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> but what is it actually good for

What are elections good for in a country of 350mm people?

Crypto is a social movement, they are much more massive and powerful than technological ones. They also provide huge returns when you embrace that you are making a social-movement type bet.

When Soros bankrupted the Bank of England it was a social bet on the various cogwheels falling in place for the short-selling to work.

The profit of that short is real money, even though it was not a bet on technology.

There are many ways to skin a cat, people have to understand that betting on technological trends is kind of a new thing, for our whole history as a specie we only bet on social movements

And also there is almost no technological bet that is purely that.

For example, people betting on Microsoft in 1994 were not only betting on the company, but also making social-science type bet that people would fall in love with the computer via a GUI, in a way that didn't happen up to then via the command interface.



> Crypto is a social movement

OK, but HN is primarily a technical forum, and so cryptocurrency is typically viewed mostly with that filter.

Presenting it as a social movement makes it immediately more in the political realm -- and that only raises more questions and potential problems. It also brings in the potential for genuine controversy without clarifying much.


> HN is primarily a technical forum

No, StackOverflow is primarily a technical forum.

HN is primarily a forum made up of technical people, talking about shit that might be interesting to technical people (hackers!).


True, I phrased that poorly.


> Presenting it as a social movement

Wasn't Windows 95 a social movement?

Maybe there wasn't a sense of rage from the masses towards the few people who could use a computer (via a Command line interface) but the end result is the same as the aims of cryptocurrency movement.

Moving from a world where a very few % of the population is able to use a particular tool towards a world where everybody can do it.

Reverse repos, loans off appreciating assets and so forth are only availible to few.


> Wasn't Windows 95 a social movement?

Umm, no? Or, if it was, that aspect of it was never apparent to me, even when I beta tested it.


Well, wasn't the end result comparable to the ones achieved by social movements?

How many people had access and were capable to use a computer before Windows 95? And how many after?

Before win95 it was a small club of elites, after it was everybody

Crypto is trying to do the same thing with complex financial operations such as reverse repos and loans backed by appreciating assets.


I think that perhaps I don't understand what you mean by "social movement". To me, a "social movement" is a large group of people trying to change society to be closer to a political ideal they believe in.

> Before win95 it was a small club of elites, after it was everybody

I don't think I fully agree with this assertion, either, but I do understand what you're getting at here. Even if this assertion is entirely true, though, I wouldn't call it a social movement.


> To me, a "social movement" is a large group of people trying to change society to be closer to a political ideal they believe in.

Once you remove the libertarian component of crypto and people who don't want to pay taxes and people who hate the Federal Reserve...you are left with people who'd love to be able to do reverse repos and getting loans off their appreciating assets, and other complex operations which are not availible to retail.

Is the unavailibility [of complex financial operations] to the general public due to a political and social stance that society has?

Or is it lack of understanding of the market by the existing financial players?

Because if it's the latter then it's not that different than companies trying to force feeding Command line interface to people before Microsoft decided to go full GUI and ship Win95




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