The "early internet" comparison is usually presented when talking about how clumsy and slow the technology is in its current state. The argument is certainly not presented in the context of how "fun" it is. There's nothing "fun" about finance (and there never will be).
In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO.
I once configured SOCKS on Windows 3.1 so I could connect to the internet over a 9600-baud modem. In those days, unless you were in Academia, you didn't know anyone with an email address. Early Usenet and IRC had very little to offer someone who wasn't a nerd. FTP? MUD gaming? Come on.
You and I found the early internet interesting precisely because we were nerds to begin with. Don't mistake that sentiment for that of the general public. They mostly found it frustrating and boring.
No, it's not a good comparison. The internet was always state of the art and better at solving actual problems the worse solutions were tackling.
Fidonet was always, on a technical level, a worse experience than the internet.
BBSs have their charm, but were absolutely obviously worse at what they did that the internet.
Cryptocurrencies are just awful at solving real problems, compared to existing solutions.
Why are you talking about the general public? Are you equating "well the internet was only cool to nerds, solving their needs" with "Bitcoin is only good for its MLM speculation properties, and to buy drugs and murders"?
"Unless you were in academia"... So you admit that it WAS useful? And how it WAS much better than what it replaced? Because that's the opposite of Bitcoin.
Yeah! My brother was an expert in 1990 at 6. Me at 6 in 93-94. Except we most certainly weren’t.
You’re giving a completely wrong impression of how the early web was and the early internet. I wasn’t around for that so I won’t personally give my input but for the time, each iteration every few years was great.
If domain knowledge wasn’t needed by the 90s. When was serious domain knowledge needed? When did that stop?
Some people found the internet hard to use and found it required more domain knowledge than they had every single year since the internet snd web have been around. Including in the 2020s.
Comparing cryptocurrencies to the Internet is about comparing its usefulness, not it's understandability. I won't argue that people in general understood the Internet.
Take my example of Fidonet. If you were not a computer expert then you had never heard of Fidonet. BBSs? Maybe you'd heard of it in some news clip about the dangers of computers.
Hell, the only time non-experts even saw anything close to a BBS was probably the movie Wargames.
> You’re giving a completely wrong impression of how the early web was and the early internet.
In what way?
> I wasn’t around for that so I won’t personally give my input
You probably won’t see this any more so I won’t respond to rest unless you respond.
For your last point. Were you around for the development of Arpanet? I don’t think there are many people who were adults in the 69s in the few places arpanet was developed at.
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So not being around for something doesn’t exclude you from being able to discuss internet related things.
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For understanding internet. I don’t think 99.9% of the population understands the difference between the internet and protocols like the web. Not sure that’s relevant any way tho.
Nerds, early adopters — whatever you want to call them, the online behaviors they pioneered became mainstream.
In contrast not even nerds are actually using Bitcoin or Ethereum for anything that interacts with the real world. All proposed applications are self-referential shell games like NFTs, staking schemes, etc.
If this is a superior platform for finance, where’s the real economic activity? Handwaving about “probably they use it in Venezuela” doesn’t cut it.
To answer your last question first, crypto clearly is a superior platform for finance, exactly because of the explosion in "self-referential shell games" - it's in fact an extreme democratizer of "finance" - anyone can create their own liquidity pools, it's trivial to create not just CDOs, but CDO2s, 3s 4s, and they all run 24/7 forever. (no, this does not have much relevance to "real" economic activity, but this is true of almost all financialization and the more people that people understand that the better, IMO)
They recent launched a governance token and DAO (many other projects have been experimenting with various types of on-chain governance models).
Both of these pursuits are widely applicable for creating sustainable models for funding and managing distributed common good projects.
Brave has over 25M active users and has built a model on their token to pay website users and creators for ads, as well as allow in-browser tipping, etc.
Many DeFi projects are experimenting with various novel forms of tokenomics (hold X tokens to access Y features; yield earned w/ Z tokens accrue to the developers) which are interesting alternatives for creating sustainable development/operational models for software.
There are projects that are doing interesting work bridging digital and physical assets (particularly in harmonizing the legal mechanisms for property) like Mattereum, but I'd argue even the simplest types of digital-only tokenization become interesting when it can be made composable with other dapps (eg, fractional ownership of projects that can later be made liquid on the open market or that can be collateralized). This ties back to the domain of not just coordinating, but incentivizing distributed collaboration/human resources.
Can you explain why I need a crypto(tm) Gitcoin and not just a cyber chuck e cheese token? I give cyber-chuck $1 and he gives me 1 cyber token. I can subdivide it 10,000 times and micro-tip any site I want. Why do I need cryptocurrency?
If your argument is that crypto would decentralize it, and guarantee a cap on coin totals, I don't buy it. That's not the reason a site owner wouldn't join a coin plan. "I would love to get paid, but I hate inflation too much to consider your proposal". Fantasy land.
That's easy and has nothing to do with what you're thinking (although you could hard-code/guarantee emission schedules if you built a smart contract on a decentralized platform) but let's ask, how and where do you redeem your $1 cyber-chuck? Presumably only with the issuer? With a crypto-token, particularly an ERC20 you have the ability to take it to any DEX and use (or create) a liquidity pool that you can then swap for high any number of high-liquidity tokens that you can use or cash out anywhere. (You can also perform price discovery and see if your $1 cyber tokens really are worth $1 on the open market, or utilize your newly acquired cyber-chucks to generate yield by providing liquidity, collateralizing it, etc).
Note that in Gitcoin's case, GTC serves as a governance token which gives voting rights for their DAO. While it may have a market value (it certainly has some value for those who want to participate), but there is a different purpose to this type of token (the same for utility tokens).
You propose a world where cyberchuck tokens are useless, but cyberchuck crypto tokens are readily traded on the open market. Cashing out requires people to value the token underneath, and that's a function of who governs the token (and what they let you do with it), not crypto vs. not crypto. Although currently "crypto anything" seems to boost the price of your asset, even if it's just Blockchain Iced Tea.
Fraud reduction by looking at the open market ("nobody's selling these $1 tokens for anything above a nickel!") isn't plausible either - you can do the same thing today by looking at YouTuber payout rates. Those aren't public but it would take the collusion of 10,000+ top tier YouTubers, many of whom don't like YouTube very much, to lie. If YouTube were ever threatened by a more open model (ex. on Patreon, you can see actual income for some creators), they might switch to stay competitive.
> utilize your newly acquired cyber-chucks to generate yield by providing liquidity, collateralizing it, etc).
I can do this with USD so we're really talking about that X day period where my tokens haven't become USD yet. Maybe there is or will be a crypto coin or five that do what Bitcoin was supposed to do - low fees, high volume, easier and cheaper than ACH or Paypal. But if those fees are low enough, I don't necessarily need to keep by cyber chucks as cyber chucks. I could convert to USD and then back into cyber chucks, if cyber chucks is the token of choice. But I think it's far more likely that out of the hundreds-thousands of current coins, the one you pick is going to be a loser in terms of long term utility. Safer to convert to USD and then into whatever today's hot coin is.
Even today, some stock options have surprisingly little price discovery (low volume, big difference between bid and ask price). And those are real, regulated financial instruments with a direct objective relationship to present and future value. I think they can be traded across the whole market too (buy at broker A, sell to someone at broker B). I don't get how, outside of speculation, Company X's coin is going to be worth more than that. Nor will it have better price discovery - there are multiple billion dollar companies who trade stocks and options.
In current "company scrip" modes (ex. casino chips) people generally don't hold onto the not-cash. They exchange it for USD within days. If MGM decides to screw over their customers and cut the conversion rate by 10x, (1) that might be illegal, (2) the % of total customers in history that will be affected are small.
We're also generally proposing micro- or mini-payments - if it's high dollar like a salary, you'll just get USD from working at a company. How many people would take a job at 1-to-1 equivalence in a crypto token instead of a USD salary? Today, I can buy stock in my company using the USD they give me. It's much safer to me because I can choose how much to put in. If I got paid in CompanyCoin that would be a return to the company scrip days. I'd be tied up in risk for minimal gain. If the coin is stable it doesn't matter if I can only invest my USDs every payday.
I admit I don't know much about ERC20 specifically. I still don't see why you can't make a useless token on ERC20. Analogous to making an app that works with all bank accounts that nobody wants to use.
> Note that in Gitcoin's case, GTC serves as a governance token which gives voting rights for their DAO.
People talk about using crypto for democratic community governance. I said this in another comment chain:
> You imply a kind of 51% governance of an open source or community driven project. History shows that community projects fork all the time over personal differences, and majority does not always rule. Google2 coin won't matter if people get mad at Google2's governance and fork it for Google2.5 coin.
Open source is generally driven by a small core of contributors. I don't see crypto voting being anything but a rubber stamp on the current pool of high activity users. I don't hate the idea here but I also don't see much point.
> why wouldn't you do it on a (performant) blockchain
I don't see value here over JP Morgan Chase operating the market as a neutral third party. Maybe Chase won't really be neutral because they want to steer you to USD and not tokens. But there's gotta be some neutral party that can govern it, something like Coinbase.
Boring old databases and the tech of 10-30 years ago are more efficient than blockchain in all cases, afaik. No matter how efficient, the design of blockchain requires distributed workers verifying each other's transactions. On Chase's server farm, server A can trust server B. All I need is a ledger of how many tokens I have, and a way to convert to USD, the tether of the real world. I can use USD to get into Ether and those 1000 tokens any time I want.
> a 1000 such tokens can interact.
It's basically an API / standard for tokens right? Today I can make an app that uses the IMDB api, but if nobody cares, the app is useless. You can make an app that uses the latest hot tech (raytracing in GPUs) but if nobody likes what you made, it's useless. Same with ERC20, if I understand correctly. I can stand outside Chuck E Cheese and try to make a secondary market in tokens. Nothing illegal about that. Tokens are traded using the hand-to-hand protocol. Yet the number of such businesses is close to zero.
Gift cards for places like Walmart and Amazon are nearly as good as cash on eBay. Nobody buying them is worried about those companies issuing too many cards and crashing the currency.
A bank operating the platform is a good example. It is certainly possible, and people can and have taken the Ethereum Virtual Machine and ran it as a permissioned network. To the extend that we can trust Chase to do it, that would work fine.
But to that I would say that the banks haven't built it, and I don't see it happening or gaining adoption. Whatever they build will by definition not be an open network, and will likely not cross too many geographic borders.
It is sort of inconceivable that some 16 year olds would be allowed to run a lending protocol on the Chase blockchain, or even a random adult, for that matter. Plenty of people would find that positive, no doubt, but it is even hard to imagine a platform being built where companies in say India could get access to on the same terms as those in the US.
Ultimately, the permission-less nature of Ethereum is what has built the DeFi infrastructure we have today, which for all its flaws, is pretty impressive.
1) You just flatly contradicted yourself without even realizing it. The top level comment said "The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access.". When challenged, you moved the bar to "Well, it eventually became useful to everyone!".
2) You're condescending "I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this...", "Handwaving", "Shell games".
3) You've got some internal benchmark about what qualifies as useful that appears to mean "if it's not useful to me, then it doesn't count" (see comment about Venezuela).
4) You seem to think of yourself as some kind of gatekeeper or authority on nerddom.
I'm not going to change your mind about anything. I've been around the internet long enough to spot people pretending to want genuine engagement when they really despise your ideas and just want to publicly slam dunk on you.
I don’t know what you mean by point 1. The qualifier I used was “everyone who got access”, and I stand by that.
Initially only nerds had access and they couldn’t get enough. When access expanded to the general public, they couldn’t get enough either.
“You’ve Got Mail” is a 1998 movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The internet was completely mainstream just 16 years after the military decided to standardize on IPv4.
If there will be a 2024 Hollywood blockbuster called “You’ve Got Bitcoin”, it’s going to be a dark parody of speculation and greed, not a heartwarming tale of how much cryptocurrency helped average people connect with each other.
> The qualifier I used was “everyone who got access”, and I stand by that. Initially only nerds had access and they couldn’t get enough. When access expanded to the general public, they couldn’t get enough either.
My whole family had access. And the families of all my friends. They hated it. It was boring and complex. If you mean "everyone who sought access" then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it? You're either misremembering or engaging in disingenuous word play.
>The internet was completely mainstream just 16 years after the military decided to standardize on IPv4.
So 16 years is the benchmark? Seems arbitrary (because it is). Bitcoin is 12 years old. When the Internet was about 12, what did Newsweek say?
>If there will be a 2024 Hollywood blockbuster called “You’ve Got Bitcoin”, it’s going to be a dark parody of speculation and greed, not a heartwarming tale of how much cryptocurrency helped average people connect with each other.
The discussion wasn't whether Crypto is a more important technology than the internet. It was about how clunky and shitty it was at the beginning. Nothing more. Stop trying to "slam dunk" on people.
There does not appear to be a point in engaging with you. You’re trying to trip up people on technicalities and anal specifics of amt of years as equivalencies for the 2010s and the 80s and 90s.
AOL was a bonanza. I didn’t use it but that started getting big enough in the mid 90s. I got on the internet as a kid barely in school in 93-94. It was vast to me. To my older brother, etc.
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Your attitude and anger appears to be doing exactly what you’re claiming others are doing. Liken slam dunking on people.
Your experience does count. Your anger and seeming intent on winning the arguments no matter what could be tainting or tilting your positioning of your experiences as worse than they were.
You can go a bit later and talk Windows 95 time. The internet was a live enough by the mid 90s. If that’s not early enough then the argument is just silly.
In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO.
I once configured SOCKS on Windows 3.1 so I could connect to the internet over a 9600-baud modem. In those days, unless you were in Academia, you didn't know anyone with an email address. Early Usenet and IRC had very little to offer someone who wasn't a nerd. FTP? MUD gaming? Come on.
You and I found the early internet interesting precisely because we were nerds to begin with. Don't mistake that sentiment for that of the general public. They mostly found it frustrating and boring.