Most of the most knowledgeable people in the space probably have large holdings, since otherwise there’s not much incentive to learn about it.
Update: My point is simply that if “most knowledgeable people in the space probably have large holdings” as was claimed, this is arguably an indictment of the technology under discussion here. Useful technologies tend to have enthusiasts with no direct financial stake in their success. The fact that people happen to invest in tech companies and do well, or that many have indirect financial incentives to embrace tech, is orthogonal to my point. It is weird if a given tech is entirely or largely carried by people directly invested in it. It raises questions of whether it is generally useful. People who want Fred to front load his disclaimer are probably thinking by along these lines.
In your case one could argue that if you saw so much future value in the Mac/Apple ecosystem you missed out significantly by not purchasing Apple stock. Depending on when you made your observation, even a modest investment would have had a significant return over the past 20 years.
I actually use the Amazon example when people tell me how worried they are about Amazon becoming all almighty and taking over all commerce - that if they actually believe that then they should probably buy Amazon stock and use the profits to do something to counter whatever negative effect they perceive.
As a former software engineer and founder now VC what I personally realized is I could have the greatest impact on the industry from leveraging capital around my own industry thesis rather than continue to build it myself. It's all a layer cake.
For me, the incentive was to learn about the tech for the sake of the tech. I actually wasn’t a believer in cryptocurrency as a long term useful concept. I was building into spaces that would benefit from immutability and transparency where accountability was low (high risk businesses and government transparency)
Really, it is something independent of the tech that allowed me to turn a corner on cryptocurrency. I accepted that large groups of believers can “create” value based on nothing but their shared willingness to continue to believe.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have such a critical mass of believers IMO. I wasn’t sure that the tech stack would live up to the hype but I was no longer worried that the price would drop to zero.