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But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first? Why would I want to hitch my wagon to that star? What will happen if

But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first? Why would I want to hitch my wagon to that star? What will happen if the speculation dies down and the ledger isn't so widely distributed anymore?

aeternum 4y ago
>But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first? They will initially but just as we saw the the early internet, a crash can wipe out the speculation pretty efficiently and what remains might actually be useful.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  I don't know about the very early days, but since 1990 Internet adoption (globally) has only gone up. Some stocks crashed, some specific sites went away, but the people involved just reorganized and made even more successful businesses. If 50%+ of Internet users decided to disconnect that could cause some real problems.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    Hasn't crypto adoption also generally only gone up? https://financesonline.com/number-of-blockchain-wallet-users/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-blockchain-wallet-users...
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      We are talking about a hypothetical future where the speculation interest goes away. The poster I was responding to thought that would make room for more pragmatic applications but I'm not so sure.
- soco 4y ago
  Which early internet crash event are you referring to?
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    The dot-com bubble that crashed circa 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble I'm not convinced that crypto is like the dot-com bubble. With the early web, its use cases were fairly clear and immediate. With crypto, the use cases remain unclear and speculative even after 13 years of hype and fanfare.
    - soco 4y ago
      I definitely wouldn't have thought to call the 00's "early internet" but that's maybe just me :)
      - leereeves 4y ago
        It was early web anyway. The first web browser was released in 1993, and the first version of Netscape was released in 1994.
- danaris 4y ago
  By the dot-com crash in 2000, there were a myriad of clear use cases for the Internet that normal people—those not particularly tech-savvy, and especially not those directly financially invested in Internet companies—used and recognized as very helpful. Bitcoin has now been around for, what, 13 years? And aside from a very brief explosion of hype around NFTs that most people were fairly quickly able to recognize as nothing but more "greater fool" scams, most people not directly financially invested in blockchain projects either don't know or care blockchain exists, or see it as a bad thing.
  - mirntyfirty 4y ago
    It was interesting how quickly the cloud providers got rid of their block chain offerings.
    - tornato7 4y ago
      Have they? It looks like Azure, AWS, and CloudFlare still have their blockchain services, and Google still maintains Ethereum-ETL. GCP made a big push into the space earlier this year with a dedicated team (but not much has come of that yet).
      - mirntyfirty 4y ago
        That’s what I get for not verifying headlines.

aeternum 4y ago

>But if the speculative use cases dwarf the normal ones, won't their interests come first? They will initially but just as we saw the the early internet, a crash can wipe out the speculation pretty efficiently and what remains might actually be useful.

jrumbut 4y ago
I don't know about the very early days, but since 1990 Internet adoption (globally) has only gone up. Some stocks crashed, some specific sites went away, but the people involved just reorganized and made even more successful businesses. If 50%+ of Internet users decided to disconnect that could cause some real problems.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Hasn't crypto adoption also generally only gone up? https://financesonline.com/number-of-blockchain-wallet-users/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-blockchain-wallet-users...
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    We are talking about a hypothetical future where the speculation interest goes away. The poster I was responding to thought that would make room for more pragmatic applications but I'm not so sure.
soco 4y ago
Which early internet crash event are you referring to?
- ogogmad 4y ago
  The dot-com bubble that crashed circa 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble I'm not convinced that crypto is like the dot-com bubble. With the early web, its use cases were fairly clear and immediate. With crypto, the use cases remain unclear and speculative even after 13 years of hype and fanfare.
  - soco 4y ago
    I definitely wouldn't have thought to call the 00's "early internet" but that's maybe just me :)
    - leereeves 4y ago
      It was early web anyway. The first web browser was released in 1993, and the first version of Netscape was released in 1994.
danaris 4y ago
By the dot-com crash in 2000, there were a myriad of clear use cases for the Internet that normal people—those not particularly tech-savvy, and especially not those directly financially invested in Internet companies—used and recognized as very helpful. Bitcoin has now been around for, what, 13 years? And aside from a very brief explosion of hype around NFTs that most people were fairly quickly able to recognize as nothing but more "greater fool" scams, most people not directly financially invested in blockchain projects either don't know or care blockchain exists, or see it as a bad thing.
- mirntyfirty 4y ago
  It was interesting how quickly the cloud providers got rid of their block chain offerings.
  - tornato7 4y ago
    Have they? It looks like Azure, AWS, and CloudFlare still have their blockchain services, and Google still maintains Ethereum-ETL. GCP made a big push into the space earlier this year with a dedicated team (but not much has come of that yet).
    - mirntyfirty 4y ago
      That’s what I get for not verifying headlines.