> If someone has a problem that crypto is actually a good fit for -- an application that would legitimately deliver value for customers, insuring medical tourism perhaps -- a lot of people will dismiss it just because they assume crypto=scam.
If there's a great application that solves an important problem using crypto then I imagine most people would focus on the problem and not the fact that crypto is used to solve it; they'd probably even gloss over how the application works.
Fair point, however I think the argument ultimately still holds. If customers or regulators learn that the application is crypto-powered under the hood, they'll be turned off. And it might be that the crypto part can't be stuffed under the hood.
It's a frustrating situation for someone like me who enjoys geeking out about designs for alternative institutions. I see many ways our institutions could be better-designed -- better aligned incentives making higher ed way cheaper & more effective, stuff like that -- and simultaneously there was so much momentum around crypto, including e.g. El Salvador adopting bitcoin. But somehow they never met in the middle. It sucks that people put their faith in tech geeks like me, and they got let down. Somehow crypto's "solution in search of a problem" never collided with the many institutional problems that desperately need solving.
> It sucks that people put their faith in tech geeks like me, and they got let down.
Well, not like you since you’re genuinely trying to solve real-world problems.
I had that feeling a lot during the dotcom era because you had a similar, although less pronounced, dynamic where some companies were focused on selling their technology as some kind of magic cure for every problem (this was also the era where you’d see startup founders proudly showing off millions of dollars worth of Sun servers running Oracle to process 100 orders a day). We’d get calls from our clients who’d get these shiny presentations but couldn’t understand how something made sense for their business, and we’d walk through it with them and confirm that it didn’t.
Most of those “it’s new and shiny! Buy now!” companies either folded or were acquired at more accurate valuations when bubble money dried up. I remember a couple of sales guys asking about jobs and it was like “you didn’t care what your prospects needed when money was easy, who can afford you now?”
My advice would always be to focus on what real thing you’re making better. If you can’t find one, either leave or have a fallback plan for things suddenly grinding to a halt. Lower-level staff are usually the ones left holding the bag unless your job is very clearly linked to revenue.
>Well, not like you since you’re genuinely trying to solve real-world problems.
Clarification: I'm not actively trying to help people, I just enjoy thinking about institutions in my spare time. Here are some relevant HN comments of mine to give a sense:
RAI works exactly as promised. The problem is that it is not a ponzi scheme. RAI is a cryptocurrency that basically implemented Milton Friedman's idea of replacing the federal reserve with a computer.
If there's a great application that solves an important problem using crypto then I imagine most people would focus on the problem and not the fact that crypto is used to solve it; they'd probably even gloss over how the application works.