricing the likelihood of this scenario with increasing optimism

That is actually very funny to read. The markets are also pricing what they want to happen not what is likely to happen. This sort of prediction is close to pointless.

You'd have to substantiate that claim which would probably take significant work.

From 2015 to today it appreciated 8000%. Do I need to elaborate further?

Yes, of course you do. You made a specific claim.

You can't find a single other investment that would have returned higher? Very different, but maybe options plays on GME? Anything like that?

I'm sure there is one! You said it's the HIGHEST - very specific claim!

You're also picking a date period that works for you - certainly I can pick other dates that don't support your argument!

I get your point, but options aren't usually considered an asset. They do expire after all! Though now that I think about it, I'm not sure what would be the best performing asset of the past decade. Bitcoin has skyrocketed in the past decade, but I still think that something else probably gained value even faster. Maybe pokemon cards? Hahaha.

LOL or MTG cards! Some have definitely gone up 100x!

Someone else pointed out here that some Pokemon or other trading cards have also gone up quite a bit! Should we buy them, too?

So were credit default swaps until the history-based assumption they were built on went into freefall. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Even an investment that has a real and solid foundation can fail fast and hard.

GPT can tell you what's wrong with Bitcoin:

You throw 25 grand on a Bitcoin bet, The dough lands in a chest, smoky and wet. You've got your Bitcoin, feelin' alive, But the chest has plans, man, it's a damn beehive.

It pays the skeptics, those withdrawing in fright,

The electric bill's covered, in the dark of the night,

A Lambo, a threesome, a few folks living in sin, As the value hits 27 grand, you think it's your turn to win.

But then comes a big fish, an old-time player, He dumps his coins, like a dirty betrayer.

The price dives to 20 grand, you can't help but feel, Thousands like you are stuck in a rotten ordeal.

You scramble to withdraw, but the site's a damn mess,

The price keeps on fallin', and the chest reveals its emptiness.

The truth is, it was never full, not even close, Now you're left with your Bitcoin, feelin' morose.

A voice in the shadows tells you, "It's not about the bread, Bitcoin's a different way to pay, don't let it go to your head. Hold tight, and embrace your virtual piece, The future of money might just find its release."

We need a “!RemindMe 10 years” feature like they have on Reddit.

No, we don't.

Put the permalink on your calendar.

I love your positive attitude.

I can do anything!

> like Bitcoin did

You think it's over for Bitcoin?

It surely looks like it is getting there https://hn.curiosity.ai/#/trends?terms=Bitcoin;Web3

By that logic, your tool also hints at possible end days for Javascript.

Careful not to overfit ;)

Neat tool, thanks for sharing.

Partially, it is hard to "prove the negative" in a way.

The real issue and logical fallacy is people are frontrunning the argument: they are making extraordinary claims of either the current capabilities of the tech or future capabilities, without offering evidence beyond "it's obvious!" or "have you tried it?" or "use the latest model, it's much better!" etc.. and maybe they don't realize it, but these are not good-faith conversations/arguments.

So, you can't respond to these - there really isn't anything to respond to, and the person is not conversing in good faith (they are assuming you're unfamiliar with the tech, they are assuming a bunch of things, really), though I do give them the benefit of the doubt and would say they aren't doing this to be trolls, they're just excited about the tech.

Same with BTC, but BTC had some extra benefits: with BTC it had a "dual use" really, the currency made promises "of course BTC is going to take off, it's obvious!" and the tech made promises "wow, can you imagine the uses of a blockchain!?"

I mean, I had my CTO still saying in 2023 that we should use blockchain tech for a CENTRALIZED platform. Unbelievable!

I know exactly where you're coming from. I've tried to avoid the hype train but I still feel the hot wind from it because I literally had my manager ask me if I could use ChatGPT to do my last project faster. I was astounded. It's tough when you know a dumb idea is not going to work, but now you have to articulate exactly why to your manager, without insulting them. Also without wasting a lot of valuable time proving something won't work, when you could be using that time to make actual progress on the project.

I feel like a lot of valuable time is going to be wasted by engineers trying to prove to managers why ChatGPT can't do a certain thing they want done faster. I don't believe ChatGPT will be a net negative for the world, but it won't be as positive as it could be exactly because of the hype effect.

One thing I learned, is you probably should not come across as someone who says "no" a lot to their manager - if you like working where you do in general. Ask open and positive questions, like "that could be a good idea, where do you think we can use it?" (or find even a better phrasing for this, managers are often very defensive, especially when they are not very skilled) rather than "how do you think that would work?" which is often my first response... hah!

Yeah I think this is a good take. There's obvious usefulness to bitcoin, and I think there's even more obvious usefulness to ChatGPT. But they've both been adopted by hype bros, who are looking to make a quick buck off of 1) the popularity of it, and 2) the fact that most people don't really understand it.

I completely agree with this. The timing of this AI hype cycle is very suspicious. Like almost as soon as crypto started to go bust with the collapse of FTX, all of the sudden, here's ChatGPT and a huge inflow of cash into AI startups.

My hot take (or maybe it's not that hot) is that post-Trump, and especially post-Jan 6, the general public has really soured on big tech. Combined with the smartphone and social media growth really slowing down, and now, non-zero interest rates, the industry is desperately searching for its "next big thing". Which is why these technologies, first crypto, and now AI, are in turbo mode and speed-running the hype cycle.