Another one: coins in general would have been far better off without this current pricing bubble.
It was far more useful, and far more frequently used, even years before the dot.com bubble, than cryptocurrencies are now.
If you took away cryptocurrencies right now, impact on me and almost everyone I know would be basically nil. If you had taken away the internet in 1996, I and many other people would have complained.
Look, I was there from the mid 90s. I'm curious about the various viewpoints, as well as a more objective, less biased summary which attempts to ignore the nostalgia factor.
> Initially for information (e-mail, ftp, finger, usenet, gopher, WWW), later for commerce.
Thanks, OK, those are examples I can work with.
E-mail -> Still exists. Was it better back in those days? We had spam back then, right? Although not so much in the earlier parts of the 90s. FWIW, I did not have access to IMAP server. I had to use POP3 and webmail instead. Nor was IMAPS or POP3S used. Man, did POP3 and webmail sucked (until Gmail came along).
FTP -> Barely used anymore. Perhaps only in "the scene", though I know in the end of '00s that already happened via autoxfer bots. We got better, more secure means of data transfer though.
Usenet -> Still exists. Spammers largely moved on. Now and then two worlds: text and binary. One grew a lot, but a lot of smaller providers didn't grow with the insane data storage amounts. So a few big players nowadays. Same with ASPs (aka ISPs) in general for that matter. It has its + and - I guess.
Finger -> Replaced by blogs I guess?
Gopher -> Barely used anymore. Replaced by WWW. I didn't experience Gopher. My first browser was Netscape 2 <3
What about the more server/UNIX world? Was that better back then as well, with these large UNIX molochs like NeXT, SGI, HP, SUN, IBM, SCO?
Arguably though, the widespread adoption of TLS/SSL has made us more secure now than in the 90s. Back in those days, we did not have technologies like Tor.
> If you took away cryptocurrencies right now, impact on me and almost everyone I know would be basically nil. If you had taken away the internet in 1996, I and many other people would have complained.
I wasn't looking at it from that angle, I assumed the OP was comparing the internet of then with the internet of now; not comparing cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is just a pleasure to observe for me, like rats running around in a cage. A bunch of NTs getting manipulated by a small number of psychopaths, that's how I'd sum cryptocurrency up.
The prices are so easily manipulated on unregulated exchanges, coupled with other scams, means the nominal price can be moved with a lot less capital.
In 1995, 40MM people had access to the internet.
The internet was a lot more established at the time of the Dotcom boom.
I agree, most of the projects in the crypto space are just overvalued vaporware (see, very recently, TRON). But some are legit.
I'll give you Yahoo. While their current demise may have been related to wounds from the dot com bubble, I think they could have been fine had they not overexerted themselves trying to return to glory. I can't blame them for trying, though.
What is actually needed to understand the situation today is a ringside seat to one of the devoted believers that has shut down their whole life and decided to gamble away their girlfriend's inheritance on fake coins. The way it takes over a person's life is a bit like crystal meth addiction combined with joining a religious cult. For these people there is no way out, their fear and greed locks them in to going all of the way. These people are not going to make any money, just lose every penny they can borrow.
With dot com there was not this low barrier to entry for essentially gambling, people did not cut themselves off from society in their little pyramid scheme cult. I find bitcoin really horrible and I am glad to have studied it close hand. I do google the coin names and it seems that everything considered a hot coin by those dedicated to the cult is blatantly a scam.
I think there is good money to be made in bitcoin for me just by documenting the fall of an individual and those around due to the obsession. Storytelling matters and I have a lot of very good material coming out of this bitcoin thing and the crazy things people say. All I have to do is keep good notes and the story should write itself very nicely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_odds_betting_terminal
I liked this comment in the original article, which is far too flippant for HN but sums up how nonsensical everything bitcoin is to me:
if this article wants to be taken seriously it needs to have a header image of some real, metal-stamped bitcoins with the logo embossed on them, all round and shiny and gleaming. Preferably it would also show two cupped hands with the bitcoins spilling out of them. Otherwise I don't even know what we're doing here.
To be fair though, I thought more people would start cashing out before now. I suspect the vast majority of Bitcoins are held by a very small number of people and pretty much all activity in the market is happening on the far fringes right now.