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I'm not a crypto advocate, but I don't understand on what basis people think crypto has been empirically disproven, at least separate from any disproof that was

I'm not a crypto advocate, but I don't understand on what basis people think crypto has been empirically disproven, at least separate from any disproof that wasn't ~equally true at its peak. It's not like Bitcoin has failed; it's down 2x from its recent spike, but it's up almost 10x from its Jan 2019 dip. Ethereum is more wounded but still expensive. Look on a log plot as is apt for these things, and it's hard to argue ruin here, especially given they've dipped before. I wouldn't be too shocked if crypto did peter out or flatline over the coming years, just it doesn't seem a priori obvious, given my broad criticisms of it have not stopped its success to date.

mmmmmbop 4y ago
There was a time around 2020 I believe, where everyone and their mother was talking about crypto and the blockchain, and how it's going to be this big technological revolution. All kinds of private and public initiatives decided to include "the blockchain" in their projects, NFTs became huge, and there was talk of putting real estate, healthcare, and logistics "onto the blockchain". It's been three years since then, and still no real-world use case has emerged. I don't dispute that there are completely valid use cases for cryptocurrencies, mainly around avoiding governmental financial restrictions and safeguards, and there are still loads of people using cryptocurrencies for speculation and/or as a "store of value". But the whole ecosystem of distributed apps, smart contracts, DAOs, and so on, still mainly revolves around itself, without wider societal impact.
4ggr0 4y ago
Maybe I'm in a minority with this argument - but just because something has a big market cap or a positive trend line, it doesn't automatically make it valid. (Bernie Madoff, Archegos, ...) Bitcoin has proven itself to be a useful financial speculation object.
- Veedrac 4y ago
  Hence “empirically disproven, at least separate from any disproof that wasn't ~equally true at its peak” and not “discredited by argument from principles”.

mmmmmbop 4y ago

There was a time around 2020 I believe, where everyone and their mother was talking about crypto and the blockchain, and how it's going to be this big technological revolution. All kinds of private and public initiatives decided to include "the blockchain" in their projects, NFTs became huge, and there was talk of putting real estate, healthcare, and logistics "onto the blockchain". It's been three years since then, and still no real-world use case has emerged. I don't dispute that there are completely valid use cases for cryptocurrencies, mainly around avoiding governmental financial restrictions and safeguards, and there are still loads of people using cryptocurrencies for speculation and/or as a "store of value". But the whole ecosystem of distributed apps, smart contracts, DAOs, and so on, still mainly revolves around itself, without wider societal impact.

4ggr0 4y ago

Maybe I'm in a minority with this argument - but just because something has a big market cap or a positive trend line, it doesn't automatically make it valid. (Bernie Madoff, Archegos, ...) Bitcoin has proven itself to be a useful financial speculation object.

Veedrac 4y ago
Hence “empirically disproven, at least separate from any disproof that wasn't ~equally true at its peak” and not “discredited by argument from principles”.