The early internet had a lot of novelty trends. The one that sticks out to me is "e-mail chains". I remember logging on to the net in 1995 at the age of ~7 year

The early internet had a lot of novelty trends. The one that sticks out to me is "e-mail chains". I remember logging on to the net in 1995 at the age of ~7 years old (only 6 years after its establishment). The answer is no -- the internet wasn't rife with scams. The dotcom bubble, however, was RIFE with garbage companies that formed and dissolved in months. Bitcoin has been around for 14 years now. If we map blockchain progress to the internet itself, or even 3d graphics (which materialized at roughly the same time as the internet with Jurassic Park coming out in 1992 and DOOM in 1993), then we are basically in the year 2003. By 2003, we basically had all the big players we have today - Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, but they were much smaller. EBay and Yahoo were considered in the same league at that time. Cloud computing and centralization of the infrastructure of the internet was not yet a thing. The problem with blockchain and VCs is that there is this cargo cult attached to it. The idea is that a bunch of libertarian nerds in their 20s made it big on the internet, so the 2022 version of that must hold true with blockchain. This is a bit silly. If we step back, blockchain is mostly an improvement on ACH bank transfers and a few other things. The rest of that space is just pure Ponzinomics.