That’s actually really interesting to me. What was the vibe at the company? Was it genuine ‘we’re making something great here’ or was it more like ‘yeah we are just trying to milk this sucker for all we can while we can’?
Discussion
No, they really believed in what they were doing. Still do, even after pivoting because their app was a failure. The guy who founded it was an old friend of mine from my hometown. He was one of the first people I knew who was into bitcoin, and he built a bitcoin tipping app for Facebook that actually worked. But then he decided to create an iPhone app that would be like Venmo for crypto and created his own ERC-20 rewards token as a way to pay users for sending USD to each other. Then the app became a mobile crypto exchange that kept adding new tokens. They couldn’t get built it right, took a year to launch the Android version, and couldn’t operate in a bunch of states for regulatory reasons so it never took off. They cut the marketing budget to near nothing because they were running out of seed money.
After that, I left and they changed gears and merged with a company that was building an identity layer KYC-friendly fork of EOS and built a DeFi platform. It still sort of exists, but they have such a small user base that I can’t imagine why they haven’t just pulled the plug on it. We’ve kept in touch, and he really believes that bitcoin’s time has come and gone, and what they’ve built is somehow better. I’ve stopped trying to change his mind.
Damn. I’m convinced that it’s largely ego that keeps people from coming back to bitcoin once they are at that stage. Their brain and self can’t process ‘going backwards’ and admitting it was right in their face the whole time. There is a humility required many don’t have. Some friends of mine bought BTC and sold it (made $ at the time) but won’t get back in now because it would only be a reminder of how much they screwed up by selling. So they focus on ‘the next bitcoin’.
We are our own worst enemy in these ways. Bravo to you for realizing and hopefully your friend will come to this realization someday.
You’re not wrong. I think he let his early success in bitcoin cloud his judgment, and he decided what the world really needed was more a government-friendly blockchain that onboarded people through their legal identity documents and had exponentially faster block time than bitcoin. He thought the Lightning Network could never succeed, and as far as I know, still does. It’s sad, he could just have built a bitcoin product that interfaces with Nostr. But instead, he’s lobbying Congress for crypto-friendly regulations that would specifically help his company.
Ugh, and thus not really advancing or improving anything. Same game as before just different buzzwords. He’s on the carousel just going in circles.
I like to be optimistic though, maybe someday he’ll come to.
Thanks for sharing that. 🙏🏻