> frankly, then you very likely weren't a community participant during the early years
What community? A sub-reddit? bitcointalk.org? How early is early to you? I found out about bitcoin and ethereum by reading Hacker News, I bought my first bitcoin when it was around $10 and most of my ethereum on the first day of the pre-sale and that's around the time when I started discussing crypto with my friends and family, some of whom are programmers but most of whom are not. I'm not sure what you're going on about regarding community.
> I don't know who Clayten Christensen is, but that's a silly quote.
Do you know what Google Search is though? Or maybe your point is that I spelled his name wrong by one letter? Either way, here you go:
"Improving a product takes time and many iterations. The first of these iterations provide minimal value to the customer but in time the base is created and the value increases exponentially."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
Since you're on this website maybe you've heard of Paul Graham?
"Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest."
http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html
> Of course every new idea and technology that became successful started small, unnoticed etc, but it's pure survivorship bias to point only to the ones that made it. What about countless things that didn't?
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that it's proof positive of it being a good idea, but that dismissing an idea on the basis of what other people think is a terrible idea. And no, every technology doesn't start out small or unnoticed (e.g. fire)
> Taking seriously things no one else does is a not a particularly wise thing to do, 99.999% of the time there's good reason no one takes something seriously, and there is no real way for anyone to reliably identify the 0.001% of times you have something worthwhile.
There's no way of replying without coming off as an asshole so apologies but, frankly, you sound like a boring person who doesn't think for themself and is probably a late adopter to most interesting things.