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Comment by mattrices | Hacker News Reader

Friendster and napster were central systems that were shut down for legal reasons and were replaced with other more distributed systems. Btc value is derived from its distributed "anti-fragile" nature which would require a lot more effort to shut down.

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When drawing an analogy to Friendster and Napster, I think the point linkregister is trying to make is that bitcoin is similar in the sense that it's a "first mover" and not a "last mover".

The underlying _why_ for these "first movers" fail are not related at all since it's a totally different vertical.

Sure, but first movers have an advantage due to wider name recognition and in this case a large established market cap and mining network. Unless the underlying tech shifts to somthing more stable or more profitable, last movers are at a disadvantage.

The deflation and high transaction fees seem to favor btc bc miners wouldn't shift to somthing less profitable and those using btc as a value store profit from deflation long term.

I absolutely agree with your distinction. I was using them as analogies for pioneer technologies.

I have faith in the overall Bitcoin architecture. Its greatest threat is a malicious actor taking over enough processing power to alter the blockchain.

I doubt that Bitcoin itself will be the dominant cryptocurrency due to the reasons I mentioned in my original post. These are two different issues and I appreciate your pointing that out.

The analogy between napster and bitcoin is interesting. Both are decentralized and "stateless." Ultimately p2p solutions like napster were replaced by Spotify/Apple Music. I think this is because the benefits of a stateless and decentralized solution weren't worth the additional complexity. Not sure if the same will be said of cryptocurrency.

Napstar was replaced by torrents. People still download music without paying for it all day every day.

IIRC if we track the number of downloads or songs played, even spotify and youtube outcompete torrents by a huge margin, downloaded torrents are just not that popular for music nowadays compared to streaming. The legal services took over most of the mindshare and volume of music distribution, most of the people who used napster back then now get their music from a streaming service, not on a torrent.

Spotify was spun out of private torrent network libraries that still exist independant of spotify. Youtube still gets a lot of uploads from private torrenters trying to generate ad revenue. Just because they are percieved as legal and convienient they get more views, but ultimately where did the content come from?

https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...

MP3s are so small compared to the rest of the internet now that there's a glut of shady websites that cater to people trying to get MP3s. Rings tones are a great example why someone with a Spotify account might google an mp3 for a song. Meanwhile you've got tons of semilegal mixes on Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Spotify and Apple Music is just convenience.

These sites also cater to the leaks scene. Every single hot album to drop recently was leaked 24-72 hours before dropping on "official" sources like Spotify. This makes even those people that have Spotify accounts look for MP3s.

A better analogy is with KaZaA. It's still around, but was largely replaced by BitTorrent.

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