Coinbase S-1

The lack of vision panned out. Bitcoin is not a good currency, it is not bringing us into a decentralized land of milk and honey, it is environmentally ruinous, and all that it has accomplished is creating yet another financial gambling market. Broadly speaking, we already have enough of those. And I guess you can still use it to buy drugs. (Although, with $10 transaction fees, probably not. The drug folks would kindly prefer it if this whole bitcoin mania could blow over, and people could go back to gambling in Vegas, or on out-of-the-money GME calls, or whatever, so they could do their business in peace.)

Of the bright predictions of the future made in 2012 about it, the only relevant one that came to fruition by 2021 is 'Many people speculating on bitcoin made a lot of money.'

Of the dour predictions of the future made in 2012 about it, only the ones I listed came true.

This is an inevitable result of deflationary currency.

It's already the leader by a long shot on network effects, stakeholders would be insane to squander that by letting other projects beat it technologically.

Obviously it can't move as fast as a smaller project (just like a large co vs a startup) but it will absolutely die if it doesn't move at all.

I view Bitcoin a lot like a company. Right now network security is paid for by inflation (issuing new coins), similar to a startup operating with VC money.

At the very least bitcoin must increase transaction volume so it can increase fee revenue without ridiculous individual transaction fees.

Except we aren't normies, a lot of us may have non CS backgrounds, but we have the World's best cryptographers, and some of us with some relevant tech backgrounds, particularly found in the Anarcho-Capitalist/Crypto-Anarchy/Cypherpunk crowds from the early days, also grew up n the internet. I learned how to solder from hacking and modding playstation, gamecube, and Dreamcast consoles and sold ripped copies of those games to fund my first startup in HS in fact. My friends online hacked DirecTV for fun on their time off and introduced me to what zero days were when I was in the 8th grade!

I was browsing newsgroups and IRC since the early 2000s and spoke to software engineers at many mega corps, and even met a few who worked in the auto industry in my early teens at meetups or drifting events.

I honestly think it's because we ushered in a paradigm shift that makes them question if they wasted their time/life entirely and we are incredibly vocal about that, not because we want to brag (most times) but because we want you to apply your Human capital and skill set to this movement as we need so much more infrastructure to make it become what we all think it can become as its still possible to be incredibly rewarded for doing so.

But many, especially here, have these delusions think they were meant to be Musk, Chamath, or Dorsey if they kept pluging away as a lowly foot soldier on a H1 visa at a FAANG: it was just a matter of time until their unicorn idea let them get to that table. It's really just sad to me, but I saw it with my own eyes so many times I cannot deny it. Hell, Chamath has even said in his recent podcast what he did is entirely unobtainable anymore, which is why he works in the spaces he does.

It's really sad, Bitcoiners as a whole are generally collaborative, and super generous people with their time and crypto (we gave so much away!) but all we ever get from the FAANG types is jealousy, scorn and resentfulness; we may be brash in our demeanor and are often very anti-Silicon Valley (even for those of us with roots there) but that is just our culture. A lot of us were channers, too. I heard it several times before I joined and posted on BTF in fact.