Microsoft is testing a built-in cryptocurrency wallet for the Edge web browser
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Edit: The absolute worst thing about it is how obscure and weird it can be with your microsoft account. I hope you never ever decide to log in with an AAD-linked account on your personal device :). I tried using the Teams webapp on mobile edge and it basically hijacked the browser, started requiring intune (just to use the browser!), meaning that obviously it didn't allow me to use the webapp at all without it (which was the entire point of trying the webapp). But it works just fine on Chrome! Amazing.
I've had a Mac for several years and am sad to see what's happened to Windows since the Win 7 days. I was tempted to go back as Apple's pricing for 16GB configurations is extortionate, but the Win 11 changes make that a dealbreaker.
https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/21720091...
It feels like like a shitty commercial zone with advertising billboards everywhere. I don’t want points when I use Bing, I don’t want to know how the stock market is doing today, I don’t want to “save” money on my shopping, I don’t care about the latest stupid thing some extreme rights person said, I don’t need a huge ugly logo to access GPT4 while the GUI is minimalist.
And I don’t need a well documented scam in my web browser.
I mostly forgot about them for almost two decades. From around 2002 to 2018, I did not use any of their products or services. And in my interactions with other indie makers, I heard about them less and less.
I remember reading Paul Graham's "Microsoft is Dead" in 2007 (http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html) and was jokingly thinking "Micro who?".
Then in 2018 they suddenly bought GitHub. And were back on the radar of every developer I know. With Azure, they became a bigger and bigger datacenter player. Then last year they made huge waves again, this time with Github CoPilot. Then this year, they were the first to put AI into a popular search engine. Before Google! And now they might become the first to put a crypto wallet into a popular browser.
Microsoft is 48 years old, but 2/3 of their market cap has been created in the last 5 years.
Unsure about the rest, but a quick search shows that 75% of Apple and 50% of Google market cap was created in the last 5 years. So some of the effect is a general tech boom that has been captured by Microsoft as well.
Google is much younger though. And its 50% are in line with the NASDAQ.
Apple had a crazy run under Tim Cook. While Steve Jobs is rightfully remembered as a visionary who built one of the biggest companies in the world, over 90% of Apples value was created under Cook.
Edge has less than 5% marketshare, it's hardly a popular browser. And the crypto wallet thing is present in Brave for years.
Installed Firefox immediately and will never look back.
Any reason I should think this is real?
Not sure you can claim they are on the hype train or late when alot of successful companies are late followers.
Brave has a built-in crypto wallet but it makes some sense in their offer, this one does not seem to.
Unless you think large amounts of people will migrate to Edge because it has a built-in wallet? It does not seem likely to me, but I'll be happy to be corrected in a few years.
Microsoft helping climb the slope of enlightenment doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea.
I’m pretty sure those are the two demographics that crypto is for.
The lack of KYC is a feature not a bug.
In fact I would say that we are already behind the hay day of wild west crypto and are entering the phase of regulated fiance. Investors are already discovering why some of those regulations exist in the first place (latest example FTX) and governments are done standing at the sidelines.
The part where the major stablecoins (eg. USDC or even Tether) hasn't failed yet, and the "dozen" you speak of are the equivalent of shitcoins that never had any traction in the first place.
Regardless, I think given the wild west of crime and fraud a world without banking surveillance would allow I don't think that's a great plan, and I doubt legitimate banks would be for it either given the legal grief they would be constantly in, assuming that you still believe that assets should be able to be seized or frozen in case of identified illegal activity, and if not a bank now needs to be comfortable knowing it's enabling human trafficking and terrorism.
Why should a bank be willing to do business with you if they can't identify you?
How about the people who want to, you know buy stuff with crypto? Metamask has 10m+ downloads on the chrome store
When USD comes crashing down, not everyone has access to gold.
If there's one thing worse than absurd volatility, it's hyperinflation.
Lately though I am seeing posts where blockheads are trying to rally and I think these are not written by ChatGPT because they are too disagreeable.
The thing is that crypto prices haven’t really collapsed and the true believers haven’t been punished enough to really change their behavior. I wish I could say people just quit trading so the prices aren’t real but looking at the charts I can’t really justify that but maybe it really is just the same two crypto bros trading.
As for MSFT they are usually (3) slow on the draw, and (4) work harder than anybody to annoy their users. They have been quick to get on the ChatGPT train, however, because they’ve always wanted to make Excel make up fake books for your organization, have Word write your homework and PowerPoint make your pitch deck for you with no consideration if the output is right or wrong and there is no way they’ll let another firm beat them to it.
That may be the case for some of the shitcoins, but it hasn't been close to true for BTC and ETH since institutions got into crypto a few years ago. They are still trading btw, some of them made an insane amount of money from the crash.
Marketing: Hold my beer...