100% agree. Been in crypto for 12 years. I’ve held this view for the last 7 years. So much delusion in the space. So much “technological orgasms” with no grounding in real world business dynamics and economics.
Precisely. I follow because there is some interesting technical work being done. There is a lot being built but even after tons of time, effort, and resources (at least 10s of billions of dollars) the only thing that ever comes out of this work is another incredibly dense and nearly impossible to use "technological orgasm" with an extremely thin use case utilized only by (seemingly) the team that built it and a minuscule circle of hardcore enthusiasts.
MetaMask is by far the most popular wallet used for all things Ethereum and Web3. They touted "30 million" MAUs[0] during the peak (3/22) of the last crypto craze/bubble. Let's put that in perspective - there are an estimated 5.3 billion people on the internet. 30 million MAUs represents 0.06% of worldwide internet users. Facebook (which has been in rapid decline) has at least 2.6 billion MAUs. One social media platform vs an entire ecosystem (MetaMask can easily be characterized as the official onramp to Web3). Literally a half of a half of one percent of the TAM (internet users).
Want a (somehow) even bleaker picture? According to DappRadar the top 10 most popular Dapps[0] COMBINED have a lifetime total of 888k wallets (all numbers rounded up) that have ever interacted with the Dapp in any capacity. That's 0.00167% of worldwide internet users and I'm sure the MAUs for these Dapps are even more pathetic. Additionally, it's widely known that wallet != user (many users use multiple wallets and addresses). Looking at these Dapps none of them have any utility other than "DeFi" (swapping tokens around), play to earn games, and straight up gambling. To look at it another way, an absolute best case (impossible) scenario for MAUs of these apps worldwide is roughly the equivalent of the entire population of a small US city. Have you heard of Lee's Summit, Missouri (to pick one)? Yeah me neither and the same could be said for these Dapps.
All of the building in the crypto ecosystem is by crypto zealots for crypto zealots which the MetaMask and Dapp numbers show is an absurdly tiny (so small you can barely wrap your head around it) population. Crypto (other than gambling on exchanges) is an extremely obscure fringe religion.
