I'm in Kuala Lumpur right now and I recently went to what was billed as a "Bitcoin" meetup.

It was an interesting cast of characters there, a lot of apparently big names in the Malaysian tech and entrepreneurial scene. (One presenter asked "does anyone here not know who I am?" and I was the only person out of 100ish who raised my hand lol).

The thing that struck me was there were only a few other guys there who were actual Bitcoiners, and if they were Maxis they didn't want to talk about that in that group.

Most of these people were working on Ethereum and Solana based startups whose function I couldn't understand in the least, even when I spoke to them at length about what problem these companies and apps were supposed to actually solve. Several of them involved NFT anime type characters which they encouraged us to snatch up while we still could.

Many were curious what this random out of place American dude was doing at the meetup. When I told them I was a long term Bitcoin holder and enthusiast, they sort of treated me as a "cute" old-fashioned fellow, gave me a figurative pat on the head, and "good for you."

I don't know quite what to make of that experience, but I think it relates in some way to the We Are Still Early reality-meme. (WASE)

I think many smart and tech-savvy people feel like they were late to Bitcoin, so they chase the next big thing, and try to outsmart everyone else in some sense. And maybe they are too caught up in the flashy jargon and bells/ whistles of Blockchain™ technology, rather than focused on how it can actually apply in normal people's lives?

I'm struggling to come up with an analogy to what these guys are up to.. are they ahead of their time in some way, like working on the pets.com or similar early 2000's dotcom startups that failed then, but exist now that the internet is more mature?

Are they Betamax enthusiasts? The Betamax was superior tech on paper but just lost the adoption race.

Or are they missing the plot entirely because they never understood the fundamentals of what Bitcoin was invented for in the first place? So they are down some strange dead end path inventing Segway scooters that are "definitely-gonna-change-the world-bro"?

I guess what I'm asking is, where does all the shitcoinery and Blockchain™ tech fit in to this WASE idea? Why are so many smart people missing what seems so obvious to us?

Maybe things are about to shift right now, and the blockchainers will start to realize that they chose the wrong horse, and migrate over. Bitcoin seems like it's starting to go mainstream but it's always hard to tell if I'm just in my own bubble.