Hacker News Reader

This is like Bitcoin.

It's objectively a very bad crypto. It's the prototype and everything it does there is a coin that does it 100x better now.

But man, Bitcoin, that name has serious influence and staying power. It's a testament to the power of branding and being the first mover.

View on HN

Bitcoin inherently relies on buy-in for its value. It's a shared fiction that becomes real because we share it. In that regard it's similar to countries. I literally cannot switch from Bitcoin to another coin and get the same value unless we collectively do it. It's a inherent property of its usage as a currency. I can switch from ChatGPT to Claude though without anyone else doing so and I get the same value. In fact, if Claude is superior I might actually get more value than if everyone switched because I now have a leg up on everyone else.

> It's a shared fiction that becomes real because we share it.

It's called the network effect, I believe.

There is a lot of truth to that.

Which means OpenAI really dropped the ball calling their first big success "ChatGPT". "Chat" was good, but three random (from the user's standpoint) letters? Ugh.

Whereas "Bitcoin" is practically Platonic. Branding platinum.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com