Yesterday I had a quasi-viral tweet about how I cannot for the life of me find an explanation as to why Web3 and the blockchain are so inevitably the future. Charlie Warzel, ever the optimist for no given reason suggested the following: Instead of a technology achieving mass adoption and creating a culture in its wake, much of the crypto movement is a durable culture that is waiting for its mass-adoption product and trying to spin up technologies that augment the culture.
I’m old enough to remember the Dot Com boom. All this stuff reminds me of it… the “you don’t get it” stuff, the “people who are skeptics are too old and technically illiterate,” and the “get in now or you’ll miss out” scarcity were all elements of the Dot Com stock bubble.
The Uber contrast is important because people wanted an alternative to taxis, especially people routinely discriminated against by taxis, victimized by predatory pricing and surcharges (zone pricing!). Even not wanting to carry large amounts of cash at the end of your night is a great use case for an alternative. And Uber/Lyft provided that, even in their terribly flawed ways.
The loose parallel I see with NFTs/Web3 (and bitcoin) is that same narrative around "the big bad corrupt monopoly needs to be taken down." But I think you do a good job laying out why that is a weak case, especially compared with taxis, and why the media shouldn't be accepting it.
Just right from the beginning, "Web3 as a culture in search of its killer technological application." is such a ridiculous idea. Why is it so hard to figure out the usefulness of this technology if it's so incredibly important and ground-breaking?
On a more macro level Ed, what I see is a tech press that is talking about something that very few people outside its bubble seem to actually care about. Even if all the benefits attributed to crypto and NFTs and even the metaverse are true, the general reaction of the average person to all the hoopla seems to be a giant shrug.
Compare that to Web 1.0 (buy things from your computer without having to go to a store!) or Web 2.0 (connect with your family and friends and make new friends who share your interests!) whose topline benefits were things the non-tech public instantly understood the appeal of and could also explain to their friends. Even Uber--call a taxi from an app on your phone and see what time it will get there--was just an easy immediate get.
3.0 has yet to find its "what's in it for me" moment--if indeed one exists--where people outside the bubble intuitively understand how all this will make their lives better.
Imagine the good if all these crypto people were working on something more useful. Health or climate or energy, etc. I’m sure it would still have a bunch of gimmicks, but we might at least get some accidental benefits along the way.
Where there's money (smoke), there's journalism. This should not be surprising.
Whether it's web3 or the metaverse, nobody wants to admit that we are bringing our humanity over with us -- in all its grandeur, fraud, and toxicity. Hence many of these new technologies are envisioned as utopian escapes from ourselves. Like the person carrying four Pullmans of emotional baggage, wondering why all their romantic relationships fail so horribly, becomes a digital nomad as a replacement for necessary therapy. We are not escaping ourselves.
I find "durability" to be the funniest part, however. Quantum computers are projected to crack the public key cryptography foundations of crypto, NFTs, and blockchains within 10-15 years. This essentially means anyone with a powerful enough quantum computer can forge ownership of any crypto asset pretty much at will. Even if you don't think crypto is a Ponzi scheme, it is one with an expected hard end within 10-15 years. All the HODLers have that long to find stooges to sell their assets to before they're pilfered or rendered worthless.
"When I started covering companies like Uber, I found myself increasingly encountering these problematic terms. These included Silicon Valley-speak like “pivot,” 4 “friction,” “innovate,” “disrupt,” “platform,” and “startup,” but also big, baggy words like “freedom” and “efficiency.”" This happed to me, too. I should be careful for this.
This is a brilliant article ... thank you. Yes sub-prime again ... or is it us all re-visiting 1928 ... just ahead of October 1929 ... I have just read the nonsense that is FRAX ... purporting to be a stable-coin but doesn’t even have the grace to back itself with real assets ... just USDT and its own native coin ... and then there is the artifice of ZIGLU with the 'highest interest account' out there .. . that achieves that by lending the token you have bought off them to ... someone ... somewhere ... but it’s redeemable with no notice ... so that’s OK ... phew.
as we type, teams of well paid internet giants have staff working out how they will control Web 3.0, just as they did web 1 and 2 (if you every buy that differentiation. The naive idea that "the city of love" lies a bus ride north of LA, that green pastures of open access and decentralized control are just around the corner has bitten us before. But we don't learn. Ask the kids who tried to reveal government malfeasants on wiki leaks. Freedom of ideas, while those who did it are rotting in jail. And yes, it's all about money. Sadly so.
The Guardian article about the pulled BBC show about the supposed crypto philantropist has a "related" link at the bottom about a 12 year old boy who apparently made 290k GBP selling NFTs for pictures of whales. The contrast couldn't be starker, it's basically the kind of fluff piece the Guardian author rightfully accuses the BBC of.
From the article:
“Ben has never interacted with the traditional legacy financial system,” he said. “He has never had an accountant, a bank account, he has never registered a company."
I would say HMRC (British IRS for those of you in the colonies, "Finanzamt" for ze Germans) is probably very interested in stories like that. That boy will need an accountant and a lawyer, or at least his family will.
Crypto has led to discoveries have improved peoples' lives. It threatens incumbent FX providers and lowers the cost of exchanging currencies internationally, which puts downward pressure on the cost of cross-border payments in many corridors.
Crypto has also put pressure on the larger banks to innovate. Granted, most have invested in walled off "blockchain technology" networks while trying to minimize the risks of crypto to their business models, but that innovation is still bearing fruit. Some banks have developed on open source protocols to create stable coins, which are a massive improvement over earlier forms of digital money. This of course puts pressure on the central banks to create their own CBDC's, which could have massive ramifications on individual freedom depending on how they are implemented (Chinese social credit score model vs. unrestricted), but it's still a forcing factor in modernizing monetary systems that have no other reason to get off their laurels and improve themselves.
Crypto puts pressure on legacy systems to innovate too. The real-time payments initiative in the US, for example, would be unlikely to have moved this quickly if there wasn't a competing threat of stablecoins. The existence of real-time payment networks is a big infrastructure improvement, increases the velocity of money, and allows for all manner of new financial innovations that weren't possible with a free-ish, real-time, good funds payment system.
I'm not completely sold on Web3, mainly because cross-chain security issues exist and are tricky to solve as different crypto protocols ossify, and I have a healthy level of skepticism that Web3 can be secure at scale, but I'll remain open minded about it, especially for use cases that aren't massive targets for hackers.
I’m old enough to remember the Dot Com boom. All this stuff reminds me of it… the “you don’t get it” stuff, the “people who are skeptics are too old and technically illiterate,” and the “get in now or you’ll miss out” scarcity were all elements of the Dot Com stock bubble.
The Uber contrast is important because people wanted an alternative to taxis, especially people routinely discriminated against by taxis, victimized by predatory pricing and surcharges (zone pricing!). Even not wanting to carry large amounts of cash at the end of your night is a great use case for an alternative. And Uber/Lyft provided that, even in their terribly flawed ways.
The loose parallel I see with NFTs/Web3 (and bitcoin) is that same narrative around "the big bad corrupt monopoly needs to be taken down." But I think you do a good job laying out why that is a weak case, especially compared with taxis, and why the media shouldn't be accepting it.
Just right from the beginning, "Web3 as a culture in search of its killer technological application." is such a ridiculous idea. Why is it so hard to figure out the usefulness of this technology if it's so incredibly important and ground-breaking?
On a more macro level Ed, what I see is a tech press that is talking about something that very few people outside its bubble seem to actually care about. Even if all the benefits attributed to crypto and NFTs and even the metaverse are true, the general reaction of the average person to all the hoopla seems to be a giant shrug.
Compare that to Web 1.0 (buy things from your computer without having to go to a store!) or Web 2.0 (connect with your family and friends and make new friends who share your interests!) whose topline benefits were things the non-tech public instantly understood the appeal of and could also explain to their friends. Even Uber--call a taxi from an app on your phone and see what time it will get there--was just an easy immediate get.
3.0 has yet to find its "what's in it for me" moment--if indeed one exists--where people outside the bubble intuitively understand how all this will make their lives better.
Imagine the good if all these crypto people were working on something more useful. Health or climate or energy, etc. I’m sure it would still have a bunch of gimmicks, but we might at least get some accidental benefits along the way.
Oh, and can I go on the record in saying that appending ".eth" to your Twitter handle is the virtual equivalent of wearing a man bun now?
Where there's money (smoke), there's journalism. This should not be surprising.
Whether it's web3 or the metaverse, nobody wants to admit that we are bringing our humanity over with us -- in all its grandeur, fraud, and toxicity. Hence many of these new technologies are envisioned as utopian escapes from ourselves. Like the person carrying four Pullmans of emotional baggage, wondering why all their romantic relationships fail so horribly, becomes a digital nomad as a replacement for necessary therapy. We are not escaping ourselves.
I find "durability" to be the funniest part, however. Quantum computers are projected to crack the public key cryptography foundations of crypto, NFTs, and blockchains within 10-15 years. This essentially means anyone with a powerful enough quantum computer can forge ownership of any crypto asset pretty much at will. Even if you don't think crypto is a Ponzi scheme, it is one with an expected hard end within 10-15 years. All the HODLers have that long to find stooges to sell their assets to before they're pilfered or rendered worthless.
"When I started covering companies like Uber, I found myself increasingly encountering these problematic terms. These included Silicon Valley-speak like “pivot,” 4 “friction,” “innovate,” “disrupt,” “platform,” and “startup,” but also big, baggy words like “freedom” and “efficiency.”" This happed to me, too. I should be careful for this.
This is a brilliant article ... thank you. Yes sub-prime again ... or is it us all re-visiting 1928 ... just ahead of October 1929 ... I have just read the nonsense that is FRAX ... purporting to be a stable-coin but doesn’t even have the grace to back itself with real assets ... just USDT and its own native coin ... and then there is the artifice of ZIGLU with the 'highest interest account' out there .. . that achieves that by lending the token you have bought off them to ... someone ... somewhere ... but it’s redeemable with no notice ... so that’s OK ... phew.
Keep writing matey you are on the mark.
as we type, teams of well paid internet giants have staff working out how they will control Web 3.0, just as they did web 1 and 2 (if you every buy that differentiation. The naive idea that "the city of love" lies a bus ride north of LA, that green pastures of open access and decentralized control are just around the corner has bitten us before. But we don't learn. Ask the kids who tried to reveal government malfeasants on wiki leaks. Freedom of ideas, while those who did it are rotting in jail. And yes, it's all about money. Sadly so.
The Guardian article about the pulled BBC show about the supposed crypto philantropist has a "related" link at the bottom about a 12 year old boy who apparently made 290k GBP selling NFTs for pictures of whales. The contrast couldn't be starker, it's basically the kind of fluff piece the Guardian author rightfully accuses the BBC of.
From the article:
“Ben has never interacted with the traditional legacy financial system,” he said. “He has never had an accountant, a bank account, he has never registered a company."
I would say HMRC (British IRS for those of you in the colonies, "Finanzamt" for ze Germans) is probably very interested in stories like that. That boy will need an accountant and a lawyer, or at least his family will.
Crypto has led to discoveries have improved peoples' lives. It threatens incumbent FX providers and lowers the cost of exchanging currencies internationally, which puts downward pressure on the cost of cross-border payments in many corridors.
Crypto has also put pressure on the larger banks to innovate. Granted, most have invested in walled off "blockchain technology" networks while trying to minimize the risks of crypto to their business models, but that innovation is still bearing fruit. Some banks have developed on open source protocols to create stable coins, which are a massive improvement over earlier forms of digital money. This of course puts pressure on the central banks to create their own CBDC's, which could have massive ramifications on individual freedom depending on how they are implemented (Chinese social credit score model vs. unrestricted), but it's still a forcing factor in modernizing monetary systems that have no other reason to get off their laurels and improve themselves.
Crypto puts pressure on legacy systems to innovate too. The real-time payments initiative in the US, for example, would be unlikely to have moved this quickly if there wasn't a competing threat of stablecoins. The existence of real-time payment networks is a big infrastructure improvement, increases the velocity of money, and allows for all manner of new financial innovations that weren't possible with a free-ish, real-time, good funds payment system.
I'm not completely sold on Web3, mainly because cross-chain security issues exist and are tricky to solve as different crypto protocols ossify, and I have a healthy level of skepticism that Web3 can be secure at scale, but I'll remain open minded about it, especially for use cases that aren't massive targets for hackers.