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> - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. Bitcoin launched in 2007. Facebook opened to the public in 2006. One o

> - Presumably more people will be online, and more ways to use crypto will be released. Bitcoin launched in 2007. Facebook opened to the public in 2006. One of those has 3 billion users, the other can't get out of the basement. Why haven't we seen more of those ways yet? > It's still very early days for crypto Facebook is one year older, and it's now basically a nation state in power and scale. When will it stop being "very early days for crypto"?

mindvirus 6y ago
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Before Facebook was Myspace, and before that forums and BBSes. The concepts Facebook was built on are much older than it. When does it stop being the early days? I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used and the general population to be comfortable with it.
- Jasper_ 6y ago
  And Bitcoin was based on Hashcash and countless other distributed ledger systems before it. > I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used Well we're already down one and a half decades. What if it never sees widespread use. Defining "very early days" as "there's no users yet" means you can always claim it's "very early days". There's another issue here, which is that people point out hard problems and say "don't worry, smart people are working on solutions". This has been happening as far back as 2013, when I was poking my head into the Bitcoin-sphere. But it never accounts for: what if there is no solution that meets all requirements? That's politically appropriate, safe, secure, and efficient? Maybe we can't claim magic future solutions will solve us when they still haven't been solved yet -- 1.5 decades in.
  - mindvirus 6y ago
    Like I said, I'm skeptical too. There is a lot of growth though - cash app and coinbase make it easy to buy, bitpay makes it easy to spend. So when I say it's early days, I mean that if crypto takes off I think it has room to be significantly bigger than today.
programmarchy 6y ago
Crypto total market cap is over $1 trillion, and Bitcoin represents 60% of that. It’s much more valuable than Facebook.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I'm skeptical that market cap is a useful metric here. Owning a cryptocurrency doesn't entitle you to a share of the value generated by that currency, so it's not clear why multiplying the price of 1 BTC by 21 million should produce a meaningful estimate of how much Bitcoin as a whole is worth.
  - pcthrowaway 6y ago
    Couldn't the same be said for owning a stock? You can only get what you can sell them for. If you own 1 million shares of a company which has issued 10 million shares and is trading at $5/share, you can't dump your million shares for $5 million, because the price would change as you were trying to sell it
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      It could be, although there are definitely situations where you could sell 10% of a company for close to its market price. But then that just means we have to use other metrics, and Facebook comes out definitively on top in for example number of active users.
- Jasper_ 6y ago
  The market cap of party confetti is over $1 trillion too. I don't think the market is anywhere near liquid enough to let you extract all of that $1 trillion, especially with Tethers looming over the whole industry.

mindvirus 6y ago

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Before Facebook was Myspace, and before that forums and BBSes. The concepts Facebook was built on are much older than it. When does it stop being the early days? I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used and the general population to be comfortable with it.

Jasper_ 6y ago
And Bitcoin was based on Hashcash and countless other distributed ledger systems before it. > I don't know - it'll take decades I would guess for it to be widely used Well we're already down one and a half decades. What if it never sees widespread use. Defining "very early days" as "there's no users yet" means you can always claim it's "very early days". There's another issue here, which is that people point out hard problems and say "don't worry, smart people are working on solutions". This has been happening as far back as 2013, when I was poking my head into the Bitcoin-sphere. But it never accounts for: what if there is no solution that meets all requirements? That's politically appropriate, safe, secure, and efficient? Maybe we can't claim magic future solutions will solve us when they still haven't been solved yet -- 1.5 decades in.
- mindvirus 6y ago
  Like I said, I'm skeptical too. There is a lot of growth though - cash app and coinbase make it easy to buy, bitpay makes it easy to spend. So when I say it's early days, I mean that if crypto takes off I think it has room to be significantly bigger than today.

programmarchy 6y ago

Crypto total market cap is over $1 trillion, and Bitcoin represents 60% of that. It’s much more valuable than Facebook.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm skeptical that market cap is a useful metric here. Owning a cryptocurrency doesn't entitle you to a share of the value generated by that currency, so it's not clear why multiplying the price of 1 BTC by 21 million should produce a meaningful estimate of how much Bitcoin as a whole is worth.
- pcthrowaway 6y ago
  Couldn't the same be said for owning a stock? You can only get what you can sell them for. If you own 1 million shares of a company which has issued 10 million shares and is trading at $5/share, you can't dump your million shares for $5 million, because the price would change as you were trying to sell it
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It could be, although there are definitely situations where you could sell 10% of a company for close to its market price. But then that just means we have to use other metrics, and Facebook comes out definitively on top in for example number of active users.
Jasper_ 6y ago
The market cap of party confetti is over $1 trillion too. I don't think the market is anywhere near liquid enough to let you extract all of that $1 trillion, especially with Tethers looming over the whole industry.