I had a bit of a panic moment today - I couldn't get the pass phrase for my Ledger (it was awkwardly packed away) and then when I asked my wife where her copy is - she looked at me like I was speaking martian. This is the second time she has lost hers after *"promising" that now she understood that it is important.
When asked "what if someone finds it?" Her defense was - No one would know what it is anyway...
With a little more effort than I had time for, I got mine - and changed the phrase.
In her defense, she is probably right, not many people would know what it was, but would you take the chance? Ubiquity of crypto might be some time off, but it isn't that uncommon that no one knows and the probability that someone knows someone is very high. I think that the next full bull will go a long way to mainstreaming the industry, but not all the way.
While in 2017/18 Bitcoin got a lot of attention and Ethereum a little bit of urinal splash, this time could be different as there are more services up and running which support getting involved - there are more gateways into crypto and with enough attention on price, the gateways are going to get busy. One of the challenges is that people aren't accustomed to managing their own security, they are used to centralized organizations to do that for them.
In Finland for example, it is possible to use bank sign-in codes and authentication apps to get into pretty much any official location, like the tax office and medical records. At least here, even most of the elderly are proficient enough to be able to use technology in this way.
This is actually something that a lot of people forget when thinking of the "easy enough for my grandma" approach, grandmas have been using using computers to some level for the last 30 years. It doesn't mean that they are going to code their own app, but they are on average, far more proficient than we give them credit for. Of course, this isn't necessarily the global average, but 10 years from now?
I was talking about alignment issues the other day and in some ways, Hive is ahead of its time, as while social media is ubiquitous, none have managed to truly create an economy that includes their user base as owners, it is all extraction. This not only is bad for the user groups, it will also eventually lead the platforms themselves to be tied to the governments and currencies, or become proxies for them.
Remember when Google removed the "Don't be evil" tagline from their code of conduct and replaced it with "Do the right thing"? While both are up to a lot of interpretation, I wonder if the "right thing" is able to be justified legally, even if it is evil. "We kept to the letter of the law".
I don't think that mainstreaming is going to include a full shift away from centralized media or business and might only make baby steps in this regard - but those tiny moves at mass scale start to recourse paradigms and shift industries, through changing consumer patterns. Rather than a corporation inventing a new product to reformulate an industry, it becomes disruption from the ground up through the economy, the unifying factor that connects and affects all business.
While we like to hate the corporations and governments, at the end of the day, they are representatives of us, byproducts of our decisions made and every time we make a purchase, we are opting into something. If we start consuming differently, the market supply starts to shift to meet demand and it really doesn't care what is demanded. Perhaps we should demand better from ourselves first.
When we act like this is the only way it can be, the results are going to follow suit. None of this is natural law, it is all engineered and the choices we make and while we might want it to change fast, it came into being through baby steps over the course of many centuries and it isn't going to change over night, nor is it going to change unless we as the consumer change it, as there is no incentive for the corporations to change at all, as the system in place is what keeps them in power.
As consumers, what we support - we empower.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Everything in here hit me on my yearning for yet another good William Gibson(-like) book. Even the photo. Then your post began with that hilarious familiar hilariousity of daily life situations...
There was an artist who became famous on Pinterest by drawing his and his wife's (or girlfriend) daily sitcom-worthy but all too familiar experience. I was happy to meet them on a ComicCon event two years ago and I bought a signed print from them. I guess I wanted to empower them in whatever small way I could afford.
Anyway, back to Cyberpunk!
I keep telling the story of a sci-fi dedicated convention where I heard a speaker ask "Why do you think we say Cyberpunk is dead?"
He never gave the answer. I never fully abandoned thinking about it. My first guess was, every single time...
"Cause we're living it and it's no longer fiction? Cause we're past some crucial point?"
But I don't completely agree. I agree partially. We are living some cyberpunk already, where corporations are becoming the new states and where virtual reality (not that optical VR tech) becomes important.
It would be nice if more did this rather than buy from the mainstream, mass-produced pool of misery.
Maybe the punk is dead as it has passed the point of being in your face against the stream, for as you say, we are halfway there. A little more breakthrough in AI and VR/AR and things get weird very fast - especially with a handful of conglomerates only interested in extending profits calling the shots.
Surely they could have solved the password issue by now.
We continuously lose them and somebody else scores.
Make things as difficult as can be in the name of security and wait for the losses to flow in.
Chips, fingerprints, or some other simple method will be so much easier.
All of these difficult passwords have not kept the hackers away.
"I put it in a place so safe, even I don't know where it is" :)
Hahaha, sounds like we both have been there before!
This was an excellent piece.
Baby steps indeed. I had an exchange with some people about Hive on Facebook yesterday, which I will probably write a post on when I find the time.
Thanks.
One of the things I have missed because of working remotely is some of the workplace discussions around these areas with people who hold a range of views. Not enough to go back to Facebook though :)
I have a feeling that a percentage of the people who find a "new life" after Corona where there is a little more personal care and responsibility taken, will be more willing to look into crypto.
I must admit passwords are a nightmare and why I can't see people having tons of sites either. Having different passwords for all the different sites is very tricky and it is bad enough remembering your bank account numbers let alone everything else.
I have hundreds of them and while I use a saver and export to paper every time I change, it is annoying every time I change one....
So if I get this right the one you were looking for was the one that has all of them saved in the one place?
Nah, the one i was looking for was for my ledger only, which I don't have stored with the rest :)
Lol. Complicated and wish it was a simpler system that was just as safe. Security is such a big thing and I think is one of the reasons crypto is not bigger.
Yeah, I wanted to have a space that was secure that even if all else was lost, there would be something in there... gotta have the passwords though :D
Some are calling for the downfall of government and fiat as the trigger for crypto boom and mass adoption. I would much rather see crypto slowly become a viable alternative to put pressure on shams like the federal reserve.
Baby steps for sure and thankfully it is not too late to claim your stake.
an alternative and then the norm is where I see it going. For a long time, there hasn't been an alternative and what we are currently doing is creating and testing the changeover. Bit by bit, the value will cross the divide and make the current system continually more unstable, which will quicken the process until it is a flood.
Once again a pleasure to read 😊
And I can imagine that laying your ledger is quite a stressful event.
Pretty stressful and my wife still doesn't get it :D
You just wrote about what i told somebody... the the thing is , if we adopt crypto we are taking power from the government. So cryptos have to find a way of adding to the economy before it will bigger accepted. I also feel that once a powerful country adopts it, then other countries will key into it. But adoption of anything will start from educating the public
government adoption is one way, public adoption might lead in a better direction.
I Totally agree with this..
"Perhaps we should demand better from ourselves first."
You could be onto something there. I wonder if those who don't believe consumers can change supply and instead demand change via authoritarianism have considered this.
Probably not. We as a society go and riot in the street as if it does something when an authority bows under the pressure. It is literally the definition of an appeal to authority -
*Don't protest, don't riot, don't say a word. Change.
I guess it's to much like hard work to change yourself and take responsibility for yourself. I get it. There are days when I wish I could be a naive child being looked after by my parents again.
I tried to tell my wife about some of the different keys and all that necessary to keep the stuff safe and she was like huh? That sounds dumb you can’t recover. Going to be the way of technology!
Some people are more in tune to technology. I met a woman who was 93 and had an iPad, Fakebook checking her stocks and was face timing with her great grandkids. Granted she’s American and probably well educated but we might not give them the credit they deserve.
I also fear what our kids will say we are too old to understand lol
There is something like 20% of BTC locked and lost forever. Just think over time how much more will be.
While they spend their time consuming what we have created :D
"I had a bit of a panic moment today - I couldn't get the pass phrase for my Ledger"
Losing your Ledger pass phrase has to be one of the scariest thoughts of every crypto holder lol.
Yep, but not as bad as the time I couldn't remember my LastPass password! :D I am more careful now.
Having to keep track of lots of passwords or phrase is somewhat stressful.. I remembered when I first joined the blockchain I was advised to write my password in different places both electronically and on paper
Many people don't do this.
#PoSh
I can feel your panic even after reading the first to second sentence. I had similar issues with password. It's hard to keep track and re-print it especially when you regularly changes it.
Say's Law of Supply & Demand is a good fit here. This is a solid truth. I got caught with a laugh at the beginning of this post because of your wife's comment "no one would know what it was anyway" BWahHAHAHaa!!! Probably true. We had a motorhome about a year and a half ago. It had a bunch of old wallet keys in it from when I was discovering crypto (none of them containing much value). I imagined the puzzled look on the faces of those who obtained them. LOL.
I went on to be delighted with the rest of your post and its honesty. Thanks for sharing. :)
Yeah. That's why I hodl obscure stuff like BAN!
For the record: I got my first computer in fall 1980, which puts me close to 40 years at the keyboard. I'm not a grandma, though :)
I'm sure somebody said this before Brene Brown but: "Be the change you want to see" has been a thing with me for a while now.
I don't hate government or corporations. I sometimes (often) dislike a thing or practice, but there is only one way to guarantee change. Be the change.
I'm on catch up. Took most of the day off yesterday to go for a hike. Another change I'd like to see.