It took Internet and social media 10 years to fully proliferate, and crypto is already 14 years old. Perhaps its zenith had already passed, and people getting to it now are laggards. If I’m being overly optimistic, then maybe 50 years to replace current financial system could be a viable goal.

I’ve used crypto for purchases of various things, and it definitely is much better than current fiat system and the banks. However, adoption is still in infancy, while at the same time regulation ban hammer is coming down hard, cutting down anyone who dares to accept crypto as payment in the “above ground” world, where 90% of the economy happens.

If you can’t use crypto in your day to day life, then crypto is just speculation. Big change isn’t coming from us, we are few and our voices are unheard. Change is coming when some celebrity or famous person shows the world how easy it is to use Monero in their day to day life, and how beneficial it would be to the civilization. Sadly all of those “heavy hitters” are rich, and they won’t risk their billions of net worth held in old money system. ‘Monero’ is the one single word that no one above $100M net worth is supposed to mention in public.

One more thing: about losing everything. I’ve bought XMR back in early 2018, and my average buy-in price is $250, or 0.025 BTC. I’ve already lost at least half of my initial fiat investment, so Monero has been an abysmal performer, not even inflation hedge. That’s not how money works. Had I kept my money in co-opted and crippled BTC, I’d be able to get 4x as much XMR as I have now.

“You have to be quite stupid to support crypto in 2023”

They ain’t wrong. Usage of crypto has very much stagnated or declined last few years, and it’s now just an Internet phenomenon drifting towards oblivion. Like gopher protocol or web rings.

Lucky ones made some life changing money. The rest have only managed to trap their capital into a dwindling returns game.