Or, more to the point, the long and drawn out block size debate, subsequent offshoot arguments and personal insult based posts are boring. Podcasts and blogs, news feeds, Twitter and Slack are all buzzing with who is right, who is stupid, who knows who and who said what, and that's why I'm bored. Utterly bored. There was a different buzz surrounding the community of crypto enthusiasts, libertarians and forward thinking "newbies" a few years ago.
You could debate the merits of public ledgers, decentralisation, anonymity and the ability to send something of value to anyone, anywhere in the world with a phone and access to the internet, both things some parts of the world take for granted, but which are not freely available to a huge majority of unbanked people with no address or ID card. You could play Satoshi Dice and bet tiny amounts instantly on virtual jackpot machines or card games. I enjoyed collecting bitcoin from faucets and later on Dogecoin, and Darkcoin before it became Dash. I wanted CarbonCoin to work. Or Titcoin. Did that even exist?
Some of us took a hit from MTGox, Paycoin or personally Cryptsy; We used bitcoin to buy Ripple, NXT, Ethereum or Litecoin, we traded it or asked to be paid with it. We set our friends up with wallets, sent bitcoin to each other to prove how cool this thing was and, in some cases we tried to spend them on real physical stuff, book trips, buy stuff on Amazon using third party apps, we swapped stories about expensive "bitcoin Pizza" or people throwing out hard drives full of coins!! We made paper bitcoin wallets and our bitcoin address was on the bottom of every comment, tweet or blog. It felt like every day something new happened.
Today we still try new things, continue to be amazed by leaps in technology, I still lose money investing in DAO's or Cloud Cuckoo land ideas, I love it all, I still shout to people about crypto, and the blockchain, and all the benefits and reasons it all makes perfect sense to me....but I'm shouting less about bitcoin itself. I'm almost ashamed to tell people about all the merits of a once future technology that seem to me to be stuck in the past, or at least not moving forward. For all the shortcomings of the DAO at least people jumped in and did something. We may not all like or agree with what they did, but they moved on it. And the community made it's choice. So what about the block size debate?
There are many new and exiting development within the "bitcoin specific" space, but you need to search for them, because this debate has, and still is rolling on unabated. And it's making people bored. I don't pretend to know whats best, I'm happy to leave that to people who do, I just want it to work. Efficiently, cheaply and easily.
It has been as devisive as Donald Trump. Or Brexit. But at least Brexit, agree or not, is done, and that is best for everyone involved, and everyone else who is watching, because you can start to move on. Fix other problems. Devote airtime to new stories. To exiting breakthroughs. We can have new conversations. Like about FreeMyVunk or FoldingCoin and is it being pumped and what does it do anyway.
And finally, because I'm bored of slow bitcoin and stupid transaction fees when my bank and Paypal are instant and free, I'm bored hearing the arguments, I'm bored of not knowing!, and now I'm bored of PokemonGo, which had, for a time, taken my mind off being bored..but finally, I can get exited again, it's not revolutionary, or new, but I think it's brilliant! I'm not bored anymore. Someone just told me about DogeCoinGo! I absolutely cannot wait!
If I could give Doge one piece of advice it is this...I'm inquisitive, like many others. And I'm inherently lazy. I soon found the Pokemon bots and cheats I'm ashamed to say, and should add I was subsequently banned, but they worked, and still do. So guard against hacks and make security your number one priority. So people don't get conned or robbed. And make it simple. So people get it. It's things like this that will advertise the blockchain and crypto in a positive way, and give normal folk a reason to get involved.
And supposing DogeCoinGo happens, and works, will it cope? What if it gains Pokemon style success? I assume players across the world could interact and send each other Doge? Now that, my friends is the future. To the moon, shibes!
And my advice to "bitcoin"? Sort it out guys, ever heard the saying size doesn't matter? It's what you do with it that counts..
