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"This is a pattern we saw a lot with prior trends like search, cloud, machine learning and AI." This is the industry pattern and has been the case going back ma
by zeruch 5y ago
"This is a pattern we saw a lot with prior trends like search, cloud, machine learning and AI." This is the industry pattern and has been the case going back many decades; the only real change is since the dotcom era, it's spread to consumers playing along, whereas prior to that it was largely just the 'investor class' in the sandbox.
- acdha 5y agoThe difference is that all of those had real products early on. The web was changing how people and businesses interacted by the mid-90s, despite computers costing far more and network access being limited and both being terribly slow. Search was a huge deal shortly afterwards, changing how people shopped, researched, etc. ML/AI has had ups and downs but we also live in a world where machines reading text, organizing your photos, responding to natural language queries, etc. are routine. In contrast, the blockchain world has consistently failed to produce anything which many people want to buy. The lure of high returns on speculation has attracted more people than any of the products, but there's no durable business hook the way there was for, say, going back to buying plane tickets over the phone.
- ethbr0 5y agoInternational money transfer?
- acdha 5y agoMaybe if the fees are low enough but that’s shaving a percentage point or two off of Western Union, not changing the world. To be clear, I would be quite happy if someone nuked PayPal or Western Union but that needs scalability and cost wins which have not yet been demonstrated.