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> “We’re so early,” goes one popular crypto mantra

I'm tired of this mantra.

To me, crypto is starting to look less like the early internet, and more like the file-sharing mania of the late 90s early 00s, ie Napster, Kazaa, Limewire etc.

A very likely outcome is that crypto will continue to be around, like some of the file sharing services, but using them will be more and more irrelevant and frowned upon by most people, who prefer the ease of the legal media streaming platforms.




Isn’t that actually a success story where the community eventually converged around a single protocol that really works?


Yeah an entire generation of engineers is obsessed with this stuff, it's not going away.


> who prefer the ease of the legal media streaming platforms

checks the need for different subscriptions for different shows and looks at my own library of purchased media for shows that disappeared for reasons

Are you sure about that analogy?


Weren't those three all sued out of existence due to copyright infringement? That's very much a different reason for failure than what's going on in crypto.


Regulation is likely to have a similar impact in crypto.


I can't agree with that. Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire were determined to have been breaching copyright law and the business model was determined to be illegal. There's no parallel here.


Comparing cryptocurrency to file-sharing seems like the exact opposite of the point you're tying to make. Microsoft and many game publishers use file-sharing for updates and content distribution. Legitimate user file-sharing (via Dropbox, etc) is ubiquitous among the computer-literate. Piracy and related activities are still flourishing and still use file-sharing.




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