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Thanks for the correction on the expression (I always forget the "love" part)! As for the rest... Pretty sure I'm following but it's a bit more philosophical t

Thanks for the correction on the expression (I always forget the "love" part)! As for the rest... Pretty sure I'm following but it's a bit more philosophical than what I'm capable of. With that said, if you follow the crypto space it's a symptom rather than problem. Just like the lottery many people will outright (essentially) say "crypto is my only chance to get out of my disadvantaged economic position". It's really quite sad and as much as I bash crypto I have a tremendous amount of empathy for people who feel trapped in their economic situation and desperately play crypto/lottery. I cringe when I see people in the crypto hate/skeptic community cheer when average crypto "users" end up in financial ruin. It's disgusting. I've told multiple people in the space something to the effect of "If you spent as much time, energy, and resources as you do pumping crypto bullshit on education - learning to code, trades, professional certifications, etc you'd be much better off". Hell - many of the shills pumping crypto could walk into any organization and get a great sales/marketing position. Crypto is truly "MLM for men" and the stats back that up. The statistics are horrendous and people desperately hoping for another "moon coin" to get that lambo (or whatever) is remarkably similar to playing the lottery or thinking your six year child getting to the NBA/NFL/etc is your ticket out.

anonym29 4y ago
I share much of your sentiment, I really do feel for the people who don't deeply understand crypto being fleeced via crypto by people who may or may not understand it but are absolutely misusing it. I don't want to put readers asleep, but I see cryptocurrency as a very complex technology that requires a bordering-on-academic understanding of privacy, autonomy, sovereignty, macroeconomics, the shortcomings of FIAT currency, centralized banking, the federal reserve, fractional reserve banking, asymmetric cryptography, computer security, and a litany of other topics to fully appreciate and realize the benefits offered by Bitcoin, Monero, etc. I think it's an utterly fascinating real-world study into the crossroads of monetary economics, market economics, politics, computer science & cybersecurity, human psychology that has some very real utilities, but... I suspect (many? most? majority? plurality?) of the people involved in crypto really don't even care about any of that, let alone understand it, they're just speculating purely on the basis of greater fool theory, and many of them do get hurt. I tend to be against government regulation, but as a pro-crypto person for the right reasons, even I don't think it would be a bad idea to kill the FIAT<->USD exchanges that let people who are dangerously uninformed participate (and get burned) in this wild west ecosystem. The sad reality that these exchanges have widespread KYC but no accredited investor requirements shows that the regulators are really only concerned about Uncle Sam's bottom line, not about protecting people. The whole thing really ought to go back to where it was circa ~2012, even it comes at the cost of BTC going back to 2012 market cap and prices. Cryptocurrency is rightfully many things: a cutting edge payment network, an enormous boon to financial privacy, a way to enable entirely new types of organizations and funding models in the business world, a source of rapid developments to and applications of fascinating and obscure cryptographic concepts (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs), a hedge against systemic FIAT and some geopolitical risks, a driver of needed improvements in FIAT financial infrastructure (just like Google Fi was a driver of needed improvements in consumer internet infrastructure), I could go on and on... But one thing it should absolutely NOT be treated as is an "investment". It generates no cashflow and investing based on greater fool theory only ever causes speculative bubbles where the nominal price spectacularly diverges from the true economic value, just like in the tulip mania. Any decent financial advisor will tell you to avoid that like the plague!
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  > Cryptocurrency is rightfully many things: a cutting edge payment network, an enormous boon to financial privacy, a way to enable entirely new types of organizations and funding models in the business world, a source of rapid developments to and applications of fascinating and obscure cryptographic concepts (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs), a hedge against systemic FIAT and some geopolitical risks, a driver of needed improvements in FIAT financial infrastructure (just like Google Fi was a driver of needed improvements in consumer internet infrastructure), I could go on and on... Legitimate question for you because this has been a remarkably civil dialog considering this is such a flash point on HN (I appreciate that): If it really is all of these things, where is the user adoption? Every six months or so I undertake the following exercise: 1) Get the 10 most active chains (variety of sources for this). Always includes bitcoin, eth, a bunch of l2s/sidechains/etc. 2) Visit their respective block explorers. 3) To the extent the data is available, capture daily and monthly metrics for the following: number of total transactions, used unique addresses, and (ideally) unique TX/RX transaction pairs. 4) Add them all up (rounded up). 5) Assume each address is a distinct user (they aren't). 6) Assume each address on each chain is a distinct user (they aren't). Every time I undergo this exercise I come to the same conclusion: based on actual network stats the number of blockchain users is incredibly low - even when strongly favoring crypto with the methodology above the DAU/MAU metrics are at best in the low 10s of millions. Even when you take the all time high metrics with the methodology above it's still well under 100 million. Considering there are an estimated > 5 billion internet users (crypto TAM) ATH numbers represent approximately 2% adoption, and I'd argue if you used a methodology that could resemble legitimate DAU/MAU stats you see from Meta, etc real adoption is probably 10-50% of that. I talked about my crypto journey - I looked at the technology over the past five-ten years and agreed with you. I was convinced it was the latest emerging technology that would provide a platform for the things you speak of and more. Then I started realizing no one I knew outside of the crypto-sphere actually used it for anything other than trading on CEXs. That's when I started performing this crude study and realized crypto/blockchain is completely irrelevant. The entire space could disappear tomorrow and barely anyone would notice. You seem to be much more capable of looking at things more holistically than I do/can. Historically, prior platforms/technologies from everything to the PC, the web, social media, smartphones, etc, etc easily hit 1 billion users inside of ten years. Generally speaking I feel like people are able to embrace things that are actually useful and benefit their lives. Crypto has been around for 14 years, has the benefit of leveraging all of these platforms, and still has abysmal user adoption. Why?

anonym29 4y ago

I share much of your sentiment, I really do feel for the people who don't deeply understand crypto being fleeced via crypto by people who may or may not understand it but are absolutely misusing it. I don't want to put readers asleep, but I see cryptocurrency as a very complex technology that requires a bordering-on-academic understanding of privacy, autonomy, sovereignty, macroeconomics, the shortcomings of FIAT currency, centralized banking, the federal reserve, fractional reserve banking, asymmetric cryptography, computer security, and a litany of other topics to fully appreciate and realize the benefits offered by Bitcoin, Monero, etc. I think it's an utterly fascinating real-world study into the crossroads of monetary economics, market economics, politics, computer science & cybersecurity, human psychology that has some very real utilities, but... I suspect (many? most? majority? plurality?) of the people involved in crypto really don't even care about any of that, let alone understand it, they're just speculating purely on the basis of greater fool theory, and many of them do get hurt. I tend to be against government regulation, but as a pro-crypto person for the right reasons, even I don't think it would be a bad idea to kill the FIAT<->USD exchanges that let people who are dangerously uninformed participate (and get burned) in this wild west ecosystem. The sad reality that these exchanges have widespread KYC but no accredited investor requirements shows that the regulators are really only concerned about Uncle Sam's bottom line, not about protecting people. The whole thing really ought to go back to where it was circa ~2012, even it comes at the cost of BTC going back to 2012 market cap and prices. Cryptocurrency is rightfully many things: a cutting edge payment network, an enormous boon to financial privacy, a way to enable entirely new types of organizations and funding models in the business world, a source of rapid developments to and applications of fascinating and obscure cryptographic concepts (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs), a hedge against systemic FIAT and some geopolitical risks, a driver of needed improvements in FIAT financial infrastructure (just like Google Fi was a driver of needed improvements in consumer internet infrastructure), I could go on and on... But one thing it should absolutely NOT be treated as is an "investment". It generates no cashflow and investing based on greater fool theory only ever causes speculative bubbles where the nominal price spectacularly diverges from the true economic value, just like in the tulip mania. Any decent financial advisor will tell you to avoid that like the plague!

kkielhofner 4y ago
> Cryptocurrency is rightfully many things: a cutting edge payment network, an enormous boon to financial privacy, a way to enable entirely new types of organizations and funding models in the business world, a source of rapid developments to and applications of fascinating and obscure cryptographic concepts (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs), a hedge against systemic FIAT and some geopolitical risks, a driver of needed improvements in FIAT financial infrastructure (just like Google Fi was a driver of needed improvements in consumer internet infrastructure), I could go on and on... Legitimate question for you because this has been a remarkably civil dialog considering this is such a flash point on HN (I appreciate that): If it really is all of these things, where is the user adoption? Every six months or so I undertake the following exercise: 1) Get the 10 most active chains (variety of sources for this). Always includes bitcoin, eth, a bunch of l2s/sidechains/etc. 2) Visit their respective block explorers. 3) To the extent the data is available, capture daily and monthly metrics for the following: number of total transactions, used unique addresses, and (ideally) unique TX/RX transaction pairs. 4) Add them all up (rounded up). 5) Assume each address is a distinct user (they aren't). 6) Assume each address on each chain is a distinct user (they aren't). Every time I undergo this exercise I come to the same conclusion: based on actual network stats the number of blockchain users is incredibly low - even when strongly favoring crypto with the methodology above the DAU/MAU metrics are at best in the low 10s of millions. Even when you take the all time high metrics with the methodology above it's still well under 100 million. Considering there are an estimated > 5 billion internet users (crypto TAM) ATH numbers represent approximately 2% adoption, and I'd argue if you used a methodology that could resemble legitimate DAU/MAU stats you see from Meta, etc real adoption is probably 10-50% of that. I talked about my crypto journey - I looked at the technology over the past five-ten years and agreed with you. I was convinced it was the latest emerging technology that would provide a platform for the things you speak of and more. Then I started realizing no one I knew outside of the crypto-sphere actually used it for anything other than trading on CEXs. That's when I started performing this crude study and realized crypto/blockchain is completely irrelevant. The entire space could disappear tomorrow and barely anyone would notice. You seem to be much more capable of looking at things more holistically than I do/can. Historically, prior platforms/technologies from everything to the PC, the web, social media, smartphones, etc, etc easily hit 1 billion users inside of ten years. Generally speaking I feel like people are able to embrace things that are actually useful and benefit their lives. Crypto has been around for 14 years, has the benefit of leveraging all of these platforms, and still has abysmal user adoption. Why?