The world is full of people who’ve outright dismissed the crypto ecosystem as some sort of “scam” or “ponzi” for many years now and so many people still continue to do this. I find this to be incredibly short-sighted given the cost of being dismissive of new technologies is immense and leads to many lost opportunities.
As I note in my tweet above, there are many people who are outright dismissing revolutionary technologies like rollups simply because they are heavily associated with Ethereum. Yep, that’s right - people who don’t like Ethereum will automatically think anything associated with it is rubbish. On the other hand, if rollups were associated with their favorite chain, they’d be all over them as if they were the best thing since sliced bread. This is obviously a really poor way to go about learning new things in this ecosystem and being ignorant to something just because the idea came from a different “tribe” is how you miss out on massive opportunities (both financially and socially). Think about all of the people who dismissed Bitcoin and Ethereum in the first few years of the projects lives - that has cost those people potentially tens of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, one thing that many humans will inherently do is dismiss an idea simply because it came from a different “camp” or “tribe” to the one they are apart of. We see this all the time in the political arena and it’s unfortunately a major driver of the insane amount of division that we see in the world today. Of course, in crypto, the “party lines” for many people are simply what coins/tokens they are holding at a given point in time. This is why you’ll typically see many “holy wars” play out on places like crypto twitter with everyone fighting over which blockchain is the “best” and why it’s going to “win” because of x, y and z feature. These fights/debates are rarely constructive and usually devolve into people just insulting each-other or blocking one another for having a different view.
In saying all of this, not every new technology is going to be long-term successful nor is it going to be interesting - the onus is really on the individual to just do the research and come to their own conclusions. Though in the crypto ecosystem this can be quite difficult because the industry seems to believe that just because a token with a project went up in value, it means that the project has product/market fit and is going to succeed long-term. The astute investors among you will be well aware by now that this is almost never the case and a rising token price can be caused by any number of factors - usually leading to a false sense of security for users, investors and the team/builders themselves.
In the end, game-changing technologies can only be ignored for so long before they eventually become so ubiquitous within society that even the most ardent critics are forced into using them (unless they want to go live with the Amish). Of course, critics will always try their best to stall the inevitably of technology (automakers and oil barons were able to stall electric car progress for a century) but eventually technology breaks through and goes on to eat the world (Tesla now has a market cap of $1.2 trillion - largest of any automaker). I believe that the same thing is happening with all the crypto use-cases that people dismiss today (especially NFTs) and it’s going to be quite fun to watch those people capitulate as the crypto industry continues to eat the world.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.
Dear Anthony,
Your article is cruel, made me think again on so many levels - :-)
Like:
- is it a feeling of wanting to belong to something that drives people into tribalism?
- Why does society need a joint enemy to focus individual energy?
- is the average IQ and EQ on CT lower then we have thought?
- Why is destructivism so much more popular then construcivism?
- Since when is etiquette less important only because you do not sit face to face?
- I always thought a "piece" is a weapon or a genital - since your articles I know better ;-)
Keep going.
A fan
Jan