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> The problem, in a nutshell, is that for Bitcoin and other digital assets to have any chance of becoming mainstream, banks—with their access to deep sources of

> The problem, in a nutshell, is that for Bitcoin and other digital assets to have any chance of becoming mainstream, banks—with their access to deep sources of liquidity and experience in facilitating payments—will have to be on board. For the time being, they’re running in the opposite direction. What does Bitcoin "becoming mainstream" look like specifically? The article doesn't offer anything - not even a link. Let's say it's 1974 and you're writing an article about the desktop computer "becoming mainstream". What does that look like exactly to you? I'm guessing it doesn't look anything like the last 30 years. Not even close. So how can the author be so confident in asserting that banks must be "on board" for this mainstreaming to happen? The desktop computer was an attack from below, in the Christenson Innovator's Dilemma sense. It looked and acted exactly like a toy for the first decade of its existence. Most incumbents who saw through that surface illusion were powerless to do anything about it. The one that did (IBM) tried, briefly succeeded, then lost the entire thing. Banks with their highly touted "experience in facilitating payments" are the very thing Bitcoin has in the crosshairs. Banks losing interest now that the Bitcoin FOMO is gone? Good riddance to them and their AML/KYC bootlicking.

Animats 4y ago
> Let's say it's 1974 and you're writing an article about the desktop computer "becoming mainstream". What does that look like exactly to you? I'm guessing it doesn't look anything like the last 30 years. Not even close. Sure it does. Read Alan Kay's "Personal Dynamic Media". His vision of the ultimate personal computer was what today we'd consider a very bulky laptop.
- britneybitch 4y ago
  Alan Kay was one of the few people in 1974 qualified to make predictions about computers. I'd compare that to Andreas Antonopoulos making predictions about bitcoin in 2011. I wouldn't trust your average journalist's predictions in either situation.
- meowkit 4y ago
  Link for the curious. http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf It's a neat read, from 1977 to be pedantic. It does miss networking - the DynaBook misses the forest for the trees in that it is a personal computer that doesn't account for the advent of the internet and how PCs/smartphones are a communication tool right after being a fancy calculator at their core. In a sense that's an apt description for how a lot of people view crypto - they see it as purely a currency network, but don't realize its much more than that.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> What does Bitcoin "becoming mainstream" look like specifically? Just like your desktop computer analogy, it looks like Grandma using Bitcoin in an everyday, mundane way like paying the electric bill.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  Euro and Yuan are mainstream, but I haven't bought either in years.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Euro and Yuan don't claim to be the ubiquitous currencies in your region. Bitcoin would want to be that. Or at least that's what it was made for.
- danaris 4y ago
  ...which was so very obviously never going to happen.
  - phs318u 4y ago
    The original Bitcoin white paper mentions commerce (in the introduction) as the primary use-case and it does not qualify this in any way. But yes, in hindsight many things become obvious.
- zirgs 4y ago
  My mom knows what the Bitcoin is. She hasn't bought any and pays bills with euros instead.
shkkmo 4y ago
We've heard that argument for a decade now, cryptocurrency has still failed to find any use cases besides speculation an law breaking. Banks have experience maintaining trust and not losing customer deposites. Cryptocurrency is struggling with this and I haven't seen any evidence of any radical new approaches to mitigate these issues.
seltzered_ 4y ago
I'm guessing mainstream means that it's enough that traditional finance has had to deal with requests to invest in it to some degree. https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/do-not-buy-this-etf-1e80ad0d2401 https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/do-not-buy-this-etf-1e8... (May 2021, Michael Green of Simplify) sorta touches on this.
root_axis 4y ago
Bitcoin already went mainstream; everyone who cares has heard all about bitcoin for years now, it's permeated pop culture, referenced in TV, movies, music, even superbowl ads - we've reached peak bitcoin saturation. The problem for cryptocurrencies is that that they just aren't very useful to the masses, thus the vision of "mainstream" as imagined with desktop PCs will never happen for bitcoin - what we have today is basically all bitcoin will ever be.
- serial_dev 4y ago
  I know that everyone has a different idea of "mainstream" for bitcoin, but to me would be that I can expect to use it to pay for "regular stuff". Maybe paying at the bakery is never going to happen with crypto, but would be nice if I could pay my next car or used car with it.
  - aaronwalker 4y ago
    I'd like this to, but to me it's still unclear whether Bitcoin's potential will be just as a reserve currency and store-of-value (like Gold), or also as a unit of account and medium of exchange (like the dollar). I'm more confident in the former and less on the latter.
  - tosihakkeri 4y ago
    That’s the problem: the problems Bitcoin is solving aren’t problems in the first place.
    - lottin 4y ago
      Yeah, I can't imagine anybody wanting to buy a car and being deterred because they didn't have a means of exchange.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        When someone bought my car we used cash. How is bitcoin superior to being able to take physical property in my hand that I know will be respected 1:1 by every legitimate institution, business, or person I know?
twiceaday 4y ago
It seems easy to draw a 'commodity' box around Bitcoin and thus explain what it going 'mainstream' means: just as easy to trade via legitimate institutions, on behalf of people who have no idea about managing money. A small part of some portfolios, like gold. You seem to have some grand context beyond this? Please share.
mumblemumble 4y ago
I'm having a hard time not seeing this take on BTC as being a version of the Galileo gambit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Galileo_gambit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Galileo_ga... The problem with reasoning that way is survivor bias: we remember the things that did change the world, and tend to forget the things that didn't. Or, even when we do remember things, we tend to do so in a selective manner. Beanie Babies, for example, did change the world, after a fashion, but not exactly in the way anybody thought they would at the time. Beanie Babies themselves mostly died out and lost all their on-paper value, but not before kickstarting the rise the rise of eBay and PayPal. But that isn't quite what any of the "this time it's special" people had in mind. It turns out that, all too often, the dichotomy turns out to have been false all along, which leaves plenty of room for literally everyone to be wrong about how things are going to play out.
acdha 4y ago
Here’s what desktop computing in 1974 looked like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200 Despite all of the hardware limitations, real businesses found things like that useful for work which wasn’t selling desktop computers. The future was visible, too: https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1974/ https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1974/ The Xerox Parc Alto was “a groundbreaking computer with wide influence on the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worked together with other Altos over a local area network. It could also share files and print out documents on an advanced Xerox laser printer. Applications were also highly innovative: a WYSISYG word processor known as “Bravo,” a paint program, a graphics editor, and email for example. Apple’s inspiration for the Lisa and Macintosh computers came from the Xerox Alto.” The key thing to remember is that while desktop computing had huge places to go, it was useful almost instantly. In contrast cryptocurrencies have been globally available for almost a decade and a half, with only self-imposed drawbacks – nothing even remotely like the limits on early computer hardware or usurious network pricing — but despite that nobody has found them useful enough even at the level of a small company replacing a typewriter with a word processor. Almost nobody uses them instead of PayPal / Venmo, the few licit businesses which still accept them almost always immediately convert to a stable currency, and when these major players fail it has almost no real-world impact. That’s actually astonishing for a globally-available technology with billions of real dollars in funding.
pavlov 4y ago
> “AML/KYC bootlicking” This is where your 1974 PC analogy breaks down. The Apple II wasn’t a tool for breaking laws. People didn’t buy them to produce Communist Party leaflets in their homes on matrix printers. But crypto is a political project. It’s intertwined with a very specific view of how money and government should work, and it’s not compatible with the legal framework in place. (Rhetoric like “bootlicking” is revealing because it’s associated with a very different 1970s movement than the computer revolution.) The PC really took off when IBM made one. That’s the equivalent of banks adopting Bitcoin. But things would have been pretty different if you needed a Congress full of Maoists first before IBM could make a personal computer.
anigbrowl 4y ago
What does Bitcoin "becoming mainstream" look like specifically? When I use it for normal internet purchases in preference to a credit/debit card.
benced 4y ago
I have a strong personal and moral conviction in favor of money-laundering so I’m pretty happy big banks are getting out of the crypto space.

Animats 4y ago

> Let's say it's 1974 and you're writing an article about the desktop computer "becoming mainstream". What does that look like exactly to you? I'm guessing it doesn't look anything like the last 30 years. Not even close. Sure it does. Read Alan Kay's "Personal Dynamic Media". His vision of the ultimate personal computer was what today we'd consider a very bulky laptop.

britneybitch 4y ago
Alan Kay was one of the few people in 1974 qualified to make predictions about computers. I'd compare that to Andreas Antonopoulos making predictions about bitcoin in 2011. I wouldn't trust your average journalist's predictions in either situation.
meowkit 4y ago
Link for the curious. http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf http://augmentingcognition.com/assets/Kay1977.pdf It's a neat read, from 1977 to be pedantic. It does miss networking - the DynaBook misses the forest for the trees in that it is a personal computer that doesn't account for the advent of the internet and how PCs/smartphones are a communication tool right after being a fancy calculator at their core. In a sense that's an apt description for how a lot of people view crypto - they see it as purely a currency network, but don't realize its much more than that.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

> What does Bitcoin "becoming mainstream" look like specifically? Just like your desktop computer analogy, it looks like Grandma using Bitcoin in an everyday, mundane way like paying the electric bill.

bufferoverflow 4y ago
Euro and Yuan are mainstream, but I haven't bought either in years.
- oblio 4y ago
  Euro and Yuan don't claim to be the ubiquitous currencies in your region. Bitcoin would want to be that. Or at least that's what it was made for.
danaris 4y ago
...which was so very obviously never going to happen.
- phs318u 4y ago
  The original Bitcoin white paper mentions commerce (in the introduction) as the primary use-case and it does not qualify this in any way. But yes, in hindsight many things become obvious.
zirgs 4y ago
My mom knows what the Bitcoin is. She hasn't bought any and pays bills with euros instead.

shkkmo 4y ago

We've heard that argument for a decade now, cryptocurrency has still failed to find any use cases besides speculation an law breaking. Banks have experience maintaining trust and not losing customer deposites. Cryptocurrency is struggling with this and I haven't seen any evidence of any radical new approaches to mitigate these issues.

seltzered_ 4y ago

I'm guessing mainstream means that it's enough that traditional finance has had to deal with requests to invest in it to some degree. https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/do-not-buy-this-etf-1e80ad0d2401 https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/do-not-buy-this-etf-1e8... (May 2021, Michael Green of Simplify) sorta touches on this.

root_axis 4y ago

Bitcoin already went mainstream; everyone who cares has heard all about bitcoin for years now, it's permeated pop culture, referenced in TV, movies, music, even superbowl ads - we've reached peak bitcoin saturation. The problem for cryptocurrencies is that that they just aren't very useful to the masses, thus the vision of "mainstream" as imagined with desktop PCs will never happen for bitcoin - what we have today is basically all bitcoin will ever be.

serial_dev 4y ago
I know that everyone has a different idea of "mainstream" for bitcoin, but to me would be that I can expect to use it to pay for "regular stuff". Maybe paying at the bakery is never going to happen with crypto, but would be nice if I could pay my next car or used car with it.
- aaronwalker 4y ago
  I'd like this to, but to me it's still unclear whether Bitcoin's potential will be just as a reserve currency and store-of-value (like Gold), or also as a unit of account and medium of exchange (like the dollar). I'm more confident in the former and less on the latter.
- tosihakkeri 4y ago
  That’s the problem: the problems Bitcoin is solving aren’t problems in the first place.
  - lottin 4y ago
    Yeah, I can't imagine anybody wanting to buy a car and being deterred because they didn't have a means of exchange.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      When someone bought my car we used cash. How is bitcoin superior to being able to take physical property in my hand that I know will be respected 1:1 by every legitimate institution, business, or person I know?

twiceaday 4y ago

It seems easy to draw a 'commodity' box around Bitcoin and thus explain what it going 'mainstream' means: just as easy to trade via legitimate institutions, on behalf of people who have no idea about managing money. A small part of some portfolios, like gold. You seem to have some grand context beyond this? Please share.

mumblemumble 4y ago

I'm having a hard time not seeing this take on BTC as being a version of the Galileo gambit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Galileo_gambit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Galileo_ga... The problem with reasoning that way is survivor bias: we remember the things that did change the world, and tend to forget the things that didn't. Or, even when we do remember things, we tend to do so in a selective manner. Beanie Babies, for example, did change the world, after a fashion, but not exactly in the way anybody thought they would at the time. Beanie Babies themselves mostly died out and lost all their on-paper value, but not before kickstarting the rise the rise of eBay and PayPal. But that isn't quite what any of the "this time it's special" people had in mind. It turns out that, all too often, the dichotomy turns out to have been false all along, which leaves plenty of room for literally everyone to be wrong about how things are going to play out.

acdha 4y ago

Here’s what desktop computing in 1974 looked like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200 Despite all of the hardware limitations, real businesses found things like that useful for work which wasn’t selling desktop computers. The future was visible, too: https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1974/ https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1974/ The Xerox Parc Alto was “a groundbreaking computer with wide influence on the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worked together with other Altos over a local area network. It could also share files and print out documents on an advanced Xerox laser printer. Applications were also highly innovative: a WYSISYG word processor known as “Bravo,” a paint program, a graphics editor, and email for example. Apple’s inspiration for the Lisa and Macintosh computers came from the Xerox Alto.” The key thing to remember is that while desktop computing had huge places to go, it was useful almost instantly. In contrast cryptocurrencies have been globally available for almost a decade and a half, with only self-imposed drawbacks – nothing even remotely like the limits on early computer hardware or usurious network pricing — but despite that nobody has found them useful enough even at the level of a small company replacing a typewriter with a word processor. Almost nobody uses them instead of PayPal / Venmo, the few licit businesses which still accept them almost always immediately convert to a stable currency, and when these major players fail it has almost no real-world impact. That’s actually astonishing for a globally-available technology with billions of real dollars in funding.

pavlov 4y ago

> “AML/KYC bootlicking” This is where your 1974 PC analogy breaks down. The Apple II wasn’t a tool for breaking laws. People didn’t buy them to produce Communist Party leaflets in their homes on matrix printers. But crypto is a political project. It’s intertwined with a very specific view of how money and government should work, and it’s not compatible with the legal framework in place. (Rhetoric like “bootlicking” is revealing because it’s associated with a very different 1970s movement than the computer revolution.) The PC really took off when IBM made one. That’s the equivalent of banks adopting Bitcoin. But things would have been pretty different if you needed a Congress full of Maoists first before IBM could make a personal computer.

anigbrowl 4y ago

What does Bitcoin "becoming mainstream" look like specifically? When I use it for normal internet purchases in preference to a credit/debit card.

benced 4y ago

I have a strong personal and moral conviction in favor of money-laundering so I’m pretty happy big banks are getting out of the crypto space.