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Comment by tetrisgm | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely asking: do people here still care about blockchain? I used to work in the space, I’m not trying to be nasty. Just that it seems the interest has vanished

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There's a quiet rumbling left over and doing more background development, trading is still taking place. The major impasse is really with "what's the framing for this invention now" - the invention is still interesting but it isn't a good technology until you have established a motive to depend on it at scale.

The flood gates are opening to do things with blockchains again in the US, although the motive for that is "more scams".

It feels like they are still searching for demand and a use case. Having made a lot of tech in the space and in ipfs, I find that all the things it’s good at are just more readily accepted when in web2

The bubble has popped and the euphoria has tuned down. However, the stable coins market is a $1-2trillion market (https://defillama.com/stablecoins), so there is still a long way to go/grow. Other cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum will continue to exist. Bitcoin mainly as an asset against the stable and Ethereum as a network to process defi transactions (you can exchange stable coins for crypto without an exchange now).

Bubble popped? Bitcoin is right at its all time high, about $110,000.

As long as professional scammers (Fin and crypto FinTech) believe they can extract more money, Bitcoin will grow. As crypto currency is still an underregulated asset there will always be more ways to extract money in a shady way. Basically fast-forwarding all the reasons for the regulations of conventional assets.

Alts never recovered. Also is Bitcoin really near ATH or did the dollar devalue? Previous ATH was roughly $70k and in that period, Gold doubled. So reaching previous ATH in my math is roughly $140k. That does match, in my experience, the rising real livings costs of food, housing and services.

Yes

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/04/stripe-closes-1point1-billio...

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-us-treasury-holdings-s...

Hype cycles always eventually die down. The true test of a technology is whether it survives the post-hype low point or slowly fades away. Time will tell which one blockchain is.

It’s all AI these days. In 10 years we’ll ask the same question about LLMs when we have all moved on to **

Completely disagree. I'm a long term bitcoin holder but as interesting as the original bitcoin whitepaper and game theory mechanisms are, it still feels like technology looking for a problem to solve.

LLMs and their generative variants are far more mind blowing. It is kind of pointless to get into another debate about use cases, because that has already been done a lot, but people are producing actual real world output right now with these tools. Right now, they are at the worst they will ever be.

Obviously you don't have to agree with me, but I think you are 100% incorrect about this technology. It may not exactly be LLMs in a strict definition that we interact with in 10 years, but it will be derivatives.

You make a fine argument, but also crypto is a multi-trillion dollar business at this point, powered by crime or not.

LLMs are all potential right now, but are no way as large and I dare say established as even just Bitcoin. As a fan of Satoshi’s creation, the impact of Bitcoin over society in the long term will be at least as large at the impact of LLMs, whether it’ll still be BTC or some other decentralised trustless digital currency powered by cryptography.

I am hoping we (humans) can build self sustaining economies around high throughput blockchains like this one - https://internetcomputer.org/

Most replies relate to crypto, but blockchains can be used for so many other applications than crypto coins.

In theory. That’d be just a slow but decentralized database. I think people have yet to come up with a product that has demand and uses this idea

it is because we are not at the top of this bull market. When crypto hits Hacker News front page every other day, then you it is the peak of the bull cycle. Happened every time in all past cycles.

I don’t think this is anything like past cycles. Blackrock and Nations be playing this time. Stack accordingly.

Countries can have FOMO, too

There are still interesting use cases for blockchain based applications and payments. I'm not sure that these uses justify the current valuations. Similar things can be said about traditional financial markets or momentum driven stocks.

Cryptocurrency markets exists on the extreme end of over-financialization. Bubbles and financial mania are not unique to blockchain tech. Pets.com would be another example. These things exist downstream from easy money policies.

Most of the hyper-grifters have pivoted to AI + blockchain hype.

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