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Surely some folks do not know the difference, and there is a lot of informational sources, whether mainstream media or otherwise that talk in such ambiguities in there failing to specify what they are talking about. It seems better to be way more specific in the way that we speak, and even frequently people are not dumb, but they still might not have spent too many hours looking into bitcoin enough in order to recognize ways that bitcoin differs from various shitcoins, even though they might know that bitcoin is the oldest or that bitcoin has the largest market cap, but they still might not know very much beyond some of the superficial kinds of talking points that are sometimes misleadingly repeated.
In relative terms, the number of people interested in the technology compared to the number of people interested in speculation only has tremendously decreased over the years. I remember having a lot of talks in the early days and of course price was a topic, but it was more about all the other stuff, like how to set up mining operations, how to store keys, how to contribute to the code, pulling an all nighter philosophizing about its impact on society, and so much more. It is not like that anymore.
90% of the time when I am approached they either say "can this thing called bitcoin still make me rich" or "do you still believe in cryptocurrencies" (when it has had red days) or "wow bitcoin is now so expensive, but what about this thing called X".
I hardly ever get approached by someone saying that he or she has looked into it and found bitcoin to be very enticing for reason A, B and C. It's not the case anymore and sometimes I miss those times because there is still so much to be discussed that is so exciting about it. If it wasn't exciting anymore, I would lose hope for bitcoin, but from the first day I found out about it, I had a feeling that this is going to be relevant in one way or another. This did not prevent me from making mistakes along the way when it comes to selling, but to save my honor, it wasn't all mistakes, but sometimes more of a necessity due to changed circumstances in life.
But yes, you can see it in this thread and I understand the title that it is about DIPS and about HODLING, which is totally fine. But the tone in most posts is very price focused and when people are price focused, they don't care about the name of the thing that makes them money or loses them money. I agree with you that the distinction must be made and I suggest everyone to google alt coin graveyard and reserve a spot for the shitcoin they have now their eyes on hoping it makes them rich.
It is very dangerous to respond with the term "cryptocurrencies" because if someone asks you whether you believe in then and you answer "yes I believe in cryptocurrencies", that person might go home and think it doesn't matter which one to pick... That is my experience and it has gotten worse whereas it was already bad when the flood of shitcoins started a little bit more than a decade ago.
I agree with everything that you are saying, except for a seemingly overall reverence for days gone by, and your seeming suggestion that all has gone to shit in bitcoin (and the crypto space) in recent years.
Sure there are always negative and positive developments, yet I doubt that the kinds of sentiments towards shitcoins or the level of misinformation (and disinformation) is worse these days as compared with historical times.
As far as I know, there have always been ways to go wrong by either not believing in bitcoin or getting distracted into some shitcoin or some other distracting nonsense.
Yeah, times have to change, and the kinds of arguments have to change and the kinds of battles have to change, so it is never going to be completely the same to compare now to years gone by, yet there are also a lot of similar patterns with just BIGGER players in the mix and also the various ways of demonizing bitcoin or causing bitcoin to seem like a bad investment are just different, even though they may well have similar elements as years gone by, so a lot of times, any of us could get scared from our bitcoin investment and consider that the upside is not sufficient in order to stay invested into bitcoin, yet our fears about bitcoin largely should affect us in our position size rather than our completely getting out of bitcoin or failing/refusing to sufficiently get into it.
There are so many folks who end up considering some kinds of claims that bitcoin is not as good as it used to be to substantiate their failure/refusal to take a sufficient and/or adequate position, so many times newbies (or no coiners or low coiners) might consider bitcoin to be an all or nothing proposition rather than something that we might choose based on a position size, and if we are feeling bearish, then maybe we "only" take a position of 5% into bitcoin, yet if we are feeling bullish, we might take a position of 25%. Yeah sure, any of us can deviate from a 5% to 25% initial investment range, since in the end each of us is responsible for our own allocation choices, including if we choose to fail/refuse to take any BTC position size, which is what a lot of newbie normies end up doing, which is reflected in the fact that it is quite likely that still ONLY about 1% or less of the world's population has any kind of stake in bitcoin.. so the so many no coiners and low coiners are going to continue to be disadvantaged by their failure/refusal to act to take a position while the BIGGER players, such as MSTR/Saylor, the Saylor imitators, various ETF purchasers, governments, institutions and rich folks continue to gobble up bitcoin's supply, while retail dummies continue to fail/refuse to act to take a bitcoin position to their own ongoing detriment, since the longer they wait, the more disadvantaged that they will be when they do finally choose to get in (they end up getting in at a much higher price, to their own detriment, since so many normies continue to wrongly conclude that it is too late to get into bitcoin or that bitcoin is a bubble or they missed their chance to get in.. blah blah blah.. have fun staying poor and/or end up having to come into bitcoin at a much higher price).