[afterburner]

It's worse than a lottery for some. It rewarded incorrect thinking on how the financial industry works.

Speculative spikes can happen for a lot of reasons, but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons.

[theplumber]

>> but that Bitcoin would replace all currencies (as early advocates would have had you believe) was not one of those reasons.

Bitcoin was not bought because people believed it will replace all currencies. They bought bitcoin to get rich fast and cash out BEFORE the expected crash.

[jl6]

A lot of the early enthusiasm absolutely was from cypherpunk futurists who genuinely did want/expect it to make traditional finance obsolete.

[JeremyNT]

This is pretty amusing to me, as somebody who did buy into the early hype - now over a decade ago. I actually got really excited about bitcoin, even mining way back when. It seemed like the possibilities were endless!

That excitement disappeared pretty quickly once I came to the (in hindsight, obvious) realization that its only valid use cases were illicit transactions and speculation. I donated whatever I had and moved well away from it (certainly a poor financial decision in retrospect, but I still believe it was the right choice personally).

The shine has been off BTC for a long time. Even though some (if not most) of the early adopters were as you describe, I suspect that almost all of the more recent comers have only joined the party for the get rich quick scheme.

[mrb]

«its only valid use cases were illicit transactions and speculation»

Crytocurrencies have many valid use cases. For one, they are the only system that allows sending money truly anywhere in the world, to anyone, anytime, and near-instantly. No other system accomplishes this. My most poignant example was being able to send money to a then-homeless unbanked friend, on a sunday, and he even converted it to cash in hands within 1 hour as he was near a bitcoin ATM. In such an emergency, no other system would have worked. We briefly considered Western Union but he was banned from them due to previous financial issues. So the permissionless aspect of Bitcoin was another benefit.

It's a little puzzling that you were an early adopter, and yet did not appreciate the qualities. Perhaps you think crypto isn't useful to you personally, therefore it has no use cases for anyone else.

[throw10920]

> its only valid use cases were illicit transactions

What makes this argument different than the "I don't have anything to hide" anti-privacy argument?

[undreren]

The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity.

Crypto currency is a wasteful, destructive, expensive and innefficient technology that has few benefits except facilitating crimes like tax evasion, money laundering, financing terrorism and purchasing drugs.

[throw10920]

> The “only valid use cases” of privacy is not to hide illegal or criminal activity.

What are the others, in the specific context of this conversation (which is privacy from the government, not from random other citizens)?

[mrb]

As an early Bitcoin adopter, I wouldn't say so. I have never seen anyone among the people I knew in the Bitcoin community in the last 12 years who believed it would "make tradfi obsolete".

For example, I expect Bitcoin to likely remain an alternative system, used only for a minority of transactions. And this view didn't conflict with my desire to buy in when I did.

[sizzle]

Wow 12 years in the game, did you make F U money?

[theplumber]

>> A lot of the early enthusiasm

These people were minning not buying bitcoin.

[afterburner]

Yeah, that was happening too, but I was getting an earful of terrible economic viewpoints in the earlier days.

I guess they could have all been lying to puff up their investments, but then I guess I'm left with thinking those particular people were stupid and liars.

[JauntTrooper]

I remember hearing similar economic arguments in 2006 - 2012 about gold and silver.

I often wonder if those same people moved into Bitcoin.

[spiralx]

When I saw the announcement of the release of the Bitcoin 0.3 client back on Slashdot in 2010, both the whitepaper and the comments (and who was making them) cemented my view as it being more of the "an-cap gold-buggery" that the site was rampant with. Basically the same people making the same arguments that they had over the Liberty Dollar a year previously following the arrest of its founders, and before that any time money came up as a topic i.e. fiat bad, gold good - which carried straight into fiat bad, gold good, Bitcoin best of all...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...

[MrMan]

those people (where I was) also loudly predicted (and lost real-money bets) on the trading floor that Obama was definitely coming for our guns and that mass shootings were all false flag operations to justify seizure of personal firearms. The Venn diagram of gun nuts and gold bug - hard money types at many places I frequent was basically a circle.

[adastra22]

Yes, they did.