I don’t think it really make sense to say cryptocurrency and blockchain are early at this point. The concept has had implementation for a decade and a half now, and the valuation of the assets have already had multiple boom and bust cycles. They may go higher still, but this doesn’t seem to have a necessary connection to practical utilization.

Blockchain-based currencies have shown great utility in helping people evade of capital controls, and yet there has been reticence to otherwise use blockchains when databases work well enough. There is still a persistent sense of “earliness” because a new project is always being spun up. Yet it may be that we have reached the peak of utility. Nonetheless I always keep an open mind, and this is why I still play around with it today.

Ironically the major exception in my mind could be Bitcoin, as it does have some of the monetary characteristics of gold that could prove useful one day. For this reason I always keep some Bitcoin and recommend others do so as well.

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Earliness is relative to adoption, not time. I would say we’re only just getting to the point where institutional adoption is having an impact. And from an infrastructural perspective, we’ve only just reached the point where building viable products that challenge incumbents is possible. 

The internet didn’t reach mainstream audiences for nearly 30 years.