[cryptonym]

In a casino you have - The gamblers spending a lot on the casino - The people coming in for the fun and spending little money - The owners/C-levels - The operational team

Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.

[brohee]

You forgot the money launderers, in both ecosystems. Casinos are the original tumbler.

[ethbr1]

'I'm shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.' https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/quotes/?item=qt0429972

[mothballed]

That falls under pragmatists

[brianolson]

I worked in blockchain ("builder") for 5 years. I started 'eh, there are speculators, whatever, I build good tech' but finished 'holy crap speculators completely dominate and distort everything, nobody cares about good tech'

[dukeyukey]

Yep. As much as I can see utility in some crypto, and there are some personalities in respect (e.g. Vitalik) by and large the sector in such a dumpster fire I'm not going anywhere near it. I've got some bitcoin in a Coinbase account, that's as close as I'm getting.

[FabHK]

> nobody cares about good tech

Indeed. For example: Chia is arguably decent tech (better than Bitcoin), built by Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame), innovative PoSpace+Time. But nobody cares, it's at #450 in market cap, way down below Doge (#10), $TRUMP (#72), Fartcoin (#144), Melania (#375).

[mozarella]

The point i was trying to make was that the disillusionment faced by technologists possibly stemmed from a naivety about how the economy works and how people respond to incentives. Speculators are a "feature/bug" of pretty much any financial system. Stocks, real-estate, fiat-currencies, potatoes - The price of everything is being distorted by speculators. Done right, they bring liquidity, financial stability, and wealth creation. Left to their own devices, they cause volatility, inequity and financial destruction. (Crypto is probably more on the latter side on some of those metrics atm). The People looking to build a good crypto solution has to be clear-eyed about how to handle them.

I also wonder if the author has partly himself to blame. From his post, it looks like he worked for the seedier players in the space (because the pay was better) and is angry at the whole space. Its like a developer who worked for Oracle on MySql swearing off the entire open-source community.

edit: >nobody cares about good tech'

True. That's a big part of why you need [token-holders], "Build it and they will come" is more of a hope than a strategy.

[Aardwolf]

> Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.

Is there any possibility the presence of the people who are there just for fun still encourages/increases the size of the first group?

[watwut]

Imo, yes. There are where gamblers come from. They are also providing plausible deniality to gamblers.

[soerxpso]

You also have this quadchotomy in a department store, or in a number of other valuable businesses.