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We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream.

• Jasper_ 9y ago
  Even taking your (IMO incorrect) assumption that the web only became mainstream when Facebook launched at face value... > When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. That was 1996. > When I could post on Twitter and Facebook it was starting to feel like it was mainstream. That was 2004. So roughly a gap of 8 years. Bitcoin started in 2009. It's now 2017. A gap of 8 years. So, uh, how much longer is a "a long way off"?
  • zippergz 9y ago
    Ask your parents to explain cryptocurrency. It's not about wall clock time. It's about milestones.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • Jasper_ 9y ago
      My point isn't "it's been eight years, so it must be ready", it's "it's been eight years, so you can stop comparing it to the early internet now". I've been following Bitcoin for five years now, and I've seen this "it's the early Internet, success doesn't happen overnight" attitude that gets more and more false every year. Bitcoin and the ecosystem around has barely changed since it was released.
      • radarsat1 9y ago
        > Bitcoin and the ecosystem around has barely changed since it was released. And yet it's still going, and with all the turmoil, it hasn't been fundamentally broken yet. I think in the end, if it remains unbroken (that is, no 50% attacks, etc) bitcoin will become a backing currency for more flexible/faster/easier to use/understand approaches. I think it has a future, but I'm not sure its future is "My mom understands it." It may nonetheless remain useful, and thus, continue to have value, even if itself it never goes "mainstream". Already it is seeing over the last 2 years a stability in its price that is very comforting. The main criticism is its extreme volatility, but as it is adopted more, as its price goes up, and as more inertia is inserted into the market, it should stabilize even more and cause a positive feedback loop encouraging more adoption. It's doesn't need to be used for day-to-day transactions for it to have value, I think it's already proven that point imho. The main concern is that this could literally turn around overnight if ever it gets fundamentally hacked/broken. This is always going to be a risk, an uncertainty which might hurt it in the long run. The question is, is this worse than e.g. counterfeit concerns with fiat currency.
      • DennisP 9y ago
        TCP/IP started going global in the mid-1980s. If you consider Bitcoin to be just the first working example of a digital currency protocol, then a better analogy might even be the first packet switching protocols in the 1960s. Bitcoin has barely changed, but the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole has changed massively, and shows no sign of stopping.
    • rdiddly 9y ago
      If you're like 25, I could be your parent. And I understand cryptocurrency OK, so I guess make sure you have dumb parents before trying this test. But actually the difficulty of understanding it is a big part of what keeps it from going truly mainstream. When the equivalent of AOL comes along and abstracts all that stuff away for people, that's when you'll see Eternal September all over again.
  • dcw303 9y ago
    I don't know. The Web and Bitcoin are operating on different time scales. One of the major factors with the Web's speed of success was that it was able to disrupt traditional media industries because it wasn't recognized as a threat until it was too late. I don't think the Finance industry is going to let the same thing happen with Bitcoin, hence things like R3 and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
  • godzillabrennus 9y ago
    The web was developed for a long time before 1996. I'd wager cryptocurrency has another 8 years before it's mainstream.
    • dboreham 9y ago
      I thought the Internet had gone mainstream in 1992 when I was passed by a UPS truck with their URL painted on the side..
      • 392c91e8165b 9y ago
        Are you sure it was 1992? Wikipedia says that there were only 50 web servers in the world in January 1993, and my recollection is that were all at educational and research institutions. I don't think for example that any of the major computer companies, e.g., Microsoft or Apple, had web site that early. (They had internet connectivity, domain names, mail servers, ftp servers -- but back then, ftp servers did not have URLs.) Maybe one or 2 had web servers, but if they did, they were probably the personal projects of one or two employees. Most of the world's web pages were about computers and the internet.
        • secabeen 9y ago
          Yeah, 1992 is way too early for that. Even then, it wasn't fully mainstream until advertisers felt able to drop the http://www http://www from the url. When companies could just put coke.com at the end of their TV ads or on the can, it was as mainstream as anything.
          • dboreham 9y ago
            As I said above it was a surprise to me at the time, but nevertheless true. The domain was registered in April 1992.
        • dboreham 9y ago
          Yes. It was something of a surprise at the time. It was also in the UK, on the A1. I know the year because it was shortly after I started a specific job that required driving up and down the A1 often. It would have been late in the year because I think I started that job in November. Here is the registered date from whois for ups.com : Created Date: 1992-04-07 I think you (or Wikipedia) are quite mistaken about 50 web servers in early 1993. I remember giving a talk about the Internet in 93 where I showed examples of web sites that were available at the time. One of them was IMDB. If I think of the servers that I ran and my friends ran, I'd get to about 20 so I have a very hard time believing there were only 50 in total. Perhaps there was a huge amount of server growth during 1993?
  • jstanley 9y ago
    Do you think hotbot launched on day 1 of the web?
• wil421 9y ago
  The web was mainstream when I was like 10 on AOL doing who knows what with all my classmates. My grandparents even got into it and sent me emails and chatrooms. Geocities was more or less main stream and kinda like pre-social media. Those communities were a little different. I can also remember using Altavista and Lycos before I ever heard of a Google. My mom introduced me to google to help me research papers for school. She showed me how to do complex searches and is by no means good with technology. Absolutely agree bitcoin is not ready for main stream. It's daunting for non techies. It wouldn't be mainstream until I can use it as easy as cash or card. Or mom and pop places accept it.
  • bdamm 9y ago
    Your mom is an outlier.
    • wil421 9y ago
      Probably for using Google early but not search engines. Vaguely remember school computer labs with various search engine in late 90s.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • coldtea 9y ago
      Not really. Don't know when you lads/lasses were born, but the Web was already mainstream, with everybody and their dog getting on it, on 1998-9 or so. It didn't have to wait until Facebook.
      • rubidium 9y ago
        In the US, 30% adoption by 1998, 50% adoption by 2000. But much higher rates of adoption for the wealthier households and much lower for the poorer. So depends on your economic state then.
        • coldtea 9y ago
• CPLX 9y ago
  But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today?
  • Swizec 9y ago
    > What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? "I want to play investor and get filthy rich but don't have enough money to be an accredited investor, playing stocks feels too hard, and angel investing seems too risky." It's solving that problem.
    • miscreanity 9y ago
      How many shares are outstanding? According to which exchange? Oh, it was recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain? No question, then. What about a deed or title for property? Which of countless organizations and public records sources has the document? If it was entered on the Ethereum blockchain, there's no doubt as to ownership. There's also tracking of goods; outbreak of salmonella? If the trail is available on a blockchain then it's easy to find the source and anything else that might be tainted. The only reason crypto is volatile right now is due to speculation on which blockchain(s) will be most successful, just as TCP/IP was not always the foremost protocol. It is the nature of growth to be uncertain and wild, and be certain that there is no going backward: Bitcoin and blockchains are here to stay. One additional note is that they are incredibly powerful tools for control and tracking - a deep state's wet dream, in the process of being willfully adopted by the masses and soon to be the delineating mark between the haves and have-nots. Make no mistake: blockchains can be manipulated by institutional forces. Huxley and Orwell could not have imagined this in their worst nightmares... beware.
      • CJefferson 9y ago
        Is it on bitcoin cash, or bitcoin core, or bitcoin XL, or bitcoin segwit2 (some options may be incorrect.. :) )
• mathgenius 9y ago
  Perhaps the comparison should be to linux. Barely anyone knows what this is and yet it runs on most of the phones of the world & is behind most websites aswell. Linux had a long runway to get there. Rusty Russell has a nice talk about this: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/transcript-my-20-year-journey-from-linux-to-bitcoin-26e66b00988b https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/transcript-my-20-year-jo...
  • davnicwil 9y ago
    Yeah, I also suspect this may be it. Cryptocurrency will be useful to consumers 'directly' in exactly the same sense that linux is useful to consumers 'directly' - it runs behind practically every service they touch every day. The fact that many won't need to know or care that's the case, what it is, how it works, may be similarly irrelevant.
  • ghaff 9y ago
    Whether or not one agrees, I've heard many smart folks without a particular dog in the hunt compare blockchain today with the internet circa 1980.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  Some of this is (to an extent) semantics. What counts as mainstream. Is spotify mainstream if more people still use CDs or tapes than streaming services? Any definition will be at least partially arbitrary, even if some are better than others. I think the relevant question is "are digital coins an important part of future money?" I think it's telling that this article is mostly concerned with investment, fortunes risked, fortunes made. Salacious and dramatic. Not so relevant right now to that question. Investment has a role en route to "mainstream" but this isn't the bottleneck in 2017. Use is - buying goods and services. On that front, the article has little to say. I'm skeptical that cryptocurrencies will last unless a lot more people start buying and selling things, paying bills, receiving salaries... Even if they do last as digital investment assets, I'm not sure it matters much.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  Some of this is (to an extent) semantics. What counts as mainstream. Is spotify mainstream if more people still use CDs or tapes than streaming services? Any definition will be at least partially arbitrary, even if some are better than others. Argument for any definition will generally amount to a definition, even if there are good reasons for the choices. I think the relevant question is "are digital coins an important part of future money?" I think it's telling that this article is mostly concerned with investment, fortunes risked, fortunes made. Salacious and dramatic. Not so relevant right now to mainstreaming of cryptocurrency as currency. Investment has a role en route to "mainstream" but this isn't the bottleneck in 2017. Use is - buying goods and services. On that front, the article has little to say. I'm skeptical that cryptocurrencies will last unless a lot more people start buying and selling things, paying bills, receiving salaries... Even if they do last as digital investment assets, I'm not sure it matters much.
• discombobulate 9y ago
  > In the same way that today's web users don't care about html, http, or urls, digital currency won't be mainstream until they don't have to care about private keys, bitcoin addresses, or even (gasp!) the blockchain. We're a long way off. Not all digital currency has keys. World of Warcraft gold, for example. One would imagine there would be a bank of sorts. Coinbase plays that role, at the moment. They supply cold storage. It does need to become easier to secure your shit -- given. Most ppl aren't going to be verifying a SHA256 hash function output of their client binaries or use (pseudo)-cypherpunk's public key to verify said hash function is correct against a known good output. Unfortunately!
• discombobulate 9y ago
  > When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream. It was in schools by that time. Youngsters could well embrace crypto long before the rest of the normies. I would have loved it when I was a kid. Anyone got kidos who grind crypto? If you're reading the nytimes for crypto, then you're behind the curve. Bigly. Digital coins. Fucking morons. & if you're reading the nytimes for crypto investment advice, then you're probably exposing yourself to risk with limited upside. Find someone who is investing in this shit full-time & give your money to them. Even tech VCs invest in crypto hedge funds. Polychain Capital is an example. Olaf Carlson-Wee (who runs it) was on the cover of Forbes recently (I believe ). They're the type of ppl you want investing for you. You could also bing Ari David Paul &/or Chris Burniske. The former is opening a fund. The latter will probably open a fund after his book 'Cryptoassets' is released (I think that's the play).
  • aedron 9y ago
    > Anyone got kidos who grind crypto? I just overheard my kid's friend talking about how you buy everything you want on "the dark web" using bitcoin to pay for it.
    • discombobulate 9y ago
      That's obviously bad. But kids have always bought drugs. That is an example of how kidos can create their own economies with crypto. Money is something everyone understands. Even penguins & chimps understand trade (for sex, with the link provided)[0]. If there's a way to ensure children didn't have access to drugs of abuse, I'm all for that. Drugs & developing brains !mix. & it seems prohibition hasn't helped any. It's spawned more concentrated substances & resilient drug markets. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals
  • neuro_imager 9y ago
    How would I go about investing via a hedge fund like Polychain Capital? I can't seam to find contact information online. Do I need to go through a broker?
• csomar 9y ago
  It is actually quite arguable: Is the web starting to go mainstream from all directions? (personal/professional/state-wide) In fact, there are still many countries who are not using the Internet for "everything". The point being made: If you can do it through the Internet, why have the brick and mortar office in the first place? The web revolution is just "getting started". I watched Bloomberg the other day where they were trying to make a point on the Nasdaq: This time it is different. The 2000 bubble was an exponential period of exponential growth (in stock prices, and not the underlying) This time it is not the same. The growth is linear, and most of the companies have infrastructure or even profit to back it up. (Apple eps is not bubbly)