I know people always get overly optimistic about the ability for decentralized systems to weaken our dependence upon or even displace major, for-profit centralized ones...
but gosh darn I hope Mastodon and the federation can do it!
I hope we can continue to grow social communities outside of the predatory model of digital ad revenue, but to do this we must keep thinking about how to make these spaces available to and accessible by non-web-technical folks.
@b_cavello a few years ago I would be skeptical but the infra and tech and prepackaged code is at the point where I wonder if it's really possible for this to be the first successful one
@five Gosh, I'm sure hoping so!
@b_cavello (yes, I'm an insufferable optimist)
@five It's lovely.
Bitcoin is still a bit like store credit, to me. While perhaps not centralized in a formal sense, the "governing body" that is bitcoin is probably smaller than, say, the authentication an enforcement of the US dollar.
@b_cavello oh definitely. It's wild that it's bigger than many countries now, but still super tiny vs USD or CNY or whatever. Or even $AAPL lol
@five Out of curiosity, do you know how big it is? I thought I had an estimate, but I'm now realizing that could be outdated and far off.
@b_cavello Bitcoin? Market cap is something like $16B I think? I'm guessing
@b_cavello looks like more like $17.5B. If you include a couple of the biggest alt-coins, the cryptocurrency market cap is >$25B