[wruza]

They make a pretty common point. Nobody around e.g. me has an ability to have even a glimpse of understanding what eth/crypto is except for speculation and low-tech fraud, and then for me "sharing value like art and album via crypto as a futuristic mean to share digital values" is bird-gibberish nonsense. General population will never be too smart on average to benefit from this "whatever".

[deeeeplearning]

The same is true about the majority of the workings of the internet, or the electrical engineering that built their phones or dozens of other things people use everyday without understanding. How is that relevant in this case?

[lifeformed]

Because laypeople know what benefit the internet or their phones provide. No layperson knows what the benefit of cryptocurrency is.

[damon_c]

> laypeople know what benefit the internet

Yes that's true now, but what about in 1997? That's what year it is in Ethereum now.

[kgilpin]

Well to be fair, transferring information instantly was pretty great even in 1997.

[roolah]

Well to be fair, transferring money instantly would be pretty great for 2020.

I mean, the only way I can pay rent to my landlord in 2020 is by having my bank send them a physical check that takes 5d to arrive (during which time no-one gets any interest), or then use multiple Zelle payments since I have an artificial cap that is lower than my rent.

[Sargos]

You'd think so but that wasn't a popular idea in 1997. Most people really didn't see much of a use for the internet.

[deeeeplearning]

Hell laypeople until the mid 2000s still didn't grasp what the Internet could be other than it was a stock market bonanza. Sounds familiar...

[wruza]

But crypto proponents describe use cases, not inner workings. Use cases for telecom were obvious much earlier that the internet itself, thousands of years of lost messages and messengers.

[literallycancer]

So uh, this remote sound transmitter seems like it might find niche use in the classical music orchestra space, but we don't see the talk-to-friends use case working out. Who would want to talk to their friends that often?