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Comment by joshuaunitus | Hacker News Reader

I don't see it exactly like this. I see where you're coming from, but some of us who buy cryptocurrency believe in the technology and back only projects that we believe will have a future. It is still speculative on an investment level, but I also use this technology and hope to build on these protocols in the future. The space has a lot of growing up to do and I hate the "wen lambo" mentality because that is not what this is about for me and I believe it deviates attention away from technology which is what is actually important here. Not every blockchain project will succeed, many will fail

Your analogy is flawed though, Coinbase wouldn't be selling pickaxes they are simply providing a means of digital asset exchange as well as selling the digital assets directly. Mining hardware would be the pickaxe.

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That might be the most literal interpretation of "selling pickaxes during a gold rush" I've ever seen. The analogy is absolutely fine.

Still disagree, the pickaxe would be a tool to harvest the good. Coinbase sells the good directly and provides a exchange to trade with others.

The idea behind the phrase is that when a ton of speculation money is flooding in to a market, you should make money by proving services to the speculators, not by speculating yourself.

Creating mining hardware is actually more speculative than an exchange, because you're picking winners and losers based on what your hardware can accelerate.

Selling pickaxes to miners has been used to describe platforms like CDNs or game engines like Unity. The fact that there is something called a miner in this context is a red herring.

A metaphorical one, I mean.

I guess they could be the pickaxe salesman depending on how you frame it, but that's just who they are. I guess I'm bringing in actual PoW mining which the analogy has nothing to do with.

I don't think they are speculating though, they are simply doing what they do and have always done. Provide a means of exchange from national currency to digital assets. It is up to the people who build around these protocols to create more ways of utilizing these digital assets through services.

It's hard to say what's going on in this market but I don't think it's a bust. A lot of money went in really fast and then huge sell offs from Mt Gox recovered bitcoins. Bitcoin is still somewhat interconnected in price with most altcoins because of pairings, and any major selloffs seem to drag the whole market down. I think it will mature in time and more people will actually utilize cryptocurrency and not just buy it for speculative reasons. Value will be established over the next few years as practical use grows.

Serious question: what is it that you think has prevented practical use and why will that not continue to hinder future practical use?

Well it is still very young and business innovation moves slow and cautious. Also regulators have not fully decided on a few issues that are very important regarding digital assets. I believe there is a lot going on behind the scenes of a lot of major companies right now though. Mostly in terms of hiring and r&d. Even Facebook is hiring blockchain engineers. I think this will all develop in time.

No. Bitmain is selling the pickaxes. Coinbase is the tent where the gold miners take their nuggets to sell.

"No."?

Like it or not, it's a phrase that dates back to Mark Twain that has far more baggage than some strict analogy made up on the spot. For instance Chris Dixon here[1] suggests that Heroku and Akamai sell pickaxes, not dynamite as a service or scalable ore transport systems.

All I'm doing is defending the GP's use of the phrase, which was absolutely valid. Perhaps you'd have used a different analogy, but it doesn't invalidate his. No quantity of curt denials you care to throw my direction will change this.

[1] http://cdixon.org/2011/02/05/selling-pickaxes-during-a-gold-...

My lord, it’s an expression, it’s not literal. Pickaxes in this metaphor are any and all tools in between an individual and their target. You would be totally right to say banks are selling pickaxes in the current financial system.

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