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I don't think it will die, newer blockchain protocols like MimbleWimble are highly interesting and pure math and cryptography. The ICO shillers are disappointin

I don't think it will die, newer blockchain protocols like MimbleWimble are highly interesting and pure math and cryptography. The ICO shillers are disappointing, I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea. For example, the recent BitTorrent ICO disappointed me, although it pumped 10x from ICO price in the past week which will keep the speculators interested, thanks to Binance supporting it.

mihaifm 8y ago
Thanks for sharing this, I haven't heard of MimbleWimble before but indeed it looks interesting. Here's the original whitepaper if anyone is interested: https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origin https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origi... I wasn't there during the dot-com era, but from what I read it was the same situation: lots of scammers and cool kids raising millions from investors driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), and lots of money ending up in the wrong hands.
m-i-l 8y ago
> I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea The big difference is that with dot-coms the scams and shady characters were in a minority, whereas with blockchain they are the vast majority (so much so that it is hard to separate the signal, if there is indeed any, from the noise). Don't think anyone would debate that point. Another (albeit more debatable) difference is that dot-coms were pretty focussed on users, while blockchain development seems to put very little genuine thought into how ordinary people would benefit from any of it - it is mostly about "building out the ecosystem" (which sounds suspiciously like "recruiting new members to our multi-level marketing scheme"). In my view these differences are because the dot-coms were driven primarily by the technology and the exciting new things you could do with it, while blockchain development is driven primarily by money (to make matters worse, psuedo anonymised money which was originally used almost exclusively for illicit purposes) hence bringing out the worst elements of human nature.

mihaifm 8y ago

Thanks for sharing this, I haven't heard of MimbleWimble before but indeed it looks interesting. Here's the original whitepaper if anyone is interested: https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origin https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origi... I wasn't there during the dot-com era, but from what I read it was the same situation: lots of scammers and cool kids raising millions from investors driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), and lots of money ending up in the wrong hands.

m-i-l 8y ago

> I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea The big difference is that with dot-coms the scams and shady characters were in a minority, whereas with blockchain they are the vast majority (so much so that it is hard to separate the signal, if there is indeed any, from the noise). Don't think anyone would debate that point. Another (albeit more debatable) difference is that dot-coms were pretty focussed on users, while blockchain development seems to put very little genuine thought into how ordinary people would benefit from any of it - it is mostly about "building out the ecosystem" (which sounds suspiciously like "recruiting new members to our multi-level marketing scheme"). In my view these differences are because the dot-coms were driven primarily by the technology and the exciting new things you could do with it, while blockchain development is driven primarily by money (to make matters worse, psuedo anonymised money which was originally used almost exclusively for illicit purposes) hence bringing out the worst elements of human nature.