Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Terr_ 4126 days ago
Yeah, "killer app" means a powerful application of technology, not the technology itself. The emphasis is that cool-technology is not enough, you need to get work (or play) out of it.

A warp-drive is just a technology, but "colonizing the galaxy" is the application which will make people really use it.

1 comments

The thing is, the regular payments system (plastic cards, Dollars, Euros, and other national currencies) already works very well for the vast majority of people. If you're a merchant, then you should certainly think about being able to accept payments in Bitcoin, but as a consumer I'm having difficulty thinking of an instance where I've ever said to myself 'I need some Bitcoin...'. If I was into drugs it would be convenient, I guess, but hte size of the illegal drug market :: regular commerce is pretty small, and I'd imagine drugs about the largest illegal consumer market by a long way. Other contraband markets involve much higher risk factors and are correspondingly smaller.