16 ms·

Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was reall

by bedobi 4y ago

Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto space" was quickly invaded by hordes of people who never really cared about the technology itself, how it works and what it's actually useful for. (and what it's not useful for) These people, who know nothing about it, and for years had dismissed it as a joke, suddenly began to talk about it very seriously as a very serious "investment" in self-proclaimed "expert" capacity. You know the type of person I'm talking about! We've all seen them, and most of us can probably count one or two amongst our friends. The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application.

dncornholio 4y ago
It's not about the tech. IMO a payment should just work. You don't need to understand the technology. It's foolish to expect people to know the tech in and out, it is irrelevant for 90% of people. There's no need to have cool applications of blockchains, there's only need for decentralisation.
k__ 4y ago
Depends on the people you hang with. I'm currently at devconnect in Amsterdam and it's full of people who care about tech. Really nice a crowd and even a bit more diverse than the rest of IT.
- lekevicius 4y ago
  I had a fantastic experience at DevCon V. Ethereum developer conferences attract all the technical folks and almost none of "money" people. I haven't gone to any Bitcoin conference, but I can't see it being the same. Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk.
  - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
    > Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk. That's true, but you say it as if that's a bad thing. Bitcoin is valuable because it does not change, its proven to work, and people know that. If the downside is that there isn't as much to talk about at a conference, then I don't give a shit.
    - thinkmassive 4y ago
      You’re right that Bitcoin is still the most valuable because it’s resistant to frivolous changes, however there’s far more development happening in the space today than ever before! Here’s links to 3 full days of talks from the Open Source Stage at the Bitcoin 2022 conference: https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1513487641538269188 https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1513487641538269188 Each YouTube video is about 5 hours long and broken into chapters per talk.
      - k__ 4y ago
        Aren't like all major tokens following BTC? If BTC fell, ETH fell too.
        thinkmassive 4y ago
        Yes, and Bitcoin has maintained its 41% dominance over the past 4 years despite the number of altcoins increasing by 10x over that period.
  - once_inc 4y ago
    Bitcoin isn't averse to change, it's averse to changes that impede on its core attributes: decentalized, permissionless, global, censorship-resistance. Increasing the block size as a patch to keep fees down infringes on the core attributes, because you increase the minimum requirements for running a node. There's a lot of innovation happening in and on Bitcoin. RSK for smart contracts, BetterHash for mining pool decentralization, the Lightning Network or Liquid Network as examples of layered scaling. Bitcoin's dev meetups are great examples of the helpful, thoughtful, enterprising and conscientious community that exists, without the overly loud, overly shallow speculators.
- boardwaalk 4y ago
  Unfortunately at the the surface, it’s all cranks. The people you see trending on Twitter and such almost seem like an alien species. And then there’s all the advertising for exchanges and such being blatant “get in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme” nonsense. I was also “into” crypto roughly early, never found a community (nor should I have to), that’s all I see, and that’s all I therefore assume exists.
  - k__ 4y ago
    Yes, totally get it. I found my crowd, but many people don't.
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
This. I saw this happen with the early internet, and then later with crypto... It took a long time for the Internet to go from 1) only know to geeks to 2) grifters promising the world to 3) wider acceptance. Maybe this will happen too with crypto, but until it sorts out its grifter problem, it will be always be stuck at stage 2.
- blamestross 4y ago
  I don't think the internet has left phase 2 yet either.
  - wccrawford 4y ago
    You're getting downvoted for that, but you aren't wrong. There aren't fewer grifters on the internet. There are just more regular people. And also more grifters, but they can hide in the rest of the noise. It's going to be the same with cryptocurrency if it sticks around. There will always be people trying to trick less-wise people into giving up their money for nothing.
  - s-lambert 4y ago
    If the internet is stuck on phase 2 then telephones are still stuck on phase 2 as well, there's still plenty of phone scams through calls/SMS.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      Telephones managed to regress from 3) to 2), in part due to the ease of automating phone scams over computer networks.
- rzwitserloot 4y ago
  The amount of time the internet took to show it is a solution to real problems, as well as the time it took for the internet to 'grow up' beyond the grifter stage (which was about the same time, and probably that is not a coincidence) is far shorter. Already - and bitcoin/crypto shows no sign of growing beyond the grifter phase. What, something like 1/3 of everybody who bought Bieber's NFT thing got it grifted? That's insane. Bitcoin is over 10 years old.
guywhocodes 4y ago
Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Monero is the closest thing to "internet cash", sadly it's not as popular as other alternatives.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. So is that why other 'crypto' like XRP, Stellar, USDC and Algorand are also compliant for the ISO 20022 standard since they are useful at being 'distributed internet money'? [0] > We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up. Both of them have completely failed in their original purposes. [0] https://www.prlog.org/12911340-cryptocurrencies-that-are-iso-20022-compliant.html https://www.prlog.org/12911340-cryptocurrencies-that-are-iso...
- janandonly 4y ago
  Then you did not look (closely) enough at BTC. When transaction prices went up in 2017 [1] the second layer technology "Lightning" was invented and build-out. Right now, Joe Average, can transact for fractions of pennies. [2] [1] http://melaurent.github.io/spamattack/ http://melaurent.github.io/spamattack/ [2] https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-cnbc-sent-btc-to-a-ukranian-in-poland/ https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-cnbc-sent-btc-to-a-ukranian...
  - rvz 4y ago
    Haven't you realised that 'the second layer technology "Lightning"' aka Lightning Network is not Bitcoin and is an off-chain system and is centralised by design which contradicts and defeats the whole purpose of what Bitcoin was built for? [0] [0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aba062 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aba062
whitepaint 4y ago
> The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application. Check out DeFI on Ethereum and your hope will resurrect. aave.com, pooltogether.com, goodghosting.com, polymarket.com, ens.domains, gitcoin. https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/
- pjc50 4y ago
  > goodghosting https://gitcoin.co/grants/1112/goodghosting-a-defi-savings-game https://gitcoin.co/grants/1112/goodghosting-a-defi-savings-g... : so this is a weird sort of mutual society / tontine kind of thing? Which has been gamified to encourage you to make regular deposits? However, it's missing three things: - what are the actual interest rates? - some sort of explanation of to what extent the principal is at risk to e.g. defi hacks or rugpulls or the collapse of the counterparty - registration with the UK FCA if you're marketing to UK customers https://register.fca.org.uk/s/ https://register.fca.org.uk/s/
subroutine 4y ago
> Sadly, the "crypto space" was quickly invaded by hordes of people who never really cared about the technology itself, how it works and what it's actually useful for. If having a solid understanding of the tech underlying crypto is a prereq of any sort, it will never reach mass adoption. Personally idgaf what fiat we choose or tech underlying my debit transactions, so long as the value is reasonably stable, my account reasonably secure, and my form of payment is accepted by almost all merchants.
- once_inc 4y ago
  Unfortunately, the world tends to dish out black swan events that invalidate your assumptions of what is reasonable. Canadian truckers, Argentinian hyperinflation, Sri Lankan federal deficits, Turkish central banking mismanagement, Russian expansionist delusions... the list goes on and on. Sure, the dollar is reasonably stable. The problem is that the global financial system is deeply flawed in its fundamental properties. Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation, financial meltdowns, geo-spatial catastrophy, and more.
  - subroutine 4y ago
    I didnt say I was specifically opposed to Bitcoin. However, until it meets my prereqs, I have little use for it.
Steko 4y ago
> mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias The whole movement came out of monetary crank-ism, those people were always there. Let me know when there’s a mainstream non-scam MiltonCoin or KeynesCoin that isn’t deflationary and automatically models semi-optimal central bank policy.
- johnny22 4y ago
  me three!! exactly what i've been waiting to hear about.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > that isn’t deflationary So you believe inflation is a good thing?
  - varjag 4y ago
    Inherently deflationary asset guarantees it's going to be used as a speculation vehicle rather than money.
    - Capira 4y ago
      ...which is good because it helps us move away from the throw-away society mentality. Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism.
      - 1ris 4y ago
        >Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism. While using the per-design resource destroying, planet burning Proof-Of-Waste? Are you Kidding? And no, deflation does not encourage more long term investments, it does simply encourage hoarding, not exactly a desirable thing, form any perspective. And of course it is the fatal (and likely never fixed) flaw in bitcoin-as-a-currency.
        Capira 4y ago
        Bitcoin being deflationary helps us move away from the mentality of a throw-away society. You can use the Lightning Network to use Bitcoin as a currency. It's almost instant and free.
dreen 4y ago
When do you think that happened? For me it was around 2012. Thats when I exited crypto and never looked back. I actually built an app before that which would easily transfer money between countries, by finding matching local trades. Unfortunately to turn it into a service, it requires the currency to both be popular and stable.
- scrlk 4y ago
  >I actually built an app before that which would easily transfer money between countries, by finding matching local trades. Is this the same idea as Wise (aka TransferWise)/hawala?
  - dreen 4y ago
    Never heard of those but if it makes you money instead of charging you then its the same.
dspillett 4y ago
> The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there It is important to note that crypto currencies are distributed blockchains, a subset of blockchain methods. Blockchains for tamper detection purposes have been around for longer than bitcoin and its ilk, IIRC they date back to the mid 80s or before.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  I love Git. It is a distributed cryptographic chain technology. Git is open source and free and used by many millions of people every day. You would think that proponents of decentralized cryptographic chain technology would talk about Git a lot. But the crypto people don't talk about Git. They are focused on being early adopters and investors in something that will generate 1000x returns, even if those returns come from a pyramid scheme mechanism.
tiborsaas 4y ago
If I replace crypto with "web", your comment still feels the same, yet the WWW is more popular than ever. Maybe look under the rug a bit deeper, but at the same time I'm not saying that the abuses aren't there.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  No, none of their arguments would make sense if substituted with www. People don't speculate with "web", they don't "pay" with web.
  - tiborsaas 4y ago
    > People don't speculate with "web" Right, risky startup ideas/investments are not a thing, understood > they don't "pay" with web Online payments doesn't exists, TIL
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      If you attribute online payments to "www", then your argument becomes even dumber.
lagadu 4y ago
This doesn't make sense. The vast majority of people aren't interested in the slightest about the technology. Nobody needs or wants to know the intricacies of SEPA payments, I just want to touch the terminal with my watch and boom, payment completed.
usrn 4y ago
I actually do still use it to pay for a SAAS side project from a retired startup founder who got kicked off paypal. It's super convenient for digital stuff like that.

by bedobi 4y ago

dncornholio 4y ago

It's not about the tech. IMO a payment should just work. You don't need to understand the technology. It's foolish to expect people to know the tech in and out, it is irrelevant for 90% of people. There's no need to have cool applications of blockchains, there's only need for decentralisation.

k__ 4y ago

Depends on the people you hang with. I'm currently at devconnect in Amsterdam and it's full of people who care about tech. Really nice a crowd and even a bit more diverse than the rest of IT.

lekevicius 4y ago
I had a fantastic experience at DevCon V. Ethereum developer conferences attract all the technical folks and almost none of "money" people. I haven't gone to any Bitcoin conference, but I can't see it being the same. Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk.
- mattwilsonn888 4y ago
  > Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk. That's true, but you say it as if that's a bad thing. Bitcoin is valuable because it does not change, its proven to work, and people know that. If the downside is that there isn't as much to talk about at a conference, then I don't give a shit.
  - thinkmassive 4y ago
    You’re right that Bitcoin is still the most valuable because it’s resistant to frivolous changes, however there’s far more development happening in the space today than ever before! Here’s links to 3 full days of talks from the Open Source Stage at the Bitcoin 2022 conference: https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1513487641538269188 https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1513487641538269188 Each YouTube video is about 5 hours long and broken into chapters per talk.
    - k__ 4y ago
      Aren't like all major tokens following BTC? If BTC fell, ETH fell too.
      - thinkmassive 4y ago
        Yes, and Bitcoin has maintained its 41% dominance over the past 4 years despite the number of altcoins increasing by 10x over that period.
- once_inc 4y ago
  Bitcoin isn't averse to change, it's averse to changes that impede on its core attributes: decentalized, permissionless, global, censorship-resistance. Increasing the block size as a patch to keep fees down infringes on the core attributes, because you increase the minimum requirements for running a node. There's a lot of innovation happening in and on Bitcoin. RSK for smart contracts, BetterHash for mining pool decentralization, the Lightning Network or Liquid Network as examples of layered scaling. Bitcoin's dev meetups are great examples of the helpful, thoughtful, enterprising and conscientious community that exists, without the overly loud, overly shallow speculators.
boardwaalk 4y ago
Unfortunately at the the surface, it’s all cranks. The people you see trending on Twitter and such almost seem like an alien species. And then there’s all the advertising for exchanges and such being blatant “get in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme” nonsense. I was also “into” crypto roughly early, never found a community (nor should I have to), that’s all I see, and that’s all I therefore assume exists.
- k__ 4y ago
  Yes, totally get it. I found my crowd, but many people don't.

alfiedotwtf 4y ago

This. I saw this happen with the early internet, and then later with crypto... It took a long time for the Internet to go from 1) only know to geeks to 2) grifters promising the world to 3) wider acceptance. Maybe this will happen too with crypto, but until it sorts out its grifter problem, it will be always be stuck at stage 2.

blamestross 4y ago
I don't think the internet has left phase 2 yet either.
- wccrawford 4y ago
  You're getting downvoted for that, but you aren't wrong. There aren't fewer grifters on the internet. There are just more regular people. And also more grifters, but they can hide in the rest of the noise. It's going to be the same with cryptocurrency if it sticks around. There will always be people trying to trick less-wise people into giving up their money for nothing.
- s-lambert 4y ago
  If the internet is stuck on phase 2 then telephones are still stuck on phase 2 as well, there's still plenty of phone scams through calls/SMS.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Telephones managed to regress from 3) to 2), in part due to the ease of automating phone scams over computer networks.
rzwitserloot 4y ago
The amount of time the internet took to show it is a solution to real problems, as well as the time it took for the internet to 'grow up' beyond the grifter stage (which was about the same time, and probably that is not a coincidence) is far shorter. Already - and bitcoin/crypto shows no sign of growing beyond the grifter phase. What, something like 1/3 of everybody who bought Bieber's NFT thing got it grifted? That's insane. Bitcoin is over 10 years old.

guywhocodes 4y ago

Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up.

andrepd 4y ago
Monero is the closest thing to "internet cash", sadly it's not as popular as other alternatives.
rvz 4y ago
> Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. So is that why other 'crypto' like XRP, Stellar, USDC and Algorand are also compliant for the ISO 20022 standard since they are useful at being 'distributed internet money'? [0] > We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up. Both of them have completely failed in their original purposes. [0] https://www.prlog.org/12911340-cryptocurrencies-that-are-iso-20022-compliant.html https://www.prlog.org/12911340-cryptocurrencies-that-are-iso...
janandonly 4y ago
Then you did not look (closely) enough at BTC. When transaction prices went up in 2017 [1] the second layer technology "Lightning" was invented and build-out. Right now, Joe Average, can transact for fractions of pennies. [2] [1] http://melaurent.github.io/spamattack/ http://melaurent.github.io/spamattack/ [2] https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-cnbc-sent-btc-to-a-ukranian-in-poland/ https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-cnbc-sent-btc-to-a-ukranian...
- rvz 4y ago
  Haven't you realised that 'the second layer technology "Lightning"' aka Lightning Network is not Bitcoin and is an off-chain system and is centralised by design which contradicts and defeats the whole purpose of what Bitcoin was built for? [0] [0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aba062 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aba062

whitepaint 4y ago

> The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application. Check out DeFI on Ethereum and your hope will resurrect. aave.com, pooltogether.com, goodghosting.com, polymarket.com, ens.domains, gitcoin. https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/

pjc50 4y ago
> goodghosting https://gitcoin.co/grants/1112/goodghosting-a-defi-savings-game https://gitcoin.co/grants/1112/goodghosting-a-defi-savings-g... : so this is a weird sort of mutual society / tontine kind of thing? Which has been gamified to encourage you to make regular deposits? However, it's missing three things: - what are the actual interest rates? - some sort of explanation of to what extent the principal is at risk to e.g. defi hacks or rugpulls or the collapse of the counterparty - registration with the UK FCA if you're marketing to UK customers https://register.fca.org.uk/s/ https://register.fca.org.uk/s/

subroutine 4y ago

> Sadly, the "crypto space" was quickly invaded by hordes of people who never really cared about the technology itself, how it works and what it's actually useful for. If having a solid understanding of the tech underlying crypto is a prereq of any sort, it will never reach mass adoption. Personally idgaf what fiat we choose or tech underlying my debit transactions, so long as the value is reasonably stable, my account reasonably secure, and my form of payment is accepted by almost all merchants.

once_inc 4y ago
Unfortunately, the world tends to dish out black swan events that invalidate your assumptions of what is reasonable. Canadian truckers, Argentinian hyperinflation, Sri Lankan federal deficits, Turkish central banking mismanagement, Russian expansionist delusions... the list goes on and on. Sure, the dollar is reasonably stable. The problem is that the global financial system is deeply flawed in its fundamental properties. Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation, financial meltdowns, geo-spatial catastrophy, and more.
- subroutine 4y ago
  I didnt say I was specifically opposed to Bitcoin. However, until it meets my prereqs, I have little use for it.

Steko 4y ago

> mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias The whole movement came out of monetary crank-ism, those people were always there. Let me know when there’s a mainstream non-scam MiltonCoin or KeynesCoin that isn’t deflationary and automatically models semi-optimal central bank policy.

johnny22 4y ago
me three!! exactly what i've been waiting to hear about.
ekianjo 4y ago
> that isn’t deflationary So you believe inflation is a good thing?
- varjag 4y ago
  Inherently deflationary asset guarantees it's going to be used as a speculation vehicle rather than money.
  - Capira 4y ago
    ...which is good because it helps us move away from the throw-away society mentality. Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism.
    - 1ris 4y ago
      >Bitcoin is very effective environmental activism. While using the per-design resource destroying, planet burning Proof-Of-Waste? Are you Kidding? And no, deflation does not encourage more long term investments, it does simply encourage hoarding, not exactly a desirable thing, form any perspective. And of course it is the fatal (and likely never fixed) flaw in bitcoin-as-a-currency.
      - Capira 4y ago
        Bitcoin being deflationary helps us move away from the mentality of a throw-away society. You can use the Lightning Network to use Bitcoin as a currency. It's almost instant and free.

dreen 4y ago

When do you think that happened? For me it was around 2012. Thats when I exited crypto and never looked back. I actually built an app before that which would easily transfer money between countries, by finding matching local trades. Unfortunately to turn it into a service, it requires the currency to both be popular and stable.

scrlk 4y ago
>I actually built an app before that which would easily transfer money between countries, by finding matching local trades. Is this the same idea as Wise (aka TransferWise)/hawala?
- dreen 4y ago
  Never heard of those but if it makes you money instead of charging you then its the same.

dspillett 4y ago

> The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there It is important to note that crypto currencies are distributed blockchains, a subset of blockchain methods. Blockchains for tamper detection purposes have been around for longer than bitcoin and its ilk, IIRC they date back to the mid 80s or before.

gitfan86 4y ago
I love Git. It is a distributed cryptographic chain technology. Git is open source and free and used by many millions of people every day. You would think that proponents of decentralized cryptographic chain technology would talk about Git a lot. But the crypto people don't talk about Git. They are focused on being early adopters and investors in something that will generate 1000x returns, even if those returns come from a pyramid scheme mechanism.

tiborsaas 4y ago

If I replace crypto with "web", your comment still feels the same, yet the WWW is more popular than ever. Maybe look under the rug a bit deeper, but at the same time I'm not saying that the abuses aren't there.

411111111111111 4y ago
No, none of their arguments would make sense if substituted with www. People don't speculate with "web", they don't "pay" with web.
- tiborsaas 4y ago
  > People don't speculate with "web" Right, risky startup ideas/investments are not a thing, understood > they don't "pay" with web Online payments doesn't exists, TIL
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    If you attribute online payments to "www", then your argument becomes even dumber.

lagadu 4y ago

This doesn't make sense. The vast majority of people aren't interested in the slightest about the technology. Nobody needs or wants to know the intricacies of SEPA payments, I just want to touch the terminal with my watch and boom, payment completed.

usrn 4y ago

I actually do still use it to pay for a SAAS side project from a retired startup founder who got kicked off paypal. It's super convenient for digital stuff like that.