[kmacdough]

There's a huge difference being "commonly used for" and "is a". The vast majority of emails and phone calls are spam. But it would be naive to call either of them - particularly email - fundamentally spam services.

Just because people leverage the hype & mostly unregulated nature of most crypto, doesn't make it innately a ponzi scheme. Yes it's a mess. Yes it needs better regulation. Yes, a large number of "use-cases" are better served by existing solutions.

But this is mostly because we're still very early in a slow-burning hype-cycle. There are some fundamentally unique services supplied by (some) currencies, like Ethereum smart contracts (e.g. de-centralized escrow), that enable fundamentally new and useful interactions. It is precisely these features which give (some) currencies innate value beyond speculation. I personally plan on waiting for the hype cycle to shake out a bit longer before I get too involved.

[mrbombastic]

It has been 14 years since the bitcoin white paper, how long will we be in the early stages of crypto?

On unique use cases, maybe but I am convinced the vast majority of crypto usage today falls in 2 camps

1) those speculating to make a quick buck

2) believers who want crypto to work

Both of these camps are working against mass adoption.

1) because for a speculative investment to be successful it must go up, and who wants to spend a currency they think will go up? Remember that guy who bought pizza with his bitcoin? What an idiot right, he traded currency for food?!?

2) the believers hold decentralization as above all else and see crypto as much a political tool as a product, they will sacrifice efficiency and convenience for this, the majority of people in the world won’t.

[TakeBlaster16]

I said the same thing in 1983: it's been 14 years since ARPANET, how long will we be in the early stages of the internet? It took 50 years of hard work before the day came when you could order a burrito from your couch. Sometimes change takes a generation or two. Be patient.

[mrbombastic]

I wasn’t around then but my impression is that at that point in time basically no one saw the internet coming maybe aside from a few geeks. Utility came piecemeal and eventually the private sector took notice that there was money to be made and something big was here. Today everyone and their mother want to tell me how crypto will revolutionize everything and I just need to wait for it to actually be usable for anything that I care about. It seems very backwards to me. Why is there so much evangelizing and so little product I can actually use?