Hacker news / YC mostly missed the boat on crypto. The comments here are ignorant and misinformed. Lots of M&A happening now, none of which is lining YC pockets. Pretty amazing how the “smartest” people could be 100% wrong on crypto
Coinbase was in the Summer 2012 batch. 13 years ago seems like a good sign that they weren’t as ignorant as you claim. There are currently 73 companies listed on YC as being crypto/Web3.
Especially with UX, the likes of https://www.privy.io/ is interesting, now we finally have "non-custodial" wallets with just a google-login. (check how it works, its pretty cool). This means any user for any web app can have a "bank accocunt"
Other stuff is zkEmail/zkTLS for verifiable data portability without exposing raw private data (huge for things like "vampire attacks"), and TEEs with fine-grained, 'OAuth 3.0'-style access control for private compute are compelling.
All of the NFT infrastructure will be repurposed for tokenized bonds (Real World Assets or RWAs) and the size of defi and crypto network assets under management will skyrocket, and become deeply intertwined with tradfi
Privacy coins (like my username) are only going to get stronger and harder to kill
It will be much easier to raise funding for tiny startups, like you could back in the pennystock days and IPOing garage businesses. Formalized and strong names / credentials / legal remedies will enable far easier capital formation for risky companies
I think the point is who won the bet with the current US administration. Also remember that Coinbase was part of YC.
But you are still correct that the majority of HN missed out on crypto and thus are allergic to it and now they are fans of anything "AI" despite not even knowing that "AGI" is a scam with the real intention of causing a 10% increase in global unemployment.
In fact, AI is more likely to be the cause of another financial crash than crypto, once we see mass layoffs accelerating.