No idea what the context is, but it's pretty clear in the last few years the crypto industry has barrelled down the cascade of degeneracy. At this point, it's institutionalised and normalised, and even the biggest players are deep into the game. To be clear, I use "gambling" in the broader sense, and yes, we're obviously seeing the same in AI stocks, Gold etc. Some of it is real, sure. The TAM for gambling is 1,000x larger than building actual products in the short-medium term, so I don't blame anyone, especially respect those who are clear they just want to extract. It's all a shame because the few actual sustainable products are better than they have ever been, and if the crypto industry had gone down the productive path instead, I'd still be writing about those.
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In 2017, Bitcoiners fought tooth and nail over block size, with one camp claiming Bitcoin will die without drastically increase throughput, while the other saying Bitcoin will die by increasing system requirements and compromising decentralization. In November 2017, Bitcoin Cash got to nearly 50% the market cap of Bitcoin under this premise, with a substantial minority convinced Bitcoin Cash would flippen Bitcoin They were both wrong! 8 years later, Bitcoin despite its anemic block size is barely utilized, but it's become a multi-trillion dollar success story. Bitcoin Cash, meanwhile, is 0.5% the market cap of BTC, 1/100th of its peak The lesson: the TAM for gambling is thousands of times greater than whatever "blockchain utility" you can think of Re: "subsidy sustainability" - also doesn't matter, as by the time that happens, most BTC will be owned by ETF custodians, and they can effectively turn it into PoS or PoA or whatever they want. All that matters is belief and religious fervour in the ticker
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Dan is right, but that aside; Personally, I do care, but the crypto industry has failed to deliver it, and has chosen a path of plutocracy & corporatocracy. Which is fair enough, as institutional speculation has a 3-4 orders of magnitude larger TAM, and it's more important to pump bags than deliver maximally neutral technology. On that note, there's a multi-trillion dollar cults built around BTC, ETH et al today, and it's definitely worth targeting that, even if technologically the solutions are suboptimal. Remember, you're invested in a ticker, not your blockchain or its tech, so in usecases where there's better & more appropriate tech than your blockchain available or waiting to be invented, you should embrace it under your banner, instead of dismissing it as "bearish". Blockchains are clearly transitory tech begging for obsolescence by more decentralised, more democratic, more efficient tech.
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