was B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
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!
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
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.
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@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
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
@five Gosh, I'm sure hoping so!
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@b_cavello (yes, I'm an insufferable optimist)
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
@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.
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@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
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
@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 I thought I had an estimate, but I'm now realizing that could be outdated and far off.
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@b_cavello Bitcoin? Market cap is something like $16B I think? I'm guessing
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)Apr 1, 2017
@five No, in terms of active participants. The "value" is not important to me. Having one or a few people own an expensive thing is not a sign of a successful distributed system.
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@b_cavello ah. Well because of the way it's designed these things are correlated, but -- right now there's drama bc the current transaction limit is reached, and people are arguing how to scale. So as of now it's, in a sense, so full it can't accept new users
Show threadwas B (this is my old account)
@five Yeah. The estimates I've seen are 1-2 million active users as an upper limit, where active is defined as wallets used within, say, the last two years.
Apr 1, 2017 at 5:00pmWeb
Show threadJJ 🔇「cιtιƶεnƒιvε」🏴ⒶApr 1, 2017
@b_cavello existence of major aggregators like Coinbase make it super hard to track but that sounds like it's in the ballpark :)