by confoundcofound on 7/27/23, 5:18 PM with 41 comments
The industry is run by a cool kids club of crypto twitter thought leaders who seem to lack the experience and wisdom to realize that the threshold of UX required for mass adoption is currently wildly out of reach for the technology, no matter how pretty the UI is. Seed phrases, gas and fees, irreversibility of transactions, virtually no concept of customer support, etc etc.
Steve Jobs famously said "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it." The entire crypto space seems to be guilty of the latter.
The longer that this space continues to focus on and struggles to get traction for novelty toy products – eg art experiments – the more pessimistic I am about the long term viability of the underlying technology. I say this with friends who work in the space who after years of pontificating about the disruptive implications of crypto, are still tweeting about the latest NFT collectible.
by cableshaft on 7/27/23, 7:01 PM
Even just as a speculative bet that moves quicker than the stock market, it has value. Some people are seeing wealth they would never have had a chance at if they did it the traditional way of investing in stocks and bonds, and it's transforming their lives (and a bunch of other people, unfortunately, have lost money, sometimes a lot of money, on the other end as well).
I joined a video game startup that ultimately failed and probably lost out on at least $100k or more on money I could have made during that time at a larger corporation, especially since I didn't have a 401k then (I got paid, but a lot less than I would have elsewhere).
It was a speculative bet that I made and I failed. I don't really see how that's much different than someone making a poor bet on crypto (assuming they only spent what they could afford to lose, of course).
by scottiebarnes on 7/27/23, 8:34 PM
Money and finance are the strongest applications where these properties benefit most.
Writing and reading transactions on blockchains is a clunky UX, but worth learning if you want to secure/transmit a billion dollars through cyberspace with no intermediaries or authority saying you can't.
Experimentation and high rates of failure is the nature of software on new platforms. So many websites, apps, games, etc. created for computers will utterly fail, but the ones that succeed end up defining generations (Minecraft, Excel, Google)
by WallyFunk on 7/27/23, 7:04 PM
And banks can reverse fraudulent transactions, whereas with crypto there is the 'code is law' thing and once it's set in stone on the blockchain, there is no going back.
Also since modern computing is so leaky and insecure, crypto is being rampantly stolen all over the place. You could say the same about computing for banks, but the rate limiting, KYC, and anti-fraud measures are way ahead of crypto.
by gregjor on 7/27/23, 5:22 PM
by theandrewbailey on 7/27/23, 5:36 PM
by pesfandiar on 7/27/23, 5:52 PM
by smoldesu on 7/27/23, 7:01 PM
> Steve Jobs famously said
Steve Jobs was a good marketer and a mediocre businessman. The fact that so many people here take him at face value is like if researchers from the future thought Charlie Chaplin was a drama actor. It's embarrassing that anyone with the gall to call something a "tech bubble illusion" would cite Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs, but here we are. I gotta get off this site...
> The longer that this space continues to focus on and struggles to get traction for novelty toy products
The space is novelty toy products. What did you really expect, for the IMF to roll over and "give you one for free"? Have you not followed the past century of macroeconomics?
by jstx1 on 7/27/23, 6:26 PM
by jtode on 7/28/23, 12:25 AM
The problem is thinking this is a useful way to represent fiscal value. Ain't.
by factorialboy on 7/28/23, 1:56 PM
Bitcoin and crypto have a solid use case, whitewashing ill-gotten black money through money laundering.
The corrupt and the criminals have ties with crypto whales, and they will pump and dump accordingly.
If a individual investor/gambler is patient, it is possible that they could realize serious profits.
Is it ethical? No.
Is it human nature? Yes.
by superchroma on 7/27/23, 5:47 PM
by mikewarot on 7/27/23, 6:07 PM
Blockchain will always have value when you need artificial scarcity on the Internet. The distributed ledger also has many uses outside of crypto currency.
by diavelguru on 7/28/23, 5:13 AM
by coldblues on 7/27/23, 7:47 PM
by matt_s on 7/27/23, 7:06 PM
Using the Steve Jobs quote - what other problem domains could you back into where blockchain might be a good fit?
A couple ideas:
* user identity - anonymous, verifiable identity not tied to a corp or gov. use cases could involve managing logins/2FA to platforms w/o relying on a google/whatever identity
* property management - tracking titles/deeds for real estate
The challenge with any ideas is typical SaaS CRUD also solves these problems fairly well.
by leet_thow on 7/28/23, 1:55 AM
by faangiq on 7/28/23, 4:32 AM
by THENATHE on 7/28/23, 6:45 AM