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> Air travel had immediate, obvious advantages. And yet, the amount of FUD and ridicule people got for trying to fly was enormous. In hindsight, the advantages
by patrickaljord 9y ago
> Air travel had immediate, obvious advantages.
And yet, the amount of FUD and ridicule people got for trying to fly was enormous. In hindsight, the advantages of a successful technology are always obvious.
> In contrast, the first decade of crypto currency hype has basically been “you should use your money to make me rich and in return you’ll get to do what you could already do except it’ll cost more and won’t have fraud protection”.
That is not how it was introduced to the world, crypto currency was introduced as a trustless decentralized cash currency no tyrant could ever manipulate to the detriment of the people, the ability to send cash near instantly to anyone across the world without a central authority. If bitcoin becomes successful (not saying it will) at fighting currency manipulation and banking the poor, people like you will say "Crypto currency had immediate, obvious advantages. There were many technical challenges but sending money fast across the world with no intermediary and making currency manipulation by tyrants impossible was an obvious win.".
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> And yet, the amount of FUD and ridicule people got for trying to fly was enormous Sources? Almost immediately after the invention of flight, WWI started putting them to use [1]. (There was ridicule about the possibility of heavier-than-air flight prior to its invention. But that’s not comparable to the matter at hand.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I
- jwilk 9y agoNon-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I
- acdha 9y ago> And yet, the amount of FUD and ridicule people got for trying to fly was enormous. Was that for trying to fly or because the proposed mechanism was obviously unworkable? It’s not like people are saying there isn’t room to improve on the credit card system, only that you have to deliver something which is actually an improvement. Similarly, your defense of bitcoin is a great example of that problem: nobody is arguing that the marketing points you repeated weren’t widely made, only that the system on offer falls far short. (E.g. “send cash instantly” versus a substantial fee and time delay compared to a credit card. Similarly, talking about currency manipulation is reasonable but it’s laughable in the context of something which fluctuates so much more than almost all currencies)
- tigershark 9y agoDo you really think that giving control of your money to a bunch of Chinese crypto miners is better than having government protection on your account (up to a certain limit obviously)? Honestly the cryptovangelists are looking much more like a scam every day if even someone who has just “a bunch” of criptocurrencies per his admission is so vocal on guaranteeing the future of the entire ecosystem...