Technology

I don’t know why NFTs ever took off

• As an actual currency, it's functionally useless. Even if every retailer on the planet were to accept it, the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter

• Because of that, it's entirely just funny money. Even further, since it's entirely a virtual asset, if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it

• The environmental impacts are horrifying. This fact alone means that it should all be eradicated. Destroying the planet for Internet funny money isn't an acceptable proposition

• For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how "decentralized" it's supposed to be, it's still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency

• Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind

• It's entirely a speculative investment scam now. There's no way to decouple it from that.

I'm a fan of cryptocurrencies, and I would dearly love for the "speculative investment scam" aspect of it to be dead. It's been a massive drag on the technology's reputation for many years, preventing it from being used for all kinds of applications that would really benefit from some form of cryptocurrency integration. Unfortunately even if the "speculative investment scam" aspect dies the bad reputation will linger, so hopefully those applications will find ways to sneak it in where useful without drawing too much attention.

but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen.

One aspect might be, that the scam stories are much more popular and easier to circulate on social media than are actual usages. It's a strong online virality bias. Scams and phishing also happen a lot in fiat and cash (albeit relatively lower), but since most of it is so secret and banks really don't want to get bad media, then try to keep such things hidden.

Look at Monero (privacy coin) for example. There is no news on whales, scams etc. there, because it's private so there is no attention given to that. That makes is easier to simply use it and not get an overly negative news bias.

At the same time, cryptos were successfully used during Ukraine for quick money Donations. This was also reported in news, but it doesn't stick so long into the minds of the people as the controversial scams/ftx etc.

Finally, at least with Ethereum there is still around 10 years of development in front of it with exciting new capabilities. Until a few years from now, we'll finally have a system with scalability ans high security as well.

However, until then ethereum will grow slowly.

Also, unfortunately I think the focus of many people has shifted from p2p currency and adoption to money making and investment - which isn't too bad, but adoption still sucks and makes it less useful for now.

Fuck, let's pray it is

It mainly lost it appeal as crashes, arrests, lawsuits, and thief keep happeneding. It was shown to be scammy with scammers scamming.

And yeah the new hotness of LLMs also helped. The tech bros who use to be pushing "X but with crypto" are now looking to push "X but with AI".

Maybe people understood, that instead of freedom as advertised, crypto brings out even more oppressive forms of capitalism.

Crypto won't ever die, too many people have too much money invested in it for it to die.

But it's going nowhere. If I can't buy groceries with a bitcoin, then it's worthless. It got popular because people used it to trade drugs. I don't even think you can do that on tor anymore.

Well, the irony is hard to miss, right? Crypto was born out of this grand idea of decentralization, but then everyone just rushed over to these centralized exchanges. Kinda sounds like a death knell to me. Seems like the original spirit of crypto got lost in the rush for profits.

I do think the tech and the concept will keep evolving, and eventually, it'll morph into something new, get a new name or something. Here's hoping that when it does, people will get that it's better to trust the collective 'us' instead of just a select few. After all, these are often the same folks messing things up. But, what can you do, huh?

No, twitter just shit the bed is all and thats where the scams were primarily spread, but now that so many people have dropped twitter you don't hear about it as much.

Pretty much 1/3rd of the ads I get on Reddit, for example, are still crypto scams.

I will agree though that it lost the crypto-bro sheen, thank god, and companies stopped trying to shoehorn it into everywhere it had no use case for.

There are use cases for it but they are extremely specific and most of the time a normal database is the right tool for the job. You need to satisfy multiple conditions for a blockchain to be the right tool for the job over a normal DB.

Furthermore, even if you do satisfy the requirements and use blockchain tech, its annoying to try and market that. Just as an example, how often do you see video game companies or gambling companies or other websites touting the fact they have, I dunno, a Redis mem server on their backend as a "selling point" of their service?

No one. No one does that, no one cares. No one tries to market what database their backend uses as a way to make their product sound better, because no one gives a shit what your backend is built on top of. They care about the actual features and functionality of your product, not the tech your developers used.

So hopefully we have now entered the era where some services do use blockchain on the backend when its the right tool or the job, but they don't bother to try and market it and no one gives a shit if its MSSQL, Blockchain, Mongo, or whatever else that is used to store data.

Too many scams. Too many ads advertising companies who ended up being scams as well. The pivot to NFTs was short-lived (because they were scams). The high-profile exchanges (FTX et al) going belly up, and the their founders in jail.

Oh boy, wait until you find out about CBDC (Government's version of cryptocurrency with dystopian spin on it such as deleting your money if they don't like you.)

It’s just another kind of MLM right now. It always has been. The superbowl Larry David add was the swan song for crypto mainstream appeal.

And you are right, most of the people that were telling you to buy cryptocurrency for reasons, now are into the “prompt engineering” fad.

Por metaverse, only the really unicorn-chasing and completely clueless about technology marketing “gurus” got into it.

Nope. I use it on a weekly basis to pay for stuff on the internet. It's got its uses and the concept is sound. What you're talking about is the hype train that happens ever so often.

I know one crypto bro IRL. He acknowledges that it's all just a pyramid scheme, but he enjoys it because it's like gambling but with more strategy involved I guess.

Weak hands got shaken out, and the economy is teetering on recession. When inflation stops and interest rates fall, and quantitative easing starts back up it's gonna come roaring back. The SEC and CFTC aren't trying to kill crypto, they are just trying to decide who's jurisdiction it falls under. The crypto industry will benefit from regulation, it will get safer, and you'll feel like an idiot for asking this question instead of buying while it's cheap. Hit me up in 2025!

i think the shitcoin trend and NFT shit is over, but crypto as a technology and cryptocurrency certainly isn't. I don't see BTC, ETH, XMR dying aaanytime soon, especially the former and the latter - they're gold standard on the net already. Overengineered crypto like ETH seems to be less popular now.

Ah yes. Another entry to the list: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

Dear god, I hope so

I hate watching so many people get scammed

Well, are MLMs dead? Audible book spamming? The nigerian prince scam? Hell, mail scams are still running to this day.

As long as there's a hook, I doubt cryptomoney scams are going to be leaving any time soon. It is rare we'll see scams of the same magnitude as before, but they'll always be around in those sorts of communities. Just a matter of principle, whenever money's involved.

You could probably go back to buying pokemon cards, though. The fact that crypto's greatest investors have a vested interest in not having their cash vanish into thin air, it's best used for it's purpose-- as currency-- unless another FTX fumbles the bag.

Nah. This happens every few years, has been since 2014. Buy a GPU before they rise up and use all of our electricity again. An new SBF will crash it sometime.

I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen

Oh I don't know maybe it has something to do with Sam Bankman-Fried swindling $8 billion.

In the majority of people's eyes crypto is seen as a scam and something to avoid. The only thing crypto ever did for me was make things I actually care about more expensive.

I think it would take a lot to recover from the bad reputation it has gotten.

I think the bubble has certainly burst. COVID resulted in loads of new consumer investers, and the visibility of crypto had never been higher. Exchanges were being advertised by major celebrities on Superbowl ads!

Then the market crashed, and all those investers realised what a mistake they'd made. I don't think it's a mistake many will make twice.

It was such a bizarre time, with major governments talking about minting their own NFTs or even their own digital currencies. That all seems to have quietly gone away now, thankfully.

While the prospect of using it in everyday transactions seems pretty much dead, for some reason the crypto market cap in and of itself is very much alive. Plus it's interesting that crypto was born out of the 2008 financial crisis and people wanting more control over their assets, so if anything I would think it would be more socially relevant now than ever.

Mid-bear-cycle. It'll be back in a year or two.

I don't think it is dead, but the hype certainly seems to be over. It is important to realize that as long as the crypto value trend is strongly linked to value of other commodities, it is still being treated as an investment, rather than a currency. Increasing the places where crypto can be actually used to pay will allow for unlinking crypto from being an investment to a currency. I guess there most people are currently not interested in that as much, which I think is unfortunate.

I'm glad I never got into cryptocurrency. For all intents & purposes, it might as well be Monopoly money.

Crypto scams burnt up all their market, i.e. pretty much everyone who was going to get into the crypto bubble, did. You can tell because crypto went mainstream, buying stadiums and advertising through Matt Damon.

So when the bubble burst that time, there's no one left to start a new bubble with.