[Passthepeas]

People should read "The Internet of Money" by Andreas Antonopolous, in it he describes how much of the criticisms levied against crypto are similar to criticism levied against the internet in the early days. Many of the internets early adopters were actual criminals, and its detractors talked about how it "couldn't scale", was bad for the environment, etc. What sort erroneous conclusion might you have drawn during the tech bubble at the turn of the century? Similar criticism were pushed on the automobile, the airplane, and even electricity.

It might not seem like now, but we are still in the early days of crpytocurrency, being this overly hung up on the current state of things is missing the forest for the trees.

[zzzeek]

> Many of the internets early adopters were actual criminals

the early adopters were college students and professors since that's where it was available. as far as "criminals" it would have only been those pesky "hackers" who were mostly acting from curiosity. there wasnt any big opportunity for financial fraud on the "internet" because there was no commerce on the internet. the commercialization had to happen first and that required massive buy-in long before criminals could have any fertile ground to operate upon.

> and its detractors talked about how it "couldn't scale",

ive never seen such a thing, in the early 90s most of us didnt even have terms like that queued up

> was bad for the environment,

never heard of this

[esja]

I was an early adopter and I don’t recall anyone saying the internet was bad for the environment, or that it couldn’t scale. Quite the opposite actually! And there was very little fraud or criminality - most new applications and ideas were genuinely innovative and immediately and obviously beneficial. Yea the financial hype took over in the late nineties but the fundamentals were always sound and the potential was obvious. And over time that potential grew, it didn’t shrink like it has for cryptocurrency.

[doomroot]

Is a sovereign nation adopting bitcoin as a payment method an example of Bitcoin’s shrinking potential?

[esja]

Actually, yes. It's had almost 13 years to prove itself as a store of value, medium of exchange, and/or unit of account. It has failed to do that in any functioning economy because despite all the hype, it's remained worse than what we already have.

The fact that after all this time proponents are celebrating it being made legal tender in a tiny dysfunctional country is a very good sign of how the horizons have narrowed. After 13 years of the web no arguments about "potential" were even needed - the evidence was embedded in all our lives.