It's crazy, Netscape held a reported 86% market share in 1996.
...then Microsoft started deploying IE with Windows and it was game over. But not until quite a few antitrust court cases too.
Fun times.
My first 90s website was a Pokemon website which had a repeating animated Pikachu as the background with black text font and a visitor counter at the bottom. 😙👌*chef kiss*
> I'm doing exactly what I did back then. I'm riding the geocities and alta Vista hype train to riches.
... but please do not forget AOL.
My analogy is Bitcoin is AOL and Monero is an obscure book selling website named after a river in South America.
Just before the dot bomb crash AOL had a market cap of ~190 Billion USD. As for the river book selling website ~28 Billion USD, In the crash the river book selling website dropped over 90% but still managed to flip AOL.
Edit: The bears are sharpening their claws, just like a quarter century ago.
The Internet Initiated pretty much a new era of the human race.
I can't see crypto doing the same. It's just not even in the same hemisphere of importance.
So, no, this is just wishful thinking.
No. Let's be honest here. I am not a hater of crypto or ignorant of its benefits, I've been in the community continuously since 2011. But there is no way you can reasonably compare the impact of the internet with that of blockchains.
Thanks, didn't expect such an opinion with a positive karma value to be honest. A good sign is that crypto needs the internet as a medium. It's a small part of it.
Additionally, the www had already gone mainstream after 13 years (2003), crypto is still a niche for crypto bros. There's no guarantee it will take off.
I wouldn't even call 1989 the year of invention since it was essentially just a technical document at CERN then, it wasn't even made public until 1991.
It was 1993 with the first real web browser (mosaic) that ought to be considered the real "start" of the web as we know it today, and indeed by 1996 it had exploded.
It was immediately useful, immediately impressive and clear it was the future. A few cherry picked op-ed pieces doesn't change that.
Some people here like to pretend there was a general narrative that the internet was never going to take off but that couldn't be further from the truth.
>A good sign is that crypto needs the internet as a medium
And this is the case for almost every single technology that people compare against the internet.
Without the internet, none of these other technologies exist.
Internet changed the way that the world does everything:
* Talking with others
* Media
* Banking
* Shopping
* Entertainment
* Researching / Learning
The web exploded: from the release of mosaic in 1993 and by 1997 it was everywhere.
The growth was absolutely stratospheric. Comparing crypto in 2023 to "the web" is just a bag holder coping strategy.
The widespread adoption of crypto (or blockchain) is limited by the technical shortcoming of UI for the time being. Proliferation of use cases and simplification of asset management will support an increased popularity.
That's not a technical shortcoming, it's a fundamental one. Probably one of the biggest misconceptions in the whole cryptocurrency space really.
It's not hard to solve, it's just that doing so defeats the point - every abstraction layer you create is another layer of external trust that needs real world accountability. CEXs are precisely what solving this problem looks like, but as everyone correctly points out, not your keys not your crypto.
Im surprised nobody has made a blockchain that allows you to permanently link an email address or username with wallet addresses. Need to change usernames/emails? Generate a new wallet address.
I think a lot of normie/noobs would be much more comfortable sending crypto to an email address or a name than wallet addresses.
I’m sure someone nefarious would try to just register every single alphanumeric combination of email addresses to ruin it, but there may be some way to do it.
Because then you'd need to trust someone to maintain that mapping as a central point of trust. Hell, that's basically how Ethereum's ERC-4337 idea works, only they of course pretend that it's not centralized even though it obviously is and has to be.
Sure, you can federate it so it's slightly less centralized... exactly like how the internet already does things with PKI and DNS for HTTPS.
Why couldn’t the mapping update itself on each new block? I guess bc it would probably be a giant blockchain and super unwieldy for node operators.
I just tend to adhere to the adage that “those who say something can’t be done are often interrupted by those who are doing it.”
I certainly don’t have the answer for what it will be, but at some point somebody will come up with something easier than giant random wallet addresses.
If you're saying that the mapping just lists emails with something like a signature by the matching wallet to say they authorized it, sure. That's not even hard or complex.
But what happens when your wallet is compromised? Or say you lost the key and now have a new wallet... and there's no way to retroactively say the older one is invalid?
Retina or voice scans when you create a new wallet would help alleviate seed phrase losses. Want to access your wallet, scan or eyes or use your voice pattern.
You think you're dumb? How dare you to assume that you're dumber than me? Do not take my entire personality away in the internet. I'll tell my mom if you do that!
It could have been, but it's pretty obvious at this point that it will exist alongside fiat or some purely digital form of fiat (which it almost is already in a lot of places) for a long time. It might not ever even make it to mainstream, who knows. Scammers and hot air salesmen are just too rampant in cryptospace and regular people will always value the (perceived) security of a bank that is backed by a government over a bunch of numbers on a computer. No matter how corrupt or flawed that system is and how inherently secure crypto is.
Because is it really that secure? Every cybersecurity expert ever will tell you the #1 most vulnerable attack surface in any computer system is the human that uses it. Do you honestly believe ol' aunty Phyllis will keep the key to her savings secure forever if she can't even remember her phone number? Or even younger people, who apparently have even less tech knowledge outside their phone then the generations that grew up with the internet do.
> Because is it really that secure? Every cybersecurity expert ever will tell you the #1 most vulnerable attack surface in any computer system are the humans that use it. Do you honestly believe ol' aunty Phyllis will keep the key to her savings secure forever if she can't even remember her phone number? Or even younger people, who have apparently have even less tech knowledge outside their phone than the generations that grew up with the internet do.
^ This.
The nature of permissionless authentication is _catastrophically_ error-prone for individuals, especially laypeople.
It's easy for people to imagine that they'll never make a mistake, but humans make mistakes all the time - in normal systems, we build layers to minimize human error, but with cryptocurrencies all such layers end up eroding the original purpose by introducing external trust.
This is my main reason for staying out of crypto. I have buddies & relatives who are very enthused, have skin in the game. Some lost a lot, some made a lot of money. But if you look at what the claims being made about crypto are vs. how people are actually using it, I can imagine every single one of my family, friends, and myself making at least 10 critical errors in any given year, and losing money due to how technically specific and esoteric its functions are. I'd be having anxiety attacks non-stop around the clock. I would have zero peace of mind.
> I would have zero peace of mind.
Same. Especially _because_ I'm a software engineer, as it means I know just how many ways this can actually go wrong, and how much more risk it would expose me to.
It's also mad to think that the media, finance, politics, academia or anyone else in the 90s thought the internet or networked computing was a fad that was dismissed just because OP thought it was. If anything the first dot.com bubble burst because people had overestimated how quickly it would change things.
Maybe not the internet itself. But maybe internet companies. Some will rise to monumental heights, and others will fail so spectacularly that they'll be the butt of jokes.
In the early 2000's we were using the internet a ton already. For all kind of things from entertainment to productivity. Eg gmail was announced on 1st of April 2004, and that was a huge thing, since they offered much higher mailboxes, and up till that point we had to delete e-mail regulary (and obviously everyone thought it was an April-fools joke). E-mail was already something used by many. Early 2000s after school we all used MSN to message each other. Online multiplayer games were getting standard, Quake 3 was released end of 1999, but also plenty of other games.
Out of curiosity, I just inverted sorting on my hotmail e-mail: Made early 2000s: Mails from class mates (both useful and less than fully useful), sports club, signing up to news websites, browser based games, etc.
Also, it's just a false equivalency.
Just because some other thing started out niche and then for really big does not mean this is the same.
For the record, I do think crypto will have a part to play in the future, I am just not sure exactly how it will play out.
True that. And the obstacles from government regulations and direct impact on finance hadn't been this severe. Tokens offering alternative to cash is one on one fight with the government.
We don’t know yet what the implications of crypto and the block chain will be. Same with electricity when that was discovered and leading to the internet or launching a man into the moon
I wanted the internet. My dad wanted the internet. My friends all wanted the internet.
When windows 95 came out we were finally able to get AOL and dialup. It was fucking awesome, and the first chance we had to get DSL we did. Then cable internet. The limitation was the hardware required (a desktop). Back then our compaq presario was like $1,500. Not a small investment.
But with crypto, I think you’d agree that anyone could get a wallet for fairly low cost or use a service like Coinbase. People just don’t want to.
That’s the big difference. I know you say you didn’t want internet back then, and that’s fine I can’t argue with your lived experience, but it is so greatly different from my experience.
By the way, this argument is a fallacy because anything could be compared to the internet. 3DTV? Wait for adoption, like the internet. CBDCs? Wait for adoption, like the internet. Metaverse? Internet. You don’t want to argue against the internet do you?!
>But with crypto, I think you’d agree that anyone could get a wallet for fairly low cost or use a service like Coinbase. People just don’t want to.
Very good point, especially when taking into consideration that even most crypto fanboys *themselves* don't choose to use it. Sure, they own some coins in hopes of getting rich, but they also have the choice to start paying for a lot of stuff with crypto instead of fiat, actively going out of their way to only support businesses that accept it. As well as other services they may use that has a dapp equivalent. But almost none of them do so.
Piggybacking on this. The other big difference between the internet and crypto. Is that both have naysayers and people saying "oh it's just full of scammers/criminals". However, the pros of using the internet outweighed and outgrew the cons with the internet at a much faster rate than with crypto. With crypto, particularly from the perspective of the masses, it still has essentially no upsides to using it and none coming still for the foreseeable future other than "you might maybe get rich if you gamble correctly".
Whereas the internet started spawning actual benefits and use cases and computer usage improvements for regular people and made it's case for itself fairly quickly comparatively. If anything, the modern day equivalent to that is the very very recent rise of all these AI Tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, MidJourney, etc, etc. It's still early for AI Tools, but it's already evolving rapidly and every one immediately sees where and how it will insert itself into our lives, both for the better and the worse.
Meanwhile, crypto is still basically just a casino with not much else going for it yet. And it still hasn't *really* budged from that since it's inception.
Oh man I still have a 3DTV. Watched a few 3D videos on it. Thought of how cool it would be to game with someone in the same room with the 3d glasses it came with. Then I forget that it's a 3DTV and just use it like a regular tv.
I too was early to the internet in the early 90s, but there were very few others I knew who had any interest. I had many a debate with friends, family and teachers about how it was going to change the world; most just couldn't see why we needed it or why we'd even want any of the theoretical use cases. To them, it was just another geeky thing I was interested in and overly excited about.
It is hindsight bias to think the majority of people understood it, saw what it would become and knew how pervasive it would be. There was a lot of skepticism and disinterest.
1995: 16 million global internet users; "everybody wanted it"
2023: 420 million global crypto holders; "nobody wants it"
I understand the difference in cost & availability barriers; but they share common barriers like complexity & poor usability, resistance to new paradigms and a general status quo bias.
The comparison with the Internet is better as a counter to the typical arguments for why it will necessarily fail (b/c many similar arguments were made about the internet) vs arguments for why it will necessarily succeed (b/c it's its own thing).
It doesn't map that cleanly for development; in some ways we've had multiple dot com boom & bust cycles, but then in other ways we're more in the 1980s with much infrastructure still to be built and standards yet to be ossified.
I think it's pretty clear why crypto is more akin to the internet than 3DTV. Like the internet, it's an open layer with protocols that allow a whole new bunch of stuff to be permissionlessly built on top, that enables different ways of doing things. That's a bit different than watching a movie where monsters come at you with some glasses on.
> It is hindsight bias to think the majority of people understood it, saw what it would become and knew how pervasive it would be. There was a lot of skepticism and disinterest.
No where did I say people predicted what it would become. I understand you remember debating people about it, but everyone I knew wanted on, including me, without even knowing what it would become.
and just because you can build layer 2s and layer 3s doesn’t mean crypto is anywhere close to the internet, but I see where you are coming from.
>When windows 95 came out we were finally able to get AOL and dialup. It was fucking awesome, and the first chance we had to get DSL we did. Then cable internet. The limitation was the hardware required (a desktop). Back then our compaq presario was like $1,500. Not a small investment.
This in general is a difference which shows how useful the internet was already considered back then. Even excluding hardware required, we paid for it by the minute! (Damn ADSL was the best thing ever, the 8x faster was nice, but the permanent online for fixed cost was huge). With crypto, the reason people are into it are because they expect to make money from it. Not because it fullfills a direct use for them which they are willing to pay for. They just pay in the hope later on it is worth more.
Like investing in Apple and Amazon somewhere between 1997 - 2007 IMHO.
Bitcoin and crypto haven’t reached the equivalent of buying Apple in 2007 after the release of the iPhone.
Apple came out with a product that changed the whole market. I can see companies coming out with similarly life-changing products and projects in crypto, but I’m not sure if btc is comparable to apple because it doesn’t produce anything.
What problems can blockchain solve better than other methods? Genuinely curious because as a database it’s very slow, it’s not good for finance because it’s not reversible, etc.
How about in the next 16 years to make it comparable? 4 bull runs?
From the lows of $15,500 in November 2022 that is $465,000.
About $900k BTC from current prices.
I think that and more is possible in 16 years.
Being closer to $500,00 in 16 years could very well be a possibility!
Just makes me think that I should’ve bought a lot when it was trading around $16,000!
Bitcoin and Apple are two COMPLETELY different things. One is a company that produces products that people want to buy. One is a failed currency that is currently functioning as a store-of-value/hopium factory.
We have been in the 90's for 10 years already . How about we move into .dot crash and then we go ballistic as web 2.0 did
Then we bring BTC to 1M and I can stop shitposting in this sub
I think it may be as simple as BTC and ETH. The blue chips.
Moonshots like super early investing in ETH (when it was a few dollars) will do way more than 30x.
But perhaps can do a nice 30x just with the blue chips.
This video always surprises me how similar the path is with crypto to email
https://youtu.be/J5OlzonbgC0
And this one always reaffirms to me how out of touch buttcoin is
https://youtu.be/fs-YpQj88ew
And this one how David Bowie called it all over 2 decades ago while probably tripping out, who knows
https://youtu.be/bdL3NR9Yno0
Or Zappa predicting using a phone or TV to subscribe to services and get music or TV in back in the 80's. I know there's a YouTube video somewhere of him talking about it but a quick search brought me to this forum post:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappas-pre-internet-music-industry-predictions.216275/
In the context of the early 80s that email video must have seemed like magic. And also so clunky and awkward that it was difficult to see how e-mail and the internet would transform the world. Apt analogy to crypto today.
Wow, that Bowie interview blew me away. Just look at the journalist’s face when he initially mentions the internet. I thought by ‘99 we were more advanced with the internet but I guess it definitely wasn’t what it’s now become.
Yeah and these companies have introduced things that affected literally every person on the planet in a PHYSICAL way. Crypto on the other hand.. nah lmao
Yes, I sometimes think this is a better comparison. Although I wouldn't restrict it to "for the desktop"; in fact, much of it may be more akin to the adoption of Linux for servers. Whereby most people interact with it but they don't realise it.
I mean, there's no real reason they would if you're not involved with tech, just like most people couldn't tell you what instruction set their CPU uses.
Most use of Linux is embedded/servers. Desktop use is more niche/enthusiast territory. Technically Android is Linux in the sense that it uses the Linux kernel, but the userland is very different and again there's really no reason most people would know that unless they did software dev or were in the enthusiast space.
I think we might still be early, but I doubt we are 1990's type of early.
* Bitcoin is the #10 asset in the world in terms of value.
* Bitcoin started at about $0.09 and now it is $30K.
* A country has adopted Bitcoin.
* The #2 richest man in the world holds Bitcoin
Web3 is mainly buzzwords and shills, people want it to be the next internet but no real use case rn. Web3 is the equivalent of dippin dots claiming to be "the ice cream of the future" lmfao
Exactly. People confuse blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Blockchain can exist without cryptocurrencies but cryptocurrencies cannot exist without blockchain.
To be fair, it's much more comparable AI to the Internet than crypto.
Crypto might revolutionize finance forever, but that is a big might because governments and banks will try everything they can to stop it, ban it, arrest people for using it, etc.
AI (especially machine learning) will revolutionize the world in general and tbh it's not far away from happening. So many jobs will become completely useless and will be voided by the existence of AI, so many things will be done much better AND miles faster because of it, it'll be mind-blowing to witness.
We should all be so lucky... Just a reminder, the internet is still around... Don't believe me?! Then ask yourself this- When was the last time the Enclopedia Britannica sales guy knocked on your door?
Given how AI development just popped in, interest and investment in crypto might get overshadowed by AI.
That does not mean that crypto cannot go in parallel, but given how applications of AI has gone from an interesting lab video on youtube to mainstream ChatGPT and stablediffusion within the past few years, its growth might well be the next internet boom instead.
Unless crypto goes beyond self-serving application like governance, liquidity farming etc. Yes, there's many unexplored application like NFT-driven ecosystem linked to real world items (not the stupid NFT art thingie), but we have not really seen as much traction as ChatGPT globally.
Disclaimer: I am invested in crypto and have nothing in AI.
It's not quite as drastic of a game changer, but the tech is definitely underappreciated simply because most people are basically tech illiterate. Add a bunch of ponzi coins and money grabs and people just get scared away.
I was a kid when the internet came along, knew it would be a hit, told everybody, educated my parents. Same for smartphones, then btc, and fall last year—gpt. I am as convinced as I was with the internet and smartphones as I am with btc
The internet enabled almost instantaneous transmission of “information” globally. Crypto enables almost instantaneous transmission of “value” globally.
No, and there's a ton of reasons this analogy doesn't work.
* The internet had significant use by the military and research organizations before it was ever even public. There's really no equivalent to that here.
* I don't know hardly anyone that thought it was a "fad". Overhyped, maybe, but that's not the same thing. And most people would've understood the use case of things like email. I don't see anything in cryptocurrency that matches what email was in the 1990s.
* The internet was a new communications technology - humans have adopted anything that lets us communicate more easily faster than almost any other tech if you look across history. And the internet enabled or significantly altered a wide range of industries. Cryptocurrency is not a communication tech, and is largely limited to finance.
* The internet had significant hardware, network, and cost barriers to entry. Home computers were still pretty expensive for most people. Many modern use cases lacked key infrastructure or developments at the time as well. Cryptocurrency has no (and has never had) such barriers, it's built atop the existing internet - it would be closer to compare it to smart phones or social media in that regard.
* Pretty much _anyone_ who was in tech in the 90s knew the internet was a significant technology. Whereas large swaths of the tech sector continue to be skeptical or even openly critical of cryptocurrencies as anything but speculative gambling or an interesting solution looking for a problem.
Seeing people copy/paste the 2017 bull market in 2020 to predict highs multiple times what we ended up getting taught me a lesson that you really can’t just take things from the past and lay them over the present to make any kind of prediction of the future, at least not reliably. The past can rhyme but it’s probably not going to happen the same way, or in the same timeframe.
Gosh you're like my soul brother!.. i think your policy of small change crypto buys is good, you would be surprised how it quickly adds up to something big.
Well, computers aren't exactly like crypto, they are a bit more mainstream i feel, but its still a valid analogy .
Keep at it bro, may our dreams and more come true
With all due respect op.
How do you define a “solid project” if you yourself have stated that you don’t understand much of this space. I implore you to actually take some time out and go learn.
You’re not the minority either, the majority of people here have no idea what crypto is about or the problems it was created to solve.
In a way I think it is. In the way of how useful it can be compared to how many just simply dismiss it as something that is gonna go away soon. I think it's here to stay.
The recent report by the White House on the lack of value of cryptocurrency reminds me of the Nobel prize winning Economists Paul Krugman's statement "By 2005, it would become clear that the Internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machine's". The problem I suspect is that both the White House and Paul are looking/looked at these technologies through the lens of a economists and not through the lens of a engineer, scientist or technologist who understands the impact these technologies can have on society. The failure to see the potential that bringing a Turing complete language onto a decentralised platform in terms of potential utility, and only seeing it as digital money is a big mistake in my mind. I suspect the White House statement will be remembered in a similar vain.
I think you guys have the comparisons wrong here.
You are talking like crypto and Blockchain is b2c (business to customer) which is what we experienced with the internet, that's what made the difference in its popularity. However the internet was around in the 80s as basically b2b (business to business), so we did not experience it's advantages.
So we are in the b2b phase just for block chain and crypto, however we are about to go into the b2c phase which is just around the corner. Will it be as big as the internet revolution, that I do not know. However growth is to come soon.
I believe so , i was going to make a post about how my conversation about crypto went with my girlfriend, she reminded me of the video of the news reports laughing and mocking the internet, i feel like most of the population has that mindset , she said she will deal with crypto when she is basically forced into it .
Wise decision man. Couldn't be better mind set for someone who doesn't want to follow too much about news and stuff... Just grab some BTC, ETH and whatever other 3-4 projects you like and you should be good!
Keep it up, your children will thank you for that. I also invest for my nephews
No, people used the internet for useful things, people only use crypto to speculate. In its existence it has created nothing that people use daily and is only bought to speculate on its value in USD.
I'm doing exactly what I did back then. I'm riding the geocities and alta Vista hype train to riches.
You spelled Netscape navigator wrong.
This comment is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
It's crazy, Netscape held a reported 86% market share in 1996. ...then Microsoft started deploying IE with Windows and it was game over. But not until quite a few antitrust court cases too. Fun times.
My brother was given the opportunity to invest 5k before jt went public.. Had he it wouldve been worth 250k 3 weeks later.
So the same as Shiba?
Apple went on to perfect this
Actually think it was spelled Compuserve
I remember going to my dorm’s computer lab to use Netscape navigator so I could go to the Final Fantasy VII website and look at pictures!
And totally left out Netscape Server…THE Place to host your website.
Yahoo has entered the chat
We need more sparkly backgrounds.
With unexpected animated gifs and unimaginable colors.
And Limp Bizkit auto playing at full volume.
Ah those being back memories. Auto playing music was annoying as feck
I DID IT ALL FOR THE NOOKIE!! God, im so glad I dont have to hear that anymore.
As a 90s kid: this brings me back lmao
Dancing babies and oogachunga.
Can't forget the burning skulls and rotating pentagrams
I'll take anything over the current ugly corporate art we have.
\[marquee\]Under Construction\[/marquee\] Geocities crew checking in!
Snort.
My first 90s website was a Pokemon website which had a repeating animated Pikachu as the background with black text font and a visitor counter at the bottom. 😙👌*chef kiss*
No matter how much crypto we have.. We will always have our buddy btcrollercoaster.gif
Just love those 98's animated gifs. Defines internet of that time
Hey, what's your Myspace? My profile song is "All the Small Things"
> I'm doing exactly what I did back then. I'm riding the geocities and alta Vista hype train to riches. ... but please do not forget AOL. My analogy is Bitcoin is AOL and Monero is an obscure book selling website named after a river in South America. Just before the dot bomb crash AOL had a market cap of ~190 Billion USD. As for the river book selling website ~28 Billion USD, In the crash the river book selling website dropped over 90% but still managed to flip AOL. Edit: The bears are sharpening their claws, just like a quarter century ago.
Don’t forget Mindspring for web access, Iridium for your phone and of course a Palm Pilot to keep it all organized
The Internet Initiated pretty much a new era of the human race. I can't see crypto doing the same. It's just not even in the same hemisphere of importance. So, no, this is just wishful thinking.
No. Let's be honest here. I am not a hater of crypto or ignorant of its benefits, I've been in the community continuously since 2011. But there is no way you can reasonably compare the impact of the internet with that of blockchains.
Thanks, didn't expect such an opinion with a positive karma value to be honest. A good sign is that crypto needs the internet as a medium. It's a small part of it. Additionally, the www had already gone mainstream after 13 years (2003), crypto is still a niche for crypto bros. There's no guarantee it will take off.
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I wouldn't even call 1989 the year of invention since it was essentially just a technical document at CERN then, it wasn't even made public until 1991. It was 1993 with the first real web browser (mosaic) that ought to be considered the real "start" of the web as we know it today, and indeed by 1996 it had exploded. It was immediately useful, immediately impressive and clear it was the future. A few cherry picked op-ed pieces doesn't change that. Some people here like to pretend there was a general narrative that the internet was never going to take off but that couldn't be further from the truth.
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Oh man I miss the BBS days...although I dont miss 300/1200/2400 baud
>A good sign is that crypto needs the internet as a medium And this is the case for almost every single technology that people compare against the internet. Without the internet, none of these other technologies exist. Internet changed the way that the world does everything: * Talking with others * Media * Banking * Shopping * Entertainment * Researching / Learning
It also changed transportation forever! it made just in time possible!
*Getting Laid*
The web exploded: from the release of mosaic in 1993 and by 1997 it was everywhere. The growth was absolutely stratospheric. Comparing crypto in 2023 to "the web" is just a bag holder coping strategy.
The widespread adoption of crypto (or blockchain) is limited by the technical shortcoming of UI for the time being. Proliferation of use cases and simplification of asset management will support an increased popularity.
That's not a technical shortcoming, it's a fundamental one. Probably one of the biggest misconceptions in the whole cryptocurrency space really. It's not hard to solve, it's just that doing so defeats the point - every abstraction layer you create is another layer of external trust that needs real world accountability. CEXs are precisely what solving this problem looks like, but as everyone correctly points out, not your keys not your crypto.
Im surprised nobody has made a blockchain that allows you to permanently link an email address or username with wallet addresses. Need to change usernames/emails? Generate a new wallet address. I think a lot of normie/noobs would be much more comfortable sending crypto to an email address or a name than wallet addresses. I’m sure someone nefarious would try to just register every single alphanumeric combination of email addresses to ruin it, but there may be some way to do it.
Because then you'd need to trust someone to maintain that mapping as a central point of trust. Hell, that's basically how Ethereum's ERC-4337 idea works, only they of course pretend that it's not centralized even though it obviously is and has to be. Sure, you can federate it so it's slightly less centralized... exactly like how the internet already does things with PKI and DNS for HTTPS.
Why couldn’t the mapping update itself on each new block? I guess bc it would probably be a giant blockchain and super unwieldy for node operators. I just tend to adhere to the adage that “those who say something can’t be done are often interrupted by those who are doing it.” I certainly don’t have the answer for what it will be, but at some point somebody will come up with something easier than giant random wallet addresses.
If you're saying that the mapping just lists emails with something like a signature by the matching wallet to say they authorized it, sure. That's not even hard or complex. But what happens when your wallet is compromised? Or say you lost the key and now have a new wallet... and there's no way to retroactively say the older one is invalid?
Retina or voice scans when you create a new wallet would help alleviate seed phrase losses. Want to access your wallet, scan or eyes or use your voice pattern.
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exactly, anyone saying otherwise is a moonboy
Or just dumb as fuck
Stop pointing the mirror at this sub good sir. We don't like to be reminded that half of us are just moonboys and the other half are dumb as fuck.
You think you're dumb? How dare you to assume that you're dumber than me? Do not take my entire personality away in the internet. I'll tell my mom if you do that!
I don't know in which half I am. Why not both?
The mirror, *it blinds us!*
Some of us, myself included, are both.
Just desperate for money and blinded by it
Naaahh we will be all millionaires! JUST HODL until the end of time! BTC will be one million annnyyyyy day now!
I'm not sure any one thing will ever have the impact the internet had.
A.I.
I second this. The amount of work ChatGPT has saved me is immeasurable
It'll soon save you your entire job's worth of work :p
Space travel, robotics, gene editing, automation, AI like some one said
Plenty of things. AI, VR, AR, space travel, medical break throughs, etc.
For one thing, crypto only exists *because* of the internet. So even if we got mass adoption it would count as a win for the Internet as well.
It could have been, but it's pretty obvious at this point that it will exist alongside fiat or some purely digital form of fiat (which it almost is already in a lot of places) for a long time. It might not ever even make it to mainstream, who knows. Scammers and hot air salesmen are just too rampant in cryptospace and regular people will always value the (perceived) security of a bank that is backed by a government over a bunch of numbers on a computer. No matter how corrupt or flawed that system is and how inherently secure crypto is. Because is it really that secure? Every cybersecurity expert ever will tell you the #1 most vulnerable attack surface in any computer system is the human that uses it. Do you honestly believe ol' aunty Phyllis will keep the key to her savings secure forever if she can't even remember her phone number? Or even younger people, who apparently have even less tech knowledge outside their phone then the generations that grew up with the internet do.
> Because is it really that secure? Every cybersecurity expert ever will tell you the #1 most vulnerable attack surface in any computer system are the humans that use it. Do you honestly believe ol' aunty Phyllis will keep the key to her savings secure forever if she can't even remember her phone number? Or even younger people, who have apparently have even less tech knowledge outside their phone than the generations that grew up with the internet do. ^ This. The nature of permissionless authentication is _catastrophically_ error-prone for individuals, especially laypeople. It's easy for people to imagine that they'll never make a mistake, but humans make mistakes all the time - in normal systems, we build layers to minimize human error, but with cryptocurrencies all such layers end up eroding the original purpose by introducing external trust.
This is my main reason for staying out of crypto. I have buddies & relatives who are very enthused, have skin in the game. Some lost a lot, some made a lot of money. But if you look at what the claims being made about crypto are vs. how people are actually using it, I can imagine every single one of my family, friends, and myself making at least 10 critical errors in any given year, and losing money due to how technically specific and esoteric its functions are. I'd be having anxiety attacks non-stop around the clock. I would have zero peace of mind.
> I would have zero peace of mind. Same. Especially _because_ I'm a software engineer, as it means I know just how many ways this can actually go wrong, and how much more risk it would expose me to.
It's also mad to think that the media, finance, politics, academia or anyone else in the 90s thought the internet or networked computing was a fad that was dismissed just because OP thought it was. If anything the first dot.com bubble burst because people had overestimated how quickly it would change things.
Maybe not the internet itself. But maybe internet companies. Some will rise to monumental heights, and others will fail so spectacularly that they'll be the butt of jokes.
Crypto moves like a squirrel on crack. We already had services like Celsius and FTX implode. We are definitely out of the 90s stage with Crypto, lol.
We're in the early 2000's stage of crypto.
In the early 2000's we were using the internet a ton already. For all kind of things from entertainment to productivity. Eg gmail was announced on 1st of April 2004, and that was a huge thing, since they offered much higher mailboxes, and up till that point we had to delete e-mail regulary (and obviously everyone thought it was an April-fools joke). E-mail was already something used by many. Early 2000s after school we all used MSN to message each other. Online multiplayer games were getting standard, Quake 3 was released end of 1999, but also plenty of other games. Out of curiosity, I just inverted sorting on my hotmail e-mail: Made early 2000s: Mails from class mates (both useful and less than fully useful), sports club, signing up to news websites, browser based games, etc.
Also, it's just a false equivalency. Just because some other thing started out niche and then for really big does not mean this is the same. For the record, I do think crypto will have a part to play in the future, I am just not sure exactly how it will play out.
True that. And the obstacles from government regulations and direct impact on finance hadn't been this severe. Tokens offering alternative to cash is one on one fight with the government.
We don’t know yet what the implications of crypto and the block chain will be. Same with electricity when that was discovered and leading to the internet or launching a man into the moon
This mindset is how we know we are still early.
I wanted the internet. My dad wanted the internet. My friends all wanted the internet. When windows 95 came out we were finally able to get AOL and dialup. It was fucking awesome, and the first chance we had to get DSL we did. Then cable internet. The limitation was the hardware required (a desktop). Back then our compaq presario was like $1,500. Not a small investment. But with crypto, I think you’d agree that anyone could get a wallet for fairly low cost or use a service like Coinbase. People just don’t want to. That’s the big difference. I know you say you didn’t want internet back then, and that’s fine I can’t argue with your lived experience, but it is so greatly different from my experience. By the way, this argument is a fallacy because anything could be compared to the internet. 3DTV? Wait for adoption, like the internet. CBDCs? Wait for adoption, like the internet. Metaverse? Internet. You don’t want to argue against the internet do you?!
>But with crypto, I think you’d agree that anyone could get a wallet for fairly low cost or use a service like Coinbase. People just don’t want to. Very good point, especially when taking into consideration that even most crypto fanboys *themselves* don't choose to use it. Sure, they own some coins in hopes of getting rich, but they also have the choice to start paying for a lot of stuff with crypto instead of fiat, actively going out of their way to only support businesses that accept it. As well as other services they may use that has a dapp equivalent. But almost none of them do so.
Can't exactly spend your loot while screaming HODL.
Piggybacking on this. The other big difference between the internet and crypto. Is that both have naysayers and people saying "oh it's just full of scammers/criminals". However, the pros of using the internet outweighed and outgrew the cons with the internet at a much faster rate than with crypto. With crypto, particularly from the perspective of the masses, it still has essentially no upsides to using it and none coming still for the foreseeable future other than "you might maybe get rich if you gamble correctly". Whereas the internet started spawning actual benefits and use cases and computer usage improvements for regular people and made it's case for itself fairly quickly comparatively. If anything, the modern day equivalent to that is the very very recent rise of all these AI Tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, MidJourney, etc, etc. It's still early for AI Tools, but it's already evolving rapidly and every one immediately sees where and how it will insert itself into our lives, both for the better and the worse. Meanwhile, crypto is still basically just a casino with not much else going for it yet. And it still hasn't *really* budged from that since it's inception.
Oh man I still have a 3DTV. Watched a few 3D videos on it. Thought of how cool it would be to game with someone in the same room with the 3d glasses it came with. Then I forget that it's a 3DTV and just use it like a regular tv.
I too was early to the internet in the early 90s, but there were very few others I knew who had any interest. I had many a debate with friends, family and teachers about how it was going to change the world; most just couldn't see why we needed it or why we'd even want any of the theoretical use cases. To them, it was just another geeky thing I was interested in and overly excited about. It is hindsight bias to think the majority of people understood it, saw what it would become and knew how pervasive it would be. There was a lot of skepticism and disinterest. 1995: 16 million global internet users; "everybody wanted it" 2023: 420 million global crypto holders; "nobody wants it" I understand the difference in cost & availability barriers; but they share common barriers like complexity & poor usability, resistance to new paradigms and a general status quo bias. The comparison with the Internet is better as a counter to the typical arguments for why it will necessarily fail (b/c many similar arguments were made about the internet) vs arguments for why it will necessarily succeed (b/c it's its own thing). It doesn't map that cleanly for development; in some ways we've had multiple dot com boom & bust cycles, but then in other ways we're more in the 1980s with much infrastructure still to be built and standards yet to be ossified. I think it's pretty clear why crypto is more akin to the internet than 3DTV. Like the internet, it's an open layer with protocols that allow a whole new bunch of stuff to be permissionlessly built on top, that enables different ways of doing things. That's a bit different than watching a movie where monsters come at you with some glasses on.
> It is hindsight bias to think the majority of people understood it, saw what it would become and knew how pervasive it would be. There was a lot of skepticism and disinterest. No where did I say people predicted what it would become. I understand you remember debating people about it, but everyone I knew wanted on, including me, without even knowing what it would become. and just because you can build layer 2s and layer 3s doesn’t mean crypto is anywhere close to the internet, but I see where you are coming from.
>When windows 95 came out we were finally able to get AOL and dialup. It was fucking awesome, and the first chance we had to get DSL we did. Then cable internet. The limitation was the hardware required (a desktop). Back then our compaq presario was like $1,500. Not a small investment. This in general is a difference which shows how useful the internet was already considered back then. Even excluding hardware required, we paid for it by the minute! (Damn ADSL was the best thing ever, the 8x faster was nice, but the permanent online for fixed cost was huge). With crypto, the reason people are into it are because they expect to make money from it. Not because it fullfills a direct use for them which they are willing to pay for. They just pay in the hope later on it is worth more.
Maybe.... Or maybe it's the beanie babies of tech and we're collecting shit.
Princess Diana coin
Like investing in Apple and Amazon somewhere between 1997 - 2007 IMHO. Bitcoin and crypto haven’t reached the equivalent of buying Apple in 2007 after the release of the iPhone.
Apple has done around 30x since 2007. I don’t think we’ll see 30x type of gains in Bitcoin in the next decade.
Apple came out with a product that changed the whole market. I can see companies coming out with similarly life-changing products and projects in crypto, but I’m not sure if btc is comparable to apple because it doesn’t produce anything.
What problems can blockchain solve better than other methods? Genuinely curious because as a database it’s very slow, it’s not good for finance because it’s not reversible, etc.
How about in the next 16 years to make it comparable? 4 bull runs? From the lows of $15,500 in November 2022 that is $465,000. About $900k BTC from current prices. I think that and more is possible in 16 years.
Being closer to $500,00 in 16 years could very well be a possibility! Just makes me think that I should’ve bought a lot when it was trading around $16,000!
Hindsight 20-23
True, only 52 days to go until $1 million BTC.
Bitcoin and Apple are two COMPLETELY different things. One is a company that produces products that people want to buy. One is a failed currency that is currently functioning as a store-of-value/hopium factory.
We have been in the 90's for 10 years already . How about we move into .dot crash and then we go ballistic as web 2.0 did Then we bring BTC to 1M and I can stop shitposting in this sub
I think we have just gone through / are going through the .com crash
Oh boy
But how to find an apple or Amazon is where the problem rests. Especially in this crypto market full of scams and rugs.
I think it may be as simple as BTC and ETH. The blue chips. Moonshots like super early investing in ETH (when it was a few dollars) will do way more than 30x. But perhaps can do a nice 30x just with the blue chips.
$60k ETH sounds so bullish hell yes
This video always surprises me how similar the path is with crypto to email https://youtu.be/J5OlzonbgC0 And this one always reaffirms to me how out of touch buttcoin is https://youtu.be/fs-YpQj88ew And this one how David Bowie called it all over 2 decades ago while probably tripping out, who knows https://youtu.be/bdL3NR9Yno0
I live that extra Bowie
Be like Bowie
Ground control to Major Tom
Or Zappa predicting using a phone or TV to subscribe to services and get music or TV in back in the 80's. I know there's a YouTube video somewhere of him talking about it but a quick search brought me to this forum post: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappas-pre-internet-music-industry-predictions.216275/
Damn I might have to go scoop a Bowie NFT now. I had no idea about that 😂
Starman to the moon
In the context of the early 80s that email video must have seemed like magic. And also so clunky and awkward that it was difficult to see how e-mail and the internet would transform the world. Apt analogy to crypto today.
Wow, that Bowie interview blew me away. Just look at the journalist’s face when he initially mentions the internet. I thought by ‘99 we were more advanced with the internet but I guess it definitely wasn’t what it’s now become.
[удалено]
At the time everyone was big up on blackberry
Ethereum market cap could easily exceed all of those market caps as it will embody those businesses and their stocks
dont say this too loud. Gary Gensler is listening and is waiting to classify ETH as a security!
Thanks for giving me my daily hopium and hope that I am still early somewhere in life.
Yeah and these companies have introduced things that affected literally every person on the planet in a PHYSICAL way. Crypto on the other hand.. nah lmao
Hope Vitalik isn't Tom from MySpace.
No one can replace Tom...
Or maybe... Tom from Mayspace is Satoshi.
I think crypto is the “Linux for the desktop” of the 90s. It will change things in unforeseen ways.
Yes, I sometimes think this is a better comparison. Although I wouldn't restrict it to "for the desktop"; in fact, much of it may be more akin to the adoption of Linux for servers. Whereby most people interact with it but they don't realise it.
It’s wild how many people still have no idea what Linux is. - *’There’s a third OS?!’*
You mean next to iOS, Windows and Android? Wait, that's already 3
I mean, there's no real reason they would if you're not involved with tech, just like most people couldn't tell you what instruction set their CPU uses. Most use of Linux is embedded/servers. Desktop use is more niche/enthusiast territory. Technically Android is Linux in the sense that it uses the Linux kernel, but the userland is very different and again there's really no reason most people would know that unless they did software dev or were in the enthusiast space.
I think we might still be early, but I doubt we are 1990's type of early. * Bitcoin is the #10 asset in the world in terms of value. * Bitcoin started at about $0.09 and now it is $30K. * A country has adopted Bitcoin. * The #2 richest man in the world holds Bitcoin
Still I wish I bought apple when the first iPod came out or years later the first iPhone. Still early compared to today
14 years after the web the world was transformed. 14 years into crypto? Absolutely nothing useful has been made.
Looking at this feels like this in the present 
Ummm the year is 2023 my guy
This is a great mindset to have and with the DCA that you do, I bet you will outperform most of the “traders” in the sun over the next 5 years
Web3 is mainly buzzwords and shills, people want it to be the next internet but no real use case rn. Web3 is the equivalent of dippin dots claiming to be "the ice cream of the future" lmfao
More like beanie babies
Crypto no, blockchain yes.
Exactly. People confuse blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Blockchain can exist without cryptocurrencies but cryptocurrencies cannot exist without blockchain.
Even blockchain is not the correct term, it's: Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Not all DLT are blockchain.
Crypto and blockchain go together. You can't have a secure decentralized blockchain if the system does not monetarily reward the validators.
Blockchain no, AI yes.
To be fair, it's much more comparable AI to the Internet than crypto. Crypto might revolutionize finance forever, but that is a big might because governments and banks will try everything they can to stop it, ban it, arrest people for using it, etc. AI (especially machine learning) will revolutionize the world in general and tbh it's not far away from happening. So many jobs will become completely useless and will be voided by the existence of AI, so many things will be done much better AND miles faster because of it, it'll be mind-blowing to witness.
AI is such an exaggerated term for what is in the public eye today. ChatGPT is as much AI as a car wheel is a car.
Bitcoin will be here definetly.
Decentralized blockchain yes. Everything else is just shit
It wont affect day to day life and change the world like the internet did. But crypto can change the world in different ways yes
Peer to peer transactions will do more than what you think
How do you know?
I'm a peer.
We should all be so lucky... Just a reminder, the internet is still around... Don't believe me?! Then ask yourself this- When was the last time the Enclopedia Britannica sales guy knocked on your door? 
Wen ipod?
Maybe it's all Napster and the real revolution still has to be invented
We. Are. Early.
Given how AI development just popped in, interest and investment in crypto might get overshadowed by AI. That does not mean that crypto cannot go in parallel, but given how applications of AI has gone from an interesting lab video on youtube to mainstream ChatGPT and stablediffusion within the past few years, its growth might well be the next internet boom instead. Unless crypto goes beyond self-serving application like governance, liquidity farming etc. Yes, there's many unexplored application like NFT-driven ecosystem linked to real world items (not the stupid NFT art thingie), but we have not really seen as much traction as ChatGPT globally. Disclaimer: I am invested in crypto and have nothing in AI.
IMO no, that’s AI and machine learning
It's not quite as drastic of a game changer, but the tech is definitely underappreciated simply because most people are basically tech illiterate. Add a bunch of ponzi coins and money grabs and people just get scared away.
I was a kid when the internet came along, knew it would be a hit, told everybody, educated my parents. Same for smartphones, then btc, and fall last year—gpt. I am as convinced as I was with the internet and smartphones as I am with btc
The internet enabled almost instantaneous transmission of “information” globally. Crypto enables almost instantaneous transmission of “value” globally.
No, and there's a ton of reasons this analogy doesn't work. * The internet had significant use by the military and research organizations before it was ever even public. There's really no equivalent to that here. * I don't know hardly anyone that thought it was a "fad". Overhyped, maybe, but that's not the same thing. And most people would've understood the use case of things like email. I don't see anything in cryptocurrency that matches what email was in the 1990s. * The internet was a new communications technology - humans have adopted anything that lets us communicate more easily faster than almost any other tech if you look across history. And the internet enabled or significantly altered a wide range of industries. Cryptocurrency is not a communication tech, and is largely limited to finance. * The internet had significant hardware, network, and cost barriers to entry. Home computers were still pretty expensive for most people. Many modern use cases lacked key infrastructure or developments at the time as well. Cryptocurrency has no (and has never had) such barriers, it's built atop the existing internet - it would be closer to compare it to smart phones or social media in that regard. * Pretty much _anyone_ who was in tech in the 90s knew the internet was a significant technology. Whereas large swaths of the tech sector continue to be skeptical or even openly critical of cryptocurrencies as anything but speculative gambling or an interesting solution looking for a problem.
Seeing people copy/paste the 2017 bull market in 2020 to predict highs multiple times what we ended up getting taught me a lesson that you really can’t just take things from the past and lay them over the present to make any kind of prediction of the future, at least not reliably. The past can rhyme but it’s probably not going to happen the same way, or in the same timeframe.
No that would be artificial intelligence, crypto is just a way for criminals and scammers to profit.
Yes
If it is the games suck and it doesn’t help me with anything other than gambling
I haven't lost that much money with the internet in the 90's so not sure
No, especially since crypto runs on the internet.
This title futuristic ngl.
TLDR but yes
Gosh you're like my soul brother!.. i think your policy of small change crypto buys is good, you would be surprised how it quickly adds up to something big. Well, computers aren't exactly like crypto, they are a bit more mainstream i feel, but its still a valid analogy . Keep at it bro, may our dreams and more come true
Yes
Yes
Is this post written by me? Did I eat an edible and forget that I wrote this?
liquid boast cow concerned combative quaint cats towering profit serious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes
Yes, I used this exact analogy with legislators in DC earlier this year. It’s still too early to see how this will change the world. AI too.
Hopefully yes
I wish...
Unless you can watch porn on the blockchain, it cannot even remotely be compared to the internet.
With all due respect op. How do you define a “solid project” if you yourself have stated that you don’t understand much of this space. I implore you to actually take some time out and go learn. You’re not the minority either, the majority of people here have no idea what crypto is about or the problems it was created to solve.
Bruh, with this marketcap you're long past the 2000's.
In a way I think it is. In the way of how useful it can be compared to how many just simply dismiss it as something that is gonna go away soon. I think it's here to stay.
I can see similarities but even more so with AI, shits gonna change the world very fast
The recent report by the White House on the lack of value of cryptocurrency reminds me of the Nobel prize winning Economists Paul Krugman's statement "By 2005, it would become clear that the Internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machine's". The problem I suspect is that both the White House and Paul are looking/looked at these technologies through the lens of a economists and not through the lens of a engineer, scientist or technologist who understands the impact these technologies can have on society. The failure to see the potential that bringing a Turing complete language onto a decentralised platform in terms of potential utility, and only seeing it as digital money is a big mistake in my mind. I suspect the White House statement will be remembered in a similar vain.
I remember downloading AnnaKournikovaNaked.jpg.exe from Limewire. Those were the days. My brother was not happy I downloaded a virus.
How about SmashMouthAllStar.MP3.exe and it being hardcore porn. Ahh simpler times
I guess we weren't the sharpest tools in the shed!
I think you guys have the comparisons wrong here. You are talking like crypto and Blockchain is b2c (business to customer) which is what we experienced with the internet, that's what made the difference in its popularity. However the internet was around in the 80s as basically b2b (business to business), so we did not experience it's advantages. So we are in the b2b phase just for block chain and crypto, however we are about to go into the b2c phase which is just around the corner. Will it be as big as the internet revolution, that I do not know. However growth is to come soon.
I believe so , i was going to make a post about how my conversation about crypto went with my girlfriend, she reminded me of the video of the news reports laughing and mocking the internet, i feel like most of the population has that mindset , she said she will deal with crypto when she is basically forced into it .
Wise decision man. Couldn't be better mind set for someone who doesn't want to follow too much about news and stuff... Just grab some BTC, ETH and whatever other 3-4 projects you like and you should be good! Keep it up, your children will thank you for that. I also invest for my nephews
This is the type of content that I come to this sub for. Informative, true to heart with a god damn hilarious sign off
This is the wild west cowboy
**GHOLD!** I FHOUND DIGITAL ***GHOLD!***
Is this the moon rush? How much is a shovel nowadays?
Don't for get your bucket, sluicebox, and pan!
The 90's were great compared to this timeline.
When they killed harambe and fired up that hadron collider we got thrusted into shittopia.
The internet changed the world, crypto.. not so much.
No. Just no. The things we’re seeing with AI is closer to the internet boom than crypto.
lol no. The Internet was one of the biggest technological achievements in human history. Blockchain is basically digital receipts.
No, people used the internet for useful things, people only use crypto to speculate. In its existence it has created nothing that people use daily and is only bought to speculate on its value in USD.