The fiat system went into one of its cyclical debacles and Bitcoin had a fertile ground to appear and be proposed as an alternative, which few took seriously at first.
Back then, it was something mainly geeks talked about and understood, but after a while, others picked up on the idea...
Bitcoin could be mined, but not too many people had the technical skills to do it.
That's how the first mean of massively distributing it was created via a website that was called a Bitcoin faucet. No ads, just a captcha and bitcoin. Lots of them, by today's market price. See the direction back then? Decentralization.
Bitcoin was forked over the years multiple times, with some of the forks forked themselves.
Faucets expanded too, both for bitcoin and for the other chains. They added ads, to bring in some fiat money too. Also, more to present days other features. Among these faucets, lots of scams and also lots of bots posing as people destroying this business model for various faucet owners.
If we ignore the scams, they helped in two ways:
- distribution of crypto, especially for the early POW chains
- new fiat money constantly coming into the space from ads, surveys, offers, etc, helpful especially early on.
Of course, they are not as useful nowadays when tons of money enter this space.
In the meantime, more complex chains came up, like Ethereum with its smart contracts, and then its forks, and then the chains which run on EVM. Then, Ethereum "killers". And other specialized blockchains and ecosystems.
Looks like things were doing well...
Then, we started with the "narratives"... In 2016-2017 we had ICOs. Most of them scams, with a few successful ones. At least the narrative was promising: "give us money to build something awesome".
In 2021, we had the NFT craze. Most of them completely brain-dead, with a couple having some utility. So "give us money to give you back a jpeg".
Nowadays, in a movement that started in the previous cycle, we have the memecoins, which are the absolute non-sense: "give us money so we will give you nothing".
AI created this image.
Sure, you get a memecoin, but if you don't know what you are doing that's less than the transaction fees you paid to get them. They don't even sell an illusion as NFTs without utility did. Hopefully, everyone who buys into memecoins know they are worthless. They just hope they will pump and be that guy who got rich trading memecoins and now driving a lambo or whatever.
Ah, and of course, now Bitcoin is being sucked up by the representatives of the fiat world to which Bitcoin was once proposed as an alternative. That's the opposite of decentralization. And the opposite of an alternative. But times have changed... Profits before ideology, if there ever was anything like that in crypto.
Frankly, I don't know what the "narrative" for the next cycle might be. Anything lower than memecoins? In fact, I think there is a narrative lower than memecoins. This one: "give us money for nothing and owe us more". Anyone jumping to build something that fits into that narrative for the next cycle? Judging by how things have progressed, It might be a hit!
I might be too hard on memecoins... A couple of them build communities, which is an important thing in a space that needs more people. Sure, they build communities of degens, with a gambling mentality... Not sure if that's much better than no community...