Shower Thoughts

Why & how did Telegram become the de-facto messaging app for crypto/web3?

A big shocker to me after beginning to work on Paragraph full-time was how all-in everyone is on TG.

cma.xyz. Founder /paragraph, ceo /mirror, previously at Google & Coinbase 

cto @ bwl.gg, 100M+ users (bdut.ch) 🙏 $eggs is life

that's for the outside of community communication, inside the community, where most messages happen, are usually on discord from my experience

any time an investor / partner / user wants to chat, it's always 'message me on TG' and very rarely 'join my discord'

it didn't

only the teams are on tg, the communities are in discord

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation and climate science, host of /diving /ethfinance /forteantimes /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

I’ve heard that argument before and agree with it (technical reasons aside). But on the other side, we have TG where comms literally transit in plain text over their server (unless you deliberately start a “Secret Chat”, which I never see anyone do)… Surely the greater evil is not the phone number here.

I like Signal (and donate to it), but the idea of handing out my phone number to strangers on the Internet is...a lot to ask.

I know Signal is testing out usernames, but they've not yet rolled out that feature to me, yet, at least.

Shocking to me too knowing how shady they’ve acted, and when actual crypto OGs like Marlinspike launched Open Whisper / Signal.

Generally I find that the crypto/web3 crowd isn’t as crypto(graphically) and privacy principled as I would have imagined them to be.

It's convoluted, but you can sign up for a Telegram-provided "anonymous number". Super handy.

no phone number or real identity requirement

Just network effects.

Product and setup were/are good enough and the switching cost is high when everyone is on TG.

discord is a product for kids

telegram is more minimalistic and elegant

How does telegram have a better chat experience than discord? I think it's the exact opposite.

the best groupchat / desktop app experience on the internet

TG never really clicked for me. i like conversations with slightly longer fleshed out thoughts and that can get so chaotic on TG, especially in group threads. i only use it begrudgingly :/

we started on forums, then moved to slack (worst time), then TG came and literally everyone moved there. Discord was top for a long, but TG is sticking around quite good

And no one uses Status, Threema, and Session

It's an incredible quasi permissionless app. I was creating TG bots back in 2016. The depth, functionality and openness of the platform always amazed me!

🥷 at Senpi:  senpi.ai 
 | Your AI edge in the market — finding signal, auto-trading, mastering exits. Welcome to the onchain dojo.

👆 is the reason! 

It's also why it I get more "this app is dominated by scammy shillers" instead of positive crypto vibes!

it started with the ico boom in 2017 and then just continued

it's also the best group-chat mobile + desktop app by far. It just works.

Man, idk, but I wish it weren't

I haven't gotten the hang of telegram yet and suck at using it

meeting someone IRL in 2021-2022 i would be asked for my twitter to keep in touch

every single person i met IRL at an event last month asked to swap TG

I hate TG.  I think it goes Discord > Slack > TG in terms of best to worst.

Telegram has been a major use case for our no-dox numbers but we have always been surprised Telegram took off the way it did.

I've never used telegram in my life. discord is bad enough...

remember using signal a lot back in 2016/17-ish when doing crypto seemed so secretive. 

I like that Telegram is the de-facto now b/c I hated needing to open up Wechat or Whatsapp or Telegram or Kakao depending on who I met.

I find it somewhat ironic for all the privacy-conscious folks to be using it as it is very data-leaky 🛁