The dot com bubble analogy is fashionable right now because it serves to push the desired narrative without having to deny or provide evidence against what is clearly a bubble. I'd imagine many of the people you see perpetuating this are the same that were denying the bubble a few months ago. However that doesn't necessarily make it wrong -- I'm very skeptical but I'd have a tough time arguing that nothing useful at all will come of crypto after a bubble pop. Wether it's worth it or not is another question.
Err, are you asking whether the internet was useful during/prior (and despite) the dot.com bubble? The answer is, yes, it was hugely useful. Initially for information (e-mail, ftp, finger, usenet, gopher, WWW), later for commerce.
It was far more useful, and far more frequently used, even years before the dot.com bubble, than cryptocurrencies are now.
If you took away cryptocurrencies right now, impact on me and almost everyone I know would be basically nil. If you had taken away the internet in 1996, I and many other people would have complained.
The dot com bubble was also much bigger than this current cryptocoin bubble. The market cap was bigger by multiples. I would also guess that this market cap reflected vastly more actual capital flowing into the market than we see now flowing into the “digital token” markets.
The prices are so easily manipulated on unregulated exchanges, coupled with other scams, means the nominal price can be moved with a lot less capital.
As a point of comparison, approx. 1MM people own Bitcoin, and I imagine that when you add in all the other cryptocurrencies it's not a whole lot larger.
In 1995, 40MM people had access to the internet.
The internet was a lot more established at the time of the Dotcom boom.
> Err, are you asking whether the internet was useful during/prior (and despite) the dot.com bubble?
Look, I was there from the mid 90s. I'm curious about the various viewpoints, as well as a more objective, less biased summary which attempts to ignore the nostalgia factor.
> Initially for information (e-mail, ftp, finger, usenet, gopher, WWW), later for commerce.
Thanks, OK, those are examples I can work with.
E-mail -> Still exists. Was it better back in those days? We had spam back then, right? Although not so much in the earlier parts of the 90s. FWIW, I did not have access to IMAP server. I had to use POP3 and webmail instead. Nor was IMAPS or POP3S used. Man, did POP3 and webmail sucked (until Gmail came along).
FTP -> Barely used anymore. Perhaps only in "the scene", though I know in the end of '00s that already happened via autoxfer bots. We got better, more secure means of data transfer though.
Usenet -> Still exists. Spammers largely moved on. Now and then two worlds: text and binary. One grew a lot, but a lot of smaller providers didn't grow with the insane data storage amounts. So a few big players nowadays. Same with ASPs (aka ISPs) in general for that matter. It has its + and - I guess.
Finger -> Replaced by blogs I guess?
Gopher -> Barely used anymore. Replaced by WWW. I didn't experience Gopher. My first browser was Netscape 2 <3
What about the more server/UNIX world? Was that better back then as well, with these large UNIX molochs like NeXT, SGI, HP, SUN, IBM, SCO?
Arguably though, the widespread adoption of TLS/SSL has made us more secure now than in the 90s. Back in those days, we did not have technologies like Tor.
> If you took away cryptocurrencies right now, impact on me and almost everyone I know would be basically nil. If you had taken away the internet in 1996, I and many other people would have complained.
I wasn't looking at it from that angle, I assumed the OP was comparing the internet of then with the internet of now; not comparing cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is just a pleasure to observe for me, like rats running around in a cage. A bunch of NTs getting manipulated by a small number of psychopaths, that's how I'd sum cryptocurrency up.
Ah, my understanding was that OP was comparing utility of the internet then (at the time of the bubble) with crypto currencies now (at the time of the bubble, arguably).
right but the dot com bubble included Google and Ebay and a lot of other legit companies. Maybe one can argue that bitcoin and Ethereum are the analogs but only time can tell
They can't be Google. Google survived the bubble by staying a small private company that bigger companies didn't see as worth acquiring. It saved them from dying with those companies when the bubble popped.
AOL had been slowly dying since it's 2000 merger with Time Warner. It's just so large that it's been flailing about for almost two decades.
I'll give you Yahoo. While their current demise may have been related to wounds from the dot com bubble, I think they could have been fine had they not overexerted themselves trying to return to glory. I can't blame them for trying, though.
I think we are nearer to 'Fixed Odds Betting Terminals' [1] than the dot com boom. Even the most absurd excesses of the dor com boom seem quite rational in comparison the situation today. I think that it really is somewhere between straight gambling and how we imagine the tulip craze to have been.
What is actually needed to understand the situation today is a ringside seat to one of the devoted believers that has shut down their whole life and decided to gamble away their girlfriend's inheritance on fake coins. The way it takes over a person's life is a bit like crystal meth addiction combined with joining a religious cult. For these people there is no way out, their fear and greed locks them in to going all of the way. These people are not going to make any money, just lose every penny they can borrow.
With dot com there was not this low barrier to entry for essentially gambling, people did not cut themselves off from society in their little pyramid scheme cult. I find bitcoin really horrible and I am glad to have studied it close hand. I do google the coin names and it seems that everything considered a hot coin by those dedicated to the cult is blatantly a scam.
I think there is good money to be made in bitcoin for me just by documenting the fall of an individual and those around due to the obsession. Storytelling matters and I have a lot of very good material coming out of this bitcoin thing and the crazy things people say. All I have to do is keep good notes and the story should write itself very nicely.
I liked this comment in the original article, which is far too flippant for HN but sums up how nonsensical everything bitcoin is to me:
if this article wants to be taken seriously it needs to have a header image of some real, metal-stamped bitcoins with the logo embossed on them, all round and shiny and gleaming. Preferably it would also show two cupped hands with the bitcoins spilling out of them. Otherwise I don't even know what we're doing here.
You can tell when a bubble is about to burst because people will start talking about how it is different this time and it will never stop going up.
To be fair though, I thought more people would start cashing out before now. I suspect the vast majority of Bitcoins are held by a very small number of people and pretty much all activity in the market is happening on the far fringes right now.
