It has been fascinating to watch the corporate cryptocurrency world try so hard to project the fringe, edgy, anti-corporate nature of cryptocurrencies that attracted so many in the first place.
All of these corporate cryptocurrency pushes have strong "How do you do, fellow children?" vibes.
But the funny part is a lot of the crypto people are eating it right up, mostly because they have to accept any and all big business investment in the crypto space to further pump their own assets.
It more mirrors the "FOQNEs" or "Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities" from Snow Crash. Sovereign individuals that hold massive bitcoin stores can transact to anyone because they can afford the fees. Normies that can't will be beholden to these large corporate interest. Transferring money to a business or person will happen in a database in Coinbase or other exchange, much like now with a bank. Settlement will happen between banks and organizations they've partnered with. For the common person the interface will be the same. Settlement between organizations will change.
I'd like to say that the fees are an artifact of the poor scaling of both Bitcoin and Ethereum, but proof of work schemes are by design horrendously inefficient and suggested alternatives like proof of stake have yet to be proven in practice.
> the fringe, edgy, anti-corporate nature of cryptocurrencies that attracted so many in the first place.
That was the first wave. This much bigger wave is people like your uncle who's not tech savvy but bought $100 in Bitcoin because they heard you could get rich from it. The ideological component is just window dressing (eventually a lot of ideology becomes window dressing so that's not too unusual).
> That was the first wave. This much bigger wave is people like your uncle who's not tech savvy but bought $100 in Bitcoin because they heard you could get rich from it
Random uncles putting $100 into BitCoin isn't driving the market.
Cryptocurrency is very corporate now, including a mix of shady corporations who love playing in this unregulated space.
The average joe is just along for the ride, but they're being pitched the idea that decentralization is democratization. Meanwhile, there's nothing stopping a decentralized cryptocurrency from being owned by very centralized players. It is, after all, tradable by anyone.
All of these corporate cryptocurrency pushes have strong "How do you do, fellow children?" vibes.
But the funny part is a lot of the crypto people are eating it right up, mostly because they have to accept any and all big business investment in the crypto space to further pump their own assets.