I just spent about an hour watching pros playing Dota at GESC: Thailand Dota2 Minor and remembered where all this started, and when. For those who aren't familiar with the first steps of the MOBA genre, the first custom map that created the new genre was Aeon of Strife (AoS). Basically a moded Starcraft map. This thing was created in 2002. It was followed by Dota (defense of the ancients) created by Icefrog and other custom scenarios within Warcraft 3 like D-day.

There was no marketing involved in the evolution of the MOBA genre. A few of us who were playing them were getting maps online and the games were mostly played in a LAN environment. It took some time for the internet to spread to all parts of the world and for people to create private rooms that organized Dota games. As time passed by, the community grew stronger and bots that recorded your in-game stats were introduced. This was probably the first ranking system Dota and the MOBA genre has ever seen. It wasn't until July 9, 2013 that Dota 2 has been released and the world was taken over by the MOBA storm followed by games like League of Legends and many other clones. If you want to look at the time frame from the inception of the idea to mainstream adoption, it took about 12 years. The same applies to the internet and most innovations in the world.

The world got a taste of crypto in December 2017 and some of them saw it as a "make money fast" opportunity while others saw the long-term potential and joined the "Hodl" part of the crypto community. The ones that wanted to make a quick buck got burned and left the crypto space for now, as more of them leave the game prices keep going down but we should come to a halt very soon. After that, it is only a matter of time when prices start going back up because good news are piling up. Once BTC gets over $15k again the media will pick up on that, working products will be presented to the public and the implementation of cryptocurrency will be hard to ignore. Just like Dota 1 needed a mainstream publisher to be available to the public so does cryptocurrency. We are currently at the peak of popularity in Dota 1 terms with all the bots and ranking systems already implemented. All we need is a publisher like Valve to make the next big step.

All big things take time, people don't like change. It is in human nature to be dismissive of new and innovative things because we feel more comfortable with familiar things. Why change something if it works, right? This is where we should remember a very important quote from Henry Ford. "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Fiat currency isn't sustainable in the long run and the stock market is slowly collapsing. Cryptocurrency has the cure for both of these problems. Fiat can become obsolete and stocks can be replaced by crypto as well. What are ICO's if not stock offerings for the early investors?

If you believe in the tech behind crypto, sit tight and wait for the change to come. The most important thing is not to get intimidated by people who say "crypto is dead" and similar stuff that you can read all over the internet. Those same people are just pissed because they bought at ATH expecting to double their money in a week. When things went south they took the loss and started ranting. That is just how internet and society is...