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Not everyone agreed it was useful. That's the point. People laughed at email, buying online, payment was even illegal in the beginning. I was also there at th

Not everyone agreed it was useful. That's the point. People laughed at email, buying online, payment was even illegal in the beginning. I was also there at the time from the very beginning. This is the same thing. Hype, then crash then re-construction then normalized. There is so much use for blockchain especially as infrastructure for society and in 10 years from now we will not even be thinking about it. It's no different.

CPLX 4y ago
They really didn’t. The fact that it was really useful was blindingly obvious to everyone pretty quickly. Like nobody was confused thinking it was better to not be able to check your bank transaction history online. The question at the time was how useful, and how quickly things were going to be transformed and what it was all worth since the hype and valuations got out of control. And there were of course dumb ideas that got funded (like the cue cat) and good but early ideas that were overfunded and poorly executed (like webvan). But life was changing irreversibly at a very visible pace as digital solutions took over. Remember when every business district had a travel agent? There are no real uses of blockchain technology today that aren’t a variation on financial speculation (aka gambling) and illicit activity. Don’t get me wrong those are great use cases. Gambling and banned transactions are a major sector. But that’s the limit of the whole affair and that’s been obviously the case for a while.
- ThomPete 4y ago
  Again we are discussing it right now. You don't see the use, I do. Whether I will be right time will tell, I am pretty sure I will, and the idea that this is a useless technology is simply a question of vision. There are plenty of use cases which are theoretically possible with Web2 but not feasible without Blockchain.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    What’s the use case? If you can name one that’s not a word salad I’m definitely curious.
    - ThomPete 4y ago
      Made another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229524
- maxisrelaxed 4y ago
  > There are no real uses of blockchain technology today that aren’t a variation on financial speculation (aka gambling) and illicit activity. This gets repeated a lot, and it's simply not true. It's a telltale sign that there's simply too much emotion in the arguments around blockchain - any post about tor and bittorrent doesn't receive nearly as many (if any) "but it's only for criminals" comments. Being able to own and trade a digital asset in much the same way a physical asset is traded is potentially a huge use for blockchains. Large players aren't about to model ownership of the digital goods they sell as items on a blockchain, but it's a big opportunity for smaller players.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    It’s not just criminals it’s gambling. That’s why people buy “digital goods”, in hopes they’ll sell for more than they paid.

CPLX 4y ago

They really didn’t. The fact that it was really useful was blindingly obvious to everyone pretty quickly. Like nobody was confused thinking it was better to not be able to check your bank transaction history online. The question at the time was how useful, and how quickly things were going to be transformed and what it was all worth since the hype and valuations got out of control. And there were of course dumb ideas that got funded (like the cue cat) and good but early ideas that were overfunded and poorly executed (like webvan). But life was changing irreversibly at a very visible pace as digital solutions took over. Remember when every business district had a travel agent? There are no real uses of blockchain technology today that aren’t a variation on financial speculation (aka gambling) and illicit activity. Don’t get me wrong those are great use cases. Gambling and banned transactions are a major sector. But that’s the limit of the whole affair and that’s been obviously the case for a while.

ThomPete 4y ago
Again we are discussing it right now. You don't see the use, I do. Whether I will be right time will tell, I am pretty sure I will, and the idea that this is a useless technology is simply a question of vision. There are plenty of use cases which are theoretically possible with Web2 but not feasible without Blockchain.
- CPLX 4y ago
  What’s the use case? If you can name one that’s not a word salad I’m definitely curious.
  - ThomPete 4y ago
    Made another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229524
maxisrelaxed 4y ago
> There are no real uses of blockchain technology today that aren’t a variation on financial speculation (aka gambling) and illicit activity. This gets repeated a lot, and it's simply not true. It's a telltale sign that there's simply too much emotion in the arguments around blockchain - any post about tor and bittorrent doesn't receive nearly as many (if any) "but it's only for criminals" comments. Being able to own and trade a digital asset in much the same way a physical asset is traded is potentially a huge use for blockchains. Large players aren't about to model ownership of the digital goods they sell as items on a blockchain, but it's a big opportunity for smaller players.
- CPLX 4y ago
  It’s not just criminals it’s gambling. That’s why people buy “digital goods”, in hopes they’ll sell for more than they paid.