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> cryptocurrency stuff is the closest I've ever felt today to the spirit of the old internet Cryptocurrency feels like the exact opposite of the old internet t

> cryptocurrency stuff is the closest I've ever felt today to the spirit of the old internet Cryptocurrency feels like the exact opposite of the old internet to me - it feels like a bunch of anonymous bros looking for the next sucker to scam out of money and get rich quick.

wvoch235 4y ago
The nature of the scam has evolved, and possibly the parties involved have changed, but the scams were always there.
Breza 4y ago
I agree with you. The early web was full of amazing opportunities but had trouble monetizing things. Cryptocurrency is the opposite, it tries to monetize everything but doesn't have practical uses.
- fho 4y ago
  Bitcoin was "old internet" tech at some point. Just for reference, I bought my first BTC at 0.20 €/BTC. Back then it looked like the future to a lot of us ... "hey! We/Hackers can make our own money. And it is superior to state issued money!" ... looking back, it honestly it is somewhat to see the state of cryptocurrencies today.
  - landoftheice 4y ago
    [dead]
  - RobotToaster 4y ago
    I thought it was a dumb idea at the time, that nobody would be stupid enough to invest in. I still think it's a dumb idea, but I've learnt not to underestimate human stupidity.
    - fho 4y ago
      See ... Back then we thought that it would be replacing cash. Some friends and I were thinking about having wallets in smart cards (technically possible) and distributing BTC terminals to local businesses. The whole crazy investment thing came much later and basically destroyed any hope of using BTC on a daily basis.
    - andirk 4y ago
      If you bought $10 USD of it "at the time", you'd have a giant pile of USD. Who is stupid in that lack of purchase? Point is a lot of things are stupid and turn out to work really well. USD is backed by a computer at the Federal Reserve. Sounds pretty stupid but it works.
      - fho 4y ago
        Hindsight is 20/20 ... I bought my BTC at 0.20€ ... Sold most of it at 20€, the rest at 200€. I could have been rich ... but how should I have known.
      - RobotToaster 4y ago
        Oh, I definitely feel stupid for underestimating human stupidity. >USD is backed by a computer at the Federal Reserve. Sounds pretty stupid but it works. Pretty much why I think it's stupid as an investment, it's no better than the USD if SHTF. You can't hold it like gold or silver.
        hot_gril 4y ago
        You're right that it's not meant for SHTF. It's for holding value under normal circumstances instead of passively investing in whatever other bubbles (stocks etc). Btw, not very many people are putting their money into gold and silver. Returns on that have been lackluster for decades. If BTC truly became "digital gold," I wouldn't be very interested.
  - grumbel 4y ago
    > looking back, it honestly it is somewhat to see the state of cryptocurrencies today. Steam and pretty much every other regular retailer dropped Bitcoin support five years ago. The state of Bitcoin feels even more hopeless today than it did back then. It is impressive how you can run a trillion dollar pyramid scheme on just digital nothingness, but I always hoped for cryptocurrency to eventually turn into a real digital cash. Bypassing the fees and incompatibles between regular payment schemes. But none of that has happened. Bitcoin is still slow and expensive and there is hardly anything you can buy with it anyway. Worse yet, most Bitcoin still gets stored in "banks" instead of being self hosted, so it failed on the whole P2P cash thing as well. It's impressive tech, but for all the wrong reasons.
    - Noujin 4y ago
      It's still taking time I think. We understood that L1 should never have been the place for the end consumers and that's why all the chains (Bitcoin-Lightning; ETH various systems like StarkNet, zkSync, Loopring and so on) are currently in the process of finding out how to make everything that is happening on L1 possible on L2. On Ethereum one big part left out is still the the general ability to run EVM code on L2, but that is happening like right now. Biggest problem after that will be user experience, but I am currently in the Ledger Connect (now Ledger extension) Testflight beta and it makes using dApps on iOS with a hardware wallet a really good experience. No cables, no app switching, no weird abstraction barrier. The new Stax also seems like a well thought out wallet that was created with a focus on UX. Only thing I don't yet see is a good NFC integration for existing payment terminals. I still think the industry is really early. Layer 3 is now a topic for privacy preserving user interactions which is super interesting. It doesn't then stop at being your own bank, but with it you will be able to really control your own identity without anyone standing in the way. For needing less trust sharing your data and being self sovereign. Using the chains just as a highly accessible, authorized data store.
      - hot_gril 4y ago
        I like cryptocurrency overall, but the bar for convenient purchases is really high. For anyone to care, it'd better be as easy as tapping my credit card on the terminal... which even Apple Pay isn't.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Once the original Bitcoin OG cypherpunks shifted from “here is an amazing new technology that could do entirely new things” to tweeting about the USD price of Bitcoin, I knew that era was over. I think it was done by ~2015. The Ethereum research community is still doing very neat cutting-edge things, but they’re a younger generation and didn’t claim to believe in the same principles (only to later disappoint us all.)
    - Noujin 4y ago
      How did the Ethereum research community disappoint us all?
      - thfuran 4y ago
        They just said that they didn't.
    - fho 4y ago
      Yep ... I just looked it up, I bought my first BTC in 2010/11 ... Back when they were just handing out 0.01 BTC to mess around.
delecti 4y ago
I think before ~2014ish it felt like the old internet. Using bitcoin to buy drugs online really felt like the internet was free and empowering again.
johnyzee 4y ago
The 'old internet' was chuck full of hucksters and scammers and 'futurists' selling snake oil, at least from circa 1993 onward and in full bloom since around the time of the Netscape IPO. It was pretty much exactly like the crypto industry, a core of real technologists doing amazing stuff, and then a whole industry of scammy sales people on top of it. If you are talking about pre-web, I'd say crypto had that era too, up until around 2012 when bitcoin really took off.

wvoch235 4y ago

The nature of the scam has evolved, and possibly the parties involved have changed, but the scams were always there.

Breza 4y ago

I agree with you. The early web was full of amazing opportunities but had trouble monetizing things. Cryptocurrency is the opposite, it tries to monetize everything but doesn't have practical uses.

fho 4y ago
Bitcoin was "old internet" tech at some point. Just for reference, I bought my first BTC at 0.20 €/BTC. Back then it looked like the future to a lot of us ... "hey! We/Hackers can make our own money. And it is superior to state issued money!" ... looking back, it honestly it is somewhat to see the state of cryptocurrencies today.
- landoftheice 4y ago
  [dead]
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  I thought it was a dumb idea at the time, that nobody would be stupid enough to invest in. I still think it's a dumb idea, but I've learnt not to underestimate human stupidity.
  - fho 4y ago
    See ... Back then we thought that it would be replacing cash. Some friends and I were thinking about having wallets in smart cards (technically possible) and distributing BTC terminals to local businesses. The whole crazy investment thing came much later and basically destroyed any hope of using BTC on a daily basis.
  - andirk 4y ago
    If you bought $10 USD of it "at the time", you'd have a giant pile of USD. Who is stupid in that lack of purchase? Point is a lot of things are stupid and turn out to work really well. USD is backed by a computer at the Federal Reserve. Sounds pretty stupid but it works.
    - fho 4y ago
      Hindsight is 20/20 ... I bought my BTC at 0.20€ ... Sold most of it at 20€, the rest at 200€. I could have been rich ... but how should I have known.
    - RobotToaster 4y ago
      Oh, I definitely feel stupid for underestimating human stupidity. >USD is backed by a computer at the Federal Reserve. Sounds pretty stupid but it works. Pretty much why I think it's stupid as an investment, it's no better than the USD if SHTF. You can't hold it like gold or silver.
      - hot_gril 4y ago
        You're right that it's not meant for SHTF. It's for holding value under normal circumstances instead of passively investing in whatever other bubbles (stocks etc). Btw, not very many people are putting their money into gold and silver. Returns on that have been lackluster for decades. If BTC truly became "digital gold," I wouldn't be very interested.
- grumbel 4y ago
  > looking back, it honestly it is somewhat to see the state of cryptocurrencies today. Steam and pretty much every other regular retailer dropped Bitcoin support five years ago. The state of Bitcoin feels even more hopeless today than it did back then. It is impressive how you can run a trillion dollar pyramid scheme on just digital nothingness, but I always hoped for cryptocurrency to eventually turn into a real digital cash. Bypassing the fees and incompatibles between regular payment schemes. But none of that has happened. Bitcoin is still slow and expensive and there is hardly anything you can buy with it anyway. Worse yet, most Bitcoin still gets stored in "banks" instead of being self hosted, so it failed on the whole P2P cash thing as well. It's impressive tech, but for all the wrong reasons.
  - Noujin 4y ago
    It's still taking time I think. We understood that L1 should never have been the place for the end consumers and that's why all the chains (Bitcoin-Lightning; ETH various systems like StarkNet, zkSync, Loopring and so on) are currently in the process of finding out how to make everything that is happening on L1 possible on L2. On Ethereum one big part left out is still the the general ability to run EVM code on L2, but that is happening like right now. Biggest problem after that will be user experience, but I am currently in the Ledger Connect (now Ledger extension) Testflight beta and it makes using dApps on iOS with a hardware wallet a really good experience. No cables, no app switching, no weird abstraction barrier. The new Stax also seems like a well thought out wallet that was created with a focus on UX. Only thing I don't yet see is a good NFC integration for existing payment terminals. I still think the industry is really early. Layer 3 is now a topic for privacy preserving user interactions which is super interesting. It doesn't then stop at being your own bank, but with it you will be able to really control your own identity without anyone standing in the way. For needing less trust sharing your data and being self sovereign. Using the chains just as a highly accessible, authorized data store.
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      I like cryptocurrency overall, but the bar for convenient purchases is really high. For anyone to care, it'd better be as easy as tapping my credit card on the terminal... which even Apple Pay isn't.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Once the original Bitcoin OG cypherpunks shifted from “here is an amazing new technology that could do entirely new things” to tweeting about the USD price of Bitcoin, I knew that era was over. I think it was done by ~2015. The Ethereum research community is still doing very neat cutting-edge things, but they’re a younger generation and didn’t claim to believe in the same principles (only to later disappoint us all.)
  - Noujin 4y ago
    How did the Ethereum research community disappoint us all?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      They just said that they didn't.
  - fho 4y ago
    Yep ... I just looked it up, I bought my first BTC in 2010/11 ... Back when they were just handing out 0.01 BTC to mess around.

delecti 4y ago

I think before ~2014ish it felt like the old internet. Using bitcoin to buy drugs online really felt like the internet was free and empowering again.

johnyzee 4y ago

The 'old internet' was chuck full of hucksters and scammers and 'futurists' selling snake oil, at least from circa 1993 onward and in full bloom since around the time of the Netscape IPO. It was pretty much exactly like the crypto industry, a core of real technologists doing amazing stuff, and then a whole industry of scammy sales people on top of it. If you are talking about pre-web, I'd say crypto had that era too, up until around 2012 when bitcoin really took off.