I used to work in bitcoin years ago, when it was quite new - we used to think it would completely be the future and was going to be as revolutionary as HTTP was. We built a business for public supply chains (for things where you don't trust the source or the middleman, like diamonds) this was when it was so new that we pivoted the business about half way through development from using the bitcoin blockchain to the new etherium blockchain that had just been released. I used to run my own copy of both bitcoin and etherium locally, when the chains were both pretty small. Like most crypto businesses, the one I worked at failed with them owing me a lot of backpay.
I traded a little bit but went off it a few years ago and haven't done any trading in years. The community around crypto is just so toxic, the environmental impacts are bad, and the idea of having an alternative to FIAT currency (and destabilising governments) doesn't sit very well with me with all the stuff going on at the moment.
Ultimately, I think the technology has some niche use cases for things where trust is low but the need for transparency is high. Like supply chains, or voting systems, or stock in companies, or even NFTs for certain things (not pixel art). But the community of bitcoin is kind of destroying the potential - if you find anyone who's into the "plandemic" conspiracy theories, chances are they're crypto bros.
I also don't think it has much of a future outside of a few niches. There's a lot of people trying to sell the idea of "web 3.0" which has a push towards decentralisation. However, web 2.0 had a clear value proposition for the customer - it was a set of technologies that made the web more responsive and more like an application. Web 3.0 is supposed to use things like blockchains to make the web more decentralised and transparent, except for the end user doesn't really care, there isn't the obvious benefit to them, and in fact decentralisation is usually a pain for the user. What has happened is everytime someones tried to build a decentralised system, like git or even the web, there's always a move to centralise it and monopolise it and in doing so make it accessible.
Ultimately, for 99% of the use cases, blockchain solutions are very slow, very expensive, and very limited places to store things. You've always been better off with traditional, centralised, databases and applications.
Great tech but it hasn't managed to find a way out of being very niche, and therefore is overblown.
I traded a little bit but went off it a few years ago and haven't done any trading in years. The community around crypto is just so toxic, the environmental impacts are bad, and the idea of having an alternative to FIAT currency (and destabilising governments) doesn't sit very well with me with all the stuff going on at the moment.
Ultimately, I think the technology has some niche use cases for things where trust is low but the need for transparency is high. Like supply chains, or voting systems, or stock in companies, or even NFTs for certain things (not pixel art). But the community of bitcoin is kind of destroying the potential - if you find anyone who's into the "plandemic" conspiracy theories, chances are they're crypto bros.
I also don't think it has much of a future outside of a few niches. There's a lot of people trying to sell the idea of "web 3.0" which has a push towards decentralisation. However, web 2.0 had a clear value proposition for the customer - it was a set of technologies that made the web more responsive and more like an application. Web 3.0 is supposed to use things like blockchains to make the web more decentralised and transparent, except for the end user doesn't really care, there isn't the obvious benefit to them, and in fact decentralisation is usually a pain for the user. What has happened is everytime someones tried to build a decentralised system, like git or even the web, there's always a move to centralise it and monopolise it and in doing so make it accessible.
Ultimately, for 99% of the use cases, blockchain solutions are very slow, very expensive, and very limited places to store things. You've always been better off with traditional, centralised, databases and applications.
Great tech but it hasn't managed to find a way out of being very niche, and therefore is overblown.