One of the criticisms against web3 and crypto is that it’s ultimately a high tech pyramid scheme, solving few problems that it didn’t create on it’s own. If that’s the case, then we should want and expect to see rising criticism and pushback. Crypto doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and if unscrutinized, can have unintended harms across technology and society in general
> is that it’s ultimately a high tech pyramid scheme, solving few problems that it didn’t create on it’s own
While you are correct in that most things borne of the blockchain space are scams, it's important to understand that it's not much different from the "technology" of the FAANGs, in terms of the harm principle.
We like to denigrate NFTs and Tether, and slag on the enormous climate and social costs of BTC speculation, while we turn a blind eye to the fact that social media and adtech are fundamentally parasitic and socially destructive technologies that are far worse for the climate, our mental health, and our privacy than an exit scam or an overpriced NFT could ever be
It's fine to criticize this space, but it's particularly funny when this criticism comes from people fully invested in GOOG, FB, NFLX, and SNAP, or who are actively writing code to enable our modern Panopticon.
one thing that's been a good development in my view is central banks taking more seriously retailer and digital concerns, even if the impetus is one of regulation. Trying to stay neutral on the inherent politics of it all...but the Fed's recently released paper [1] for comment on developing a centrally backed digital currency recognizes some very real challenges and opportunities that the current US banking system has not well solved for.
As long as it's centered around the value of BTC, this is false. BTC has totally failed as a currency and is completely dependent on speculators pushing its valuation up to keep the miners profitable. I'll be willing to concede this point to you if eventually all proof-of-work coins disappear and the BTC maxis go away, and the incentives change to move away from mining and towards providing real services, but I doubt this will ever happen given this was the whole reason the crypto bubble happened in the first place.
Perhaps you want to define web3 in a more vague way like "any web business that uses a merkle tree publicly in some fashion". You can do that but either you're still left with BTC maxis leading the charge on that, or you have to expand it in such a way that the term becomes meaningless because it applies to a lot of unrelated things. Was google a web3 business before anyone knew what that was because they used a merkle tree in google drive, and google drive was public? How about github with their public git repositories? See what I mean here?
I'm sorry but you don't know me, I've seen lots of BTC/ETH maxis who adopted the term early and continue to use the term to describe their efforts (and it's really not hard to find them doing this on HN and Twitter either) so if you disagree with their assertions and think they're misinformed I suggest you take that up with them and not me.
Why do you choose to use this term in its definition by some “btc maxis” instead of what an actual and huge community of developers mean by it? Some cognitive bias at play here my friend?
Upon observation, that huge community of developers appears to still be mostly building apps and altcoins on top of ETH and cashing out on BTC exchanges because that's what everyone uses and it's how you make the most money. These coins have not diminished in popularity, the huge community has only increased their popularity. If you take issue with cognitive bias then take it up with them. Like I said, I will concede this point when that changes and all the proof-of-work coins are gone, and the BTC maxis go away and stop having so much influence, but that has not happened and I am very skeptical that it ever will without also taking everything else you'd describe as "web3" with it.
I used to be very interested in defi but I can't anymore when it's evident that the same market forces and consolidation and network effects keeping traditional banking afloat are also keeping BTC afloat because too many people are invested in keeping it the dominant coin. I really hope I'm wrong and BTC is not "too big to fail" but if I am then I expect you'll see these fancy web3 startups pivot back to making "boring" web 2.0 banking systems because there is no big money in defi anymore.
I have read countless research papers and press releases and blogs and open source code relating to web3 over the past few years, so if I'm ill informed then it sounds like you're suggesting that pretty much everyone else is also. If there is some secret I'm missing, now is your chance to say it. Please try to make more substantial comments. Thanks.
