This whole conversation reminds me of when AOL provided a link to the World Wide Web for their subscribers. It was the first time that "browsers" - aka, people who browse, but do not produce content themselves - were allowed onto the web in large numbers. It instantly flipped the entire web from a place where creative people built shit and shared it with each other, to an enormous horde of people consuming/copying/commenting on your stuff. Which was useless. These people were using the Web like TV, rather than the hot rod auto shop that it was. What the fuck do I care what some non-creator from Poughkeepsie thinks of my work? What have THEY done? Bitcoin, et al, seem to be in a similar place: A great tech idea was just about to hit its stride and become something much bigger and more powerful... and then the looky-lous came in, and have artificially skewed the idea/product/technology. From someone who has lived through this change four times: It ain't coming back. It is now the property of the speculators. They are there, they are in, and you cannot eject them. They are now a fact of the market, and just need to be endured and understood. (Incidentally, this is why I don't play PubG, a game I know I would love. It is over-populated with people who are REALLY GOOD, and snipe any newcomers constantly, until it is no fun. This creates an isolated cadre of the "elite" who play it until the company can no longer sustain the server costs, and goes out of business or sells off to someone else, because they can't get new users to play.)
No, not like that. The discussion is not "you guys are polluting my internetz with your triviality" it's "Just because you can buy a GSXR does not mean you should see how fast you can take the Angeles Crest." Or worse, "just because you can walk through a dark alley with fistfuls of cash doesn't mean you should." OftenBen's argument is "people are stupid, let them eat shit." My argument is that "protections exist for stupid people and a lot of them are going to get hurt." It's not far from this: Really, though, that's a subsection of a larger discussion about where the "top" would be, if we could try and figure out the top. I don't think we can. In the meantime though there's now real money piling in which increases the target richness in the ecosystem. The statement that sent OB down the hate spiral: They don't understand the Internet either. You know that, I know that, we all know that. But "the Internet" has a lot more protections and familiarity than cryptocurrency does. I transferred 50 ETH yesterday. That used to be cute. That used to be, like, $35. You copy-paste a number like 0xC2D7CF95645D33006175B78989035C7c9061d3F9 And you copy paste a number like 3a1076bf45ab87712ad64ccb3b10217737f7faacbf2872e88fdd9a537d8fe266 And you hit go And you hope to shit it's right And in 30 seconds or so the money goes from one place to another. $35! Super-awesome! 30 seconds! Future of the Internet! Except it's not $35, it's a goddamn Mercedes E-class that you could lose because of a typo and you can cry to whoever you want, the blockchain don't care. And right now we're all fuckin' around trading in exchanges and maybe that's the future but the kind of naked risk you're exposed to with this shit is something we haven't seen since we chased the brigands off the turnpike.People think they understand the Internet. My beef is they have no interest in understanding crypto, but they're all eager to buy some.