What I see is one side that thinks bitcoin (specifically bitcoin) is going to be the new cash or the new gold, and one side that thinks bitcoin is a bubble.
Overtime this has evolved a bit; most bitcoin fans no longer argue for it as a currency, and they also talk about ETH etc. just as much as bitcoin.
I do not see most people who think bitcoin is a bubble saying blockchain itself is useless. You’re conflating two points of view to create a false dichotomy that (ironically) supports your own position.
The reason bitcoin is such a controversial topic is because the “bubblers” are right about one thing: there is a large component of emotion and hope driving those bullish on bitcoin. Logic like “well it’s not that different from gold” is arguable, but that in itself isn’t a guarantee bitcoin will be useful - hence there’s an element of gambling/irrationality. And no-one wants to be accused of that.
I often see discussions on HN where people are saying that bitcoin is completely useless (technically and economically), that it invented nothing new, etc.
I'm not a bitcoin supporter, I think the tech has been demonstrated as fundamentally flawed in practice already (slow and expensive transactions, failed to scale, failed to evolve etc.) and the economic/legal aspects are very complicated and uncertain.
But a lot of people are willing to put money in to playing with it and stuff like smart contracts, etc. are interesting - I wouldn't call it useless and it has decent potential to solve some issues but it's nowhere near it currently (eg. it could handle international money transfer - if it was easier to convert to cash/buy - but right now the margins and fees eat the difference between standard methods like western union, and they are less volatile/proven/known).
I'm interested in knowing why you think it failed scaling and evolving. SegWit and by extension LN, increased both scaling and was a significant evolution that enables sidechains and interchain transactions.
What became quite obvious was the "scare" with full blocks and expensive transactions was with all likelihood an attack with spam transactions and not an actual issue at this moment. See https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,all for unconfirmed transactions and notice how it doesn't exactly line up with price increases where you would expect more activity. There seems to be some correlation with the entire BCH fork.
What I see is one side that thinks bitcoin (specifically bitcoin) is going to be the new cash or the new gold, and one side that thinks bitcoin is a bubble.
Overtime this has evolved a bit; most bitcoin fans no longer argue for it as a currency, and they also talk about ETH etc. just as much as bitcoin.
I do not see most people who think bitcoin is a bubble saying blockchain itself is useless. You’re conflating two points of view to create a false dichotomy that (ironically) supports your own position.
The reason bitcoin is such a controversial topic is because the “bubblers” are right about one thing: there is a large component of emotion and hope driving those bullish on bitcoin. Logic like “well it’s not that different from gold” is arguable, but that in itself isn’t a guarantee bitcoin will be useful - hence there’s an element of gambling/irrationality. And no-one wants to be accused of that.