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I guess there's a significant audience of people who are interested in cryptocurrency but know nothing about it. Even as someone who likes crypto, it seems lik

I guess there's a significant audience of people who are interested in cryptocurrency but know nothing about it. Even as someone who likes crypto, it seems like the push for "public acceptance" of cryptocurrency starting like 8 years ago was way too early and mostly caused by price action. I also blame the "steve jobs" imagery we always see associating technological development with mass adoption, It's clear that you have to develop the a strong basic use case first before marketing to users. The time spent discussing poltics and price of crypto and onboarding new users would be better spent developing the core technology and creating simple real-world markets that use cryptocurrency. Instead, cryptocurrency is getting outmoded by the likes of "dumb" systems like CashApp and more competitive inter-bank systems like Plaid. The mass of uneducated users in cryptocurrency space is a major problem because it does not allow the open-source development process to be democratic. That requires a userbase that is proactive about change and willing to undergo Hard-Forks that respect the users at large (against other interest groups like Miners, Owners, etc.).

Loughla 2y ago
>The mass of uneducated users in cryptocurrency space is a major problem Maybe I'm too cynical, but from my perspective, the mass of uneducated users is literally by design. They are people who early adopters wanted in so the price would go up without too much hassle of really explaining what was happening. Something, something, bag holders? Or am I incorrect?
- beeflet 2y ago
  The problem is that you are conflating the users with the owners. You can own cryptocurrency on an exchange or make a couple transactions to hold your funds in a wallet, but that is not really being a user. Users use cryptocurrency for real transactions and ultimately derive actual economic value from the convenience of the network. If a cryptocurrency has a lot of users, the price will be more stable and the fee model will hold up in the long term. Users do not necessarily have a lot of funds. Owners only get value by on-boarding more owners, so they can sell and stop being owners, which is ultimately zero-sum (actually less than zero-sum because someone has to pay the miners). The problem with pretty much every cryptocurrency that exists is that there are more owners than users, and the owners have more power than users. But the long-term success of the system relies on users.

Loughla 2y ago

>The mass of uneducated users in cryptocurrency space is a major problem Maybe I'm too cynical, but from my perspective, the mass of uneducated users is literally by design. They are people who early adopters wanted in so the price would go up without too much hassle of really explaining what was happening. Something, something, bag holders? Or am I incorrect?

beeflet 2y ago
The problem is that you are conflating the users with the owners. You can own cryptocurrency on an exchange or make a couple transactions to hold your funds in a wallet, but that is not really being a user. Users use cryptocurrency for real transactions and ultimately derive actual economic value from the convenience of the network. If a cryptocurrency has a lot of users, the price will be more stable and the fee model will hold up in the long term. Users do not necessarily have a lot of funds. Owners only get value by on-boarding more owners, so they can sell and stop being owners, which is ultimately zero-sum (actually less than zero-sum because someone has to pay the miners). The problem with pretty much every cryptocurrency that exists is that there are more owners than users, and the owners have more power than users. But the long-term success of the system relies on users.