Yes, there's also something about techies that get older that makes them more negative? Thinking of comments on some other websites that have been around longer, such as slashdot.
You can’t fault folks for being “negative” when Armstrong’s narrative did in fact prove to be very wrong. He’s saying in 5-10 years Amazon isn’t going to suffer paying CC interchange fees, and yet here we are and that hasn’t changed.
Folks are talking about mainstream acceptance of BTC, and that means holding 1-3% of the balance sheet in BTC and an eccentric billionaire with an electric car company accepting them for payment.
To be sure, the underlying crypto value has blown up, but it’s integration into society has fallen well short of Armstrong’s predictions in 2012.
More mature/older tech individuals have seen this cycle play out before, and so they’re just not as quick to embrace the unchecked enthusiasm and optimism.
I’m mean credit card fees are still too high but I guess it’s harder to build a payment system? With square on iPads though it seems like an alternate could exist even though everyone loves Venmo...
Not negative, just more realistic as experience builds up and patterns emerge. It doesn't mean that people can judge everything perfectly, but it is backed up by the fact that the vast majority of new crazy projects don't end up actually doing anything.
Yes, but Bitcoin didn't fit a "pattern". I saw it was going to likely change the world back then, if governments didn't ban together to suppress it (which could have easily happened). And I was > 30 when I got into Bitcoin back in early 2011. I started a crypto business that fizzled out, and then had to sell most of my Bitcoins for medical bills 5 years later (sold the rest for med bills last year - just another way that medical care destroys people's future in this country, also had to liquidate a good part of my retirement).
But yeah, it didn't pan out as a payment processor, which is what I was hoping for. But mathematically, it was easy to predict that if things caught on, Bitcoin would go over $10,000. It killed me to sell mine 5 years ago.
> just another way that medical care destroys people's future in this country, also had to liquidate a good part of my retirement).
Is it right to blame medical bills rather than blame bad luck for your misfortune and/or lack of a job or income to buy healthcare to cover those medical bills? (This is general w/o knowing your specifics).
> I started a crypto business that fizzled out
Example if your crypto business (or any business you started) didn't fizzle out you would not have to have sold your bitcoins possible. Also (and this is the larger point) if you had taken a traditional and less risky job at a large company (tech or otherwise) most cases the healthcare provided would have covered (once again generally w/o knowing your specifics) your healthcare bills.
> s it right to blame medical bills rather than blame bad luck for your misfortune and/or lack of a job or income to buy healthcare to cover those medical bills
I had health insurance and a job. I had just transitioned from a job paying ~$30,000 to one paying $100,000. Perhaps my only mistake was waiting 10 years to move to a software engineering job despite hobby programming my entire life, and loving programming (my prior industry originally paid ~$50,000/year but automation, globalization, and consolidation had whitled the average salary down over 10 years)[1].
And you're stunningly naive to think that having health insurance and a job will save you from financial catastrophe if you face severe illness (and I was within 20 pounds of my ideal weight and in relatively good shape). Perhaps you can come out OK (not great) if you have a large nest egg and really good long-term care insurance (I didn't, having recently worked a $30,000/yr job with a family). If you have those, congrats: you're in the top ~5% of Americans.
But sure, let's blame "bad luck" instead of an obviously malfunctioning system. It's not necessarily capitalism. If you're not poor, it appears that medical costs are reasonable in countries with a functioning capitalist medical system (like India, Thailand, Mexico, etc). It's our weird hybrid system, where there's no competition and no downward price pressure on providers. And hospitals continue to consolidate, so prices will only go up.
> Also (and this is the larger point) if you had taken a traditional and less risky job at a large company (tech or otherwise)
You know nothing of my situation. Building that company, and programming that service (which I did while holding down a job in my old industry), was the exact thing that allowed me to flee a dying $30,000/year profession and transition into a bigcorp as a software developer making $100,000/year, a little over 1 year before my first major illness. I had tried to transition into tech once before, and was turned down for lack of experience (and to be fair, it was also during the great recession).
1. And I can tell you're the kind of person who would interject here, "maybe you were just a bad worker, and that's why your salary went down instead of up". Well, my salary has gone the other way (up, significantly) since I entered tech, even as I've struggled with significant chronic health issues. So let me stop you there.
> Yes, there's also something about techies that get older that makes them more negative?
Most ideas do not work and even most that work don't work as well (in terms of making money) as coinbase has. The only reason we are discussing what Brian was looking for in 2012 is because he is an outlier. Otherwise what he said back then would be of little interest.
