> Cryptocurrencies became popular due to distrust in the economy, but they did not prove to be a viable replacement.
I mean BTC or ETH were a lot better place to keep your capital in the last X years (where you can pick any X since the GFC/Bitcoins inception) than keeping it in dollars or euros.
Of course some people had access to a) the free money that the US gov has been printing over that same period, b) connections to early investment opportunities , and so may have had better places to put their capital.
But for regular people who didn't have the connections to invest in AirBnB during the earlier rounds and put their capital to work (doing all the good work that AirBnB has done) it seems to have actually worked pretty well if you distrusted the economy. I'll leave it up you to work the ratio of how many people exist in those two groups.
Also this comment seems to assume that it's over and everyone trusts the economy now, and that bitcoin & crypto have failed in that use case. Doesn't seem that way to me.
You can certainly criticize the actions of VCs in the space, and a bunch of other groups, and I wouldn't disagree, but believe it or not there is people in crypto who still have the original principals, and what is more is there is a constant influx of new people with those same principals.
this about sums up the level of depth and knowledge on the crypto industry that HN crypto skeptics are at:
Those live streams are not run by Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey or Cathie Wood. They are low effort scams aiming at getting people to send BTC, its just recycled video content with text put beside it.
I mean BTC or ETH were a lot better place to keep your capital in the last X years (where you can pick any X since the GFC/Bitcoins inception) than keeping it in dollars or euros.
Of course some people had access to a) the free money that the US gov has been printing over that same period, b) connections to early investment opportunities , and so may have had better places to put their capital.
But for regular people who didn't have the connections to invest in AirBnB during the earlier rounds and put their capital to work (doing all the good work that AirBnB has done) it seems to have actually worked pretty well if you distrusted the economy. I'll leave it up you to work the ratio of how many people exist in those two groups.
Also this comment seems to assume that it's over and everyone trusts the economy now, and that bitcoin & crypto have failed in that use case. Doesn't seem that way to me.
You can certainly criticize the actions of VCs in the space, and a bunch of other groups, and I wouldn't disagree, but believe it or not there is people in crypto who still have the original principals, and what is more is there is a constant influx of new people with those same principals.