Looks like this got moved off the front page which is too bad, I would love to see it plastered everywhere for a few days
I watched the discussion unfold a bit and it was instructive. Obviously there were a lot of upvotes on the story because I think the thesis is basically commonsense for most people that pay attention. Except for the actual active scammers (or chumps that have somehow been had) who are quickly voting down any comments supportive of the fact that crypto is a scam. It's the contrast between the upvotes of the story and the downvoted common sense comments that is interesting. It happens with political stories sometimes too
I like to read things on HN because they're interesting, not because they're right or wrong.
Maybe most people were voting on this because they think it's right or wrong, not because it says anything new or interesting (I don't see that it does).
Something that only received a passing mention in this is that cryptocurrency and related web3 items are sold like a technical panacea to a whole host of other problems with the financial system, governments, corporations, and so on, some of which are real, some are definitely in the realm of fantasy.
From my perspective it's just changing one set of monetary system problems for another set of technical and resource use problems, which IMO is not a step forward.
Overwrought marketing language and idealism are definitely problems, but there's something significant to there now being a chance to create a new financial system, or meaningfully impact the current one.
Specifically, there is energy and capital available, whereas previously it would have been impossible to work on this seriously absent a collapse or crisis in the current system.
As for whether the technological changes imply net neutral outcomes, that seems hard to qualify.
Anecdotally, the only “Web 3” that has improved my life is Monero.
It’s the best way I’ve found to send money to strangers on the internet. I’ve opened unofficial bounties and paid open source developers to implement them, as one example.
It really “just works” in a way where other crypto currency doesn’t.
I still support many other projects in this space, but Monero was the only one I felt comfortable actually using.
Software developers should universally reject payment in crypto, but especially monero. I know I would if you tried to pay me with that. It's the same situation as tornado cash. By using it you're providing cover for north korea and other sanctioned entities to launder money: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/02/12/north-korea-is-e...
It has no other real legal or legitimate use case, it otherwise works the same as other cryptos. You could just pay those developers in cash. Most developers I've known that aren't hardcore crypto zealots prefer to get paid in cash.
This is increasingly important because I've observed the "pull back" in hype has allowed a new breed of charlatans to pretend there is ever more legitimacy to this whole scam. Notably, Big 4 consulting firms have been embracing various Web3 stuff obviously without understanding it, but smelling that there is money to be made. So now legitimate businesses somehow get caught up on this scam based on some business translator misunderstanding of what it is, and have to double down on pretending it's legit. The whole thing needs a big bucket of cold water thrown on it
An example of this is Azure jumping on board the Distributed Identity (DID) bandwagon.
The only reason DID exists is to push crypto. Nobody wants their identity to be put on a public ledger. That's has identity theft built-in as a "feature"!
I’m don’t own any crypto but this is overly dismissive. Encoding game theoretic concepts into a “token” such that various parties can be incentivized in the correct way such that the value of the overall ecosystem is maximized is a valuable concept.
There are many great cons, the current monetary system could easily be considered one of them. Fractional reserve banking is a fraudulent concept at its core. Yet, we keep it because it kind of works to create the right incentives (we accept some level of corruption for this reason). It isn’t (at all) clear to me that we have landed on an optimal system.
Ledgers, blockchain, distributed systems, etc prexisted, long before web 3.0 and cryptocurrencies. Those are not disruptive technologies and they don't offer anything new, neither they solve any new problems.
Bitcoin on the other hand, as it was presented by Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, is the disruptive technology. Took existing technologies and combine them in a way making something unique. It is not a currency, it is a platform of trust. For the first time in human history there is a tool that enables online exchange of value, which is peer-to-peer, permissionless, censorship resistant, borderless, neutral and open.
The rest of the applications that are built on this idea may be "useless" as the author believes, maybe not. I don't know that and I don't think anyone can be sure.
When the current financial system is a fraud and rigged the only bad thing that web 3.0 and cryptocurrencies could do is not making it better.
MIT course MAS.S62 Cryptocurrency Engineering and Design is free in youtube and helped me understand more about money, the tech and what problems is solving.
>which is peer-to-peer, permissionless, censorship resistant, borderless, neutral and open
All of this is false. Every word of it. If that's what you heard from an MIT course then what that professor is doing is shameful. Here, let's go through it.
- Bitcoin isn't peer-to-peer or permissionless and it never has been. The network is de-facto run by mining pools who have exclusive permission to determines who gets to write to the blockchain. In order for two users to send payments to each other they must go through the miners and must pay them fees to gain permission. Peer-to-peer would be if the two users directly sent messages to each other to exchange funds, but that isn't how Bitcoin works. The core design of it intentionally has middlemen and gatekeeping built in.
- Bitcoin isn't censorship resistant or borderless. Have some articles:
- Bitcoin isn't neutral. The political leanings of bitcoin have been known for a very long time. Satoshi intentionally put political statements in the whitepaper and the genesis block. The early adoption by wikileaks and silk road wasn't a coincidence, they had a very specific goal they had in mind.
- Bitcoin isn't open. The code itself is available on github but only a small number of people have commit access. A random person can't just go in and start modifying the bitcoin code at will. The best you can do is try to fork the network and launch your own token, which has happened a lot of times but none succeeded at causing the system to actually become open.
>The rest of the applications that are built on this idea may be "useless" as the author believes, maybe not. I don't know that and I don't think anyone can be sure.
I can say for sure that it's useless because every single positive claim I've ever seen about it has been completely false.
A lot of the arguments seem kind of bad. Just in the first paragraph:
"Blockchain is the greatest technological fraud" - It's just a hashed data structure. Maybe people use it for fraud but that's like saying accounts are a fraud because someone had bad ones once.
"[Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies] are functionally useless as currencies outside the realms of criminal activity and a Ponzi scheme in effect if not name for everyone else." - they are used a fair bit in speculation which is not actually illegal. With bitcoin there is no ponzi schemer, the thing doesn't collapse ponzi like - it just goes up and down.
Not to say they don't have flaws but there is interesting stuff too.
No, that paragraph is correct. You may be either missing some context or using a different definition of blockchain that doesn't apply to crypto and web3. All the selling points that crypto people have said about blockchains are completely false. It is just a hashed data structure but that's the point -- how is a hashed data structure going to solve inequality, minimize global energy usage, stop wars and feed the hungry? Of course it can't, but you can still see plenty of those outrageous claims floating around on crypto twitter from people who should know better. As far as hashed data structures go, it's not even a good one. It's universally bad at everything for a number of reasons. This is a database system intentionally designed so that writing to the database becomes increasingly and artificially expensive and/or wasteful, for no actual benefit. There's nothing interesting about them.
There doesn't need to be a single person collecting the dollars for it to be a ponzi-esque scheme. The reason people call it a ponzi is because there is no actual profit anywhere in the system nor is there any reasonable mechanism for any typical investors to get stable profits. It's all speculation. The only way you can make a profit from "investing" in crypto is by selling to someone else at a higher price. Yes, ponzi schemes can continue indefinitely if people keep dumping money into it and nobody shuts them down.
The author is correct in almost all his criticism. However, there is an emerging core of blockchain media that is providing real entertainment value to users. Bitcoin itself can be viewed as entertainment media rather than financial disruption. Bitcoin has an entertaining albeit misleading story generating a fan club that generates plenty of drama. Web3 takes the ability for blockchain media producers to service consumers further.
You might be entirely correct but my experience tells me that being logically right and the way the world works are two different things. Under a few of these points credit cards should not exist, yet here we are with our overlords.
Really? Personally, I would say that a "great" con is one that makes lots of money, putting Web 3.0 pretty far up the list when it comes to grassroots level scams.
> A "great" con would be something that suckered people who aren't greedy or shortsighted.
Everyone's greedy or shortsighted if you hit the right cognitive levers, which is why cons work on everyone, especially on people who think cons don't work on them.
I agree with you for the way in which “great” is used as a measure of quality. But ”great” can also be used as a measure of size and/or impact, e.g. “Sir, your investment proposal contains a great deal of bullshit.”
In that sense, web/3 might be a called a great con.
I agree with the bottom line, but the form, why does the author have to exaggerate like this?
Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. It's just much less useful than the hype makes it out to be.
Making absolute statements like this isn't helpful, it makes it easy to demolish the argument for the actual scammers.
Hi, author here. So the first thing is as something meant to be an engaging (though casual) read and one which is targeted at an audience who might not all be tech buffs, of course there's some simplification, glossing over some things and yes, a bit of hyperbole here and there for dramatic effect. The opening paragraph, for example, obviously lays out a strong and provocative position to immediately engage the reader and establish the post's theme as a critical piece.
The other part is the article already comes in at something like 3800 words. I could write five, ten times that on the subject and still not be done. I have to pick and choose what I cover and in what detail.
The primary use case of cryptocurrencies (and in particular Bitcoin) today, when used directly as currency, as a means of purchase, is criminal activity. The article glossed over that there are other niche use cases where coins are used as currencies but they are very much a niche, particularly when weighed against the biggest use of crypto today which is simply as a form of something analogous to stock trading only without the regulation.
But this is almost a secondary point; the article is about "Web 3" hype, these points are relevant insofar as the thing which is really being challenged is this idea that crypto and blockchain will be the foundation of a major new era in the web.
I'll certainly take it as constructive feedback on my writing if that isn't clear enough. Thanks.
I also think cryptocurrency is hyped & bubble. But the author is also wrong here by calling "only for criminals".
Cryptocurrency were supposed to mimic decentralized cash but there are still some problem that needs fixing.
> Imagine, for example, a world where you're out at a restaurant, or something, and you accidentally drop your keys. Someone else picks them up off the floor, only instead of handing them back to you, they now legally own your house and car. You call the police, but they say they have no power to insist this person gives you back your property. It's their property now, because possession is ownership, access is authorization.
Cryptocurrency should mimic cash, they don't have any intrinsic value just like cash. So correct example would be if you drop cash in restaurant not keys of your car. Just like cash whoever picks it up is there new owner & police can't do anything about it except for locking him in jail.
> In October 2017, JP Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon called the idea a fraud and said he would fire any employee trading Bitcoin for being "stupid".
Ofcourse he will say that, JP Morgan creates money out of thin air by using fractional reserve, just like cryptocurrency. So basically bitcoin is taking away there business.
Author also misses important use like voting where we want record to be public, accountable & certifiable.
And about the criminal part. For criminals, CASH IS STILL THE KING.
One of the worst facets of the whole web3 movement is the "thought leaders" and community talking very confidently about how blockchain will replace very well established ways of doing business (FTA "airlines selling tickets"). The author takes a very dim view of the whole blockchain space, and uses the worst possible interpretation of parts of it to make their case, but I don't disagree on this point.
Whether web3 becomes a mainstream "thing" is anyone's guess, but if it makes any headway, it won't be large enterprises leading the charge. Exactly like the author states; "Do airlines have any problem selling [tickets] to you? Of course not; this process is already efficient and optimal." Where it potentially could be used is by smaller entities that don't have well established processes, and don't necessarily have the means to build out some of the required systems.
If I want to build any kind of digital asset (an item in a game*, access to a forum, etc) and I want to allow it to be traded, I have to build that trading platform. If I want it to be traded outside of my platform, then I have to deal with endless integrations. If I'm a multi-billion dollar enterprise that's fine, I can do that. If I'm a small company, that may not be feasible. If I use a blockchain to store that asset (or at least to track who owns it) then I only need to integrate to that blockchain, that is, check that a user owns the asset before I allow them to use it in my system. I'm not saying this is simple, or even currently desirable for most people or companies, but what I am saying is that it is something that is feasible and potentially of value to an end user.
Where this will struggle in the short-term is in the end-user experience. Wallets are awful, most people don't want self-custody, and honestly, the space is filled with slimy individuals that don't exactly inspire trust. I could write for hours about all the things that I view as wrong with with web3 (some of them are technical, the majority are about the people), but to outright dismiss it as a scam/only for criminals/the worst thing on Earth is blindly emotive and is (almost) as bad as the fanatics that are just as emotional about promoting it.
* I'm only referring to tracking ownership, not interoperability across different games. That can go in the "unrealistic things web3 people say" basket.
> but to outright dismiss it as a scam/only for criminals/the worst thing on Earth is blindly emotive
I mean but you came up with one maybe kinda plausible use case just to better than I could dismiss why it would be a piece of shit anyway - and that most importantly it doesn’t solve the hard problems.
It’s not emotive - I just want an existence proof of something useful that isn’t purchases or transactions I want off the grid.
I don’t think money laundering or concealing transactions is necessarily criminal - but the only real use of crypto assets for transactions is to do stuff someone powerful doesn’t think you should be doing.
You raise a good point. As a sceptic of this space, I would counter the UX issue you mention - which is a huge hurdle for any larger scale adoption of blockchain - will realistically only be solved by billion-dollar enterprise involvement, which will inevitably mean centralization, which in turn means we might as well drop the blockchain part.
Somebody else could build a centralized trading platform, and if you use that, it will be cheaper for all parties.
Whether web3 becomes a thing is not anybody's guess. Anybody who thinks about it clearly can easily conclude that it will never be a thing except among scammers and their marks.
No one doubts that platforms can be powerful. At least I fully agree with that. But what is the benefit of a decentralized platform powered by blockchain? Spotify is a very successful platform for artists. No blockchain involved.
This post is mostly about Bitcoin and Proof of Work. Currently "Web3" tech is being built on Ethereum, Proof of Stake, zero-knowledge proofs, rollup sequencers, data availability sampling, and multi-party computation. The recent advances are not like the earliest iterations; a harsh critique of Bitcoin is not equivalent to the harsh critique of Web3.
The post is riddled with fallacies. For example:
> Imagine, for example, a world where you're out at a restaurant, or something, and you accidentally drop your keys. Someone else picks them up off the floor, only instead of handing them back to you, they now legally own your house and car.
This framing is ridiculous and reveals either that the author has no idea what they are criticizing, or is being deliberately obtuse. Nobody in Web3 is suggesting you hold all of your assets in a single private key that you physically carry to a restaurant.
The root of this blog post is this:
> it's the sheer absence of any explanation or detail as to what problem [web3] advocates believe they are solving
And this is the primary complaint. Web3 is too vague a term, and encompasses too many unrealistic hype ideas like houses-on-the-blockchain, and the author has not bothered to look further than these claims.
Why not take aim at actual Web3 products that are live today: Uniswap, Aave, ENS. These all fit under the umbrella of Web3 and are able to secure billions of dollars worth of assets while meeting the promised goals: a set of trustless, permissionless, and decentralized tools for transferring and owning value on the internet.
> Nobody in Web3 is suggesting you hold all of your assets in a single private key that you physically carry to a restaurant
I'm not suggesting that, either. It's a metaphor. In the metaphor, we're not talking about crypto wallet keys, we're talking about actual, physical keys which open doors. But many people do of course keep all their crypto keys in a single, vulnerable location, or hand the contents of their wallets over to another wallet for some other purpose such as lending - typically this is on centralized exchanges or defi markets and platforms, for example Celsius - which I haven't checked in a while but can only assume is still in business, doing well and allowing customers to access their funds.
XMPP, bittorrent, now blockchain. All 3 have the same thing in common that they had high hopes of creating a distributed alternative future for their paradigm. The first 2 fizzled into mostly fringe usage. I guess we'll have to wait and see if blockchain follows the same path, but seems to be going that way
I don't XMPP was meant to be "distributed," at least not in the way that the BitTorrent network is (and blockchains nominally are). XMPP assumes a relatively normal client-server architecture, but with no authoritative index server. That makes it decentralized in the way that IRC and SMTP are, but doesn't imply anything about consensus or peer coordination.
(More stridently: even as "failures," both XMPP and BitTorrent have probably been significantly better for the world, on net, than blockchain projects have been.)
I find this comment surprising because I don’t know what I’d do without BitTorrent - what are the alternatives? Edonkey, gnutella, etc are all dead. Just yesterday I downloaded an entire series in a matter of minutes thanks to BitTorrent. That would’ve taken ages over emule.
Same thing with the first .com bubble.
AI have been through this too and is now having a revival.
Blockchain and Web 3 is not going anywhere it will just not be championed by the current generation. The coming will use this as it was the most normal in the world.
I mostly agree with this critique but OP is coming from a privileged 1st world perspective. I think we should be looking at low trust societies which have different challenges than what you might expect in the "developed" world
> Do you have any problem buying airline tickets now? Do airlines have any problem selling them to you? Of course not; this process is already efficient and optimal.
I don’t know about optimal, there are middlemen everywhere.
What middleman do you deal with when buying an airline ticket? I buy mine directly from the airline; when I search, the search engines I use directly link me to the airline for the sale.
Airline ticketing itself is suboptimal for historic reasons (complicated fare class coding), but middlemen are no longer a major factor in that. Travel agents no longer dominate booking.
Middlemen are not always bad. Would you like to have to deal with 50 different suppliers for the basic foodstuffs you might keep in your home? No, you'd much rather go to a disgusting middleman (i.e. grocery store) and buy all 50 of those items from one vendor.
Where middlemen exist in travel these days, it's mostly this. I personally don't want to have to search dozens are individual airline websites for fares.
You can buy almost any air ticket from the airline website.
The only reason to get to a middleman is so that you have a bigger variety of options to chose from, as they can sell from multiple airlines (and also bear some costs and buy in bulk in advance from the airline and sell cheaper).
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
I watched the discussion unfold a bit and it was instructive. Obviously there were a lot of upvotes on the story because I think the thesis is basically commonsense for most people that pay attention. Except for the actual active scammers (or chumps that have somehow been had) who are quickly voting down any comments supportive of the fact that crypto is a scam. It's the contrast between the upvotes of the story and the downvoted common sense comments that is interesting. It happens with political stories sometimes too
[+] [-] dwgebler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bo1024|3 years ago|reply
Maybe most people were voting on this because they think it's right or wrong, not because it says anything new or interesting (I don't see that it does).
[+] [-] hn2017|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdw|3 years ago|reply
From my perspective it's just changing one set of monetary system problems for another set of technical and resource use problems, which IMO is not a step forward.
[+] [-] tern|3 years ago|reply
Specifically, there is energy and capital available, whereas previously it would have been impossible to work on this seriously absent a collapse or crisis in the current system.
As for whether the technological changes imply net neutral outcomes, that seems hard to qualify.
[+] [-] olah_1|3 years ago|reply
It’s the best way I’ve found to send money to strangers on the internet. I’ve opened unofficial bounties and paid open source developers to implement them, as one example.
It really “just works” in a way where other crypto currency doesn’t.
I still support many other projects in this space, but Monero was the only one I felt comfortable actually using.
[+] [-] orwin|3 years ago|reply
But you're totally right, only monero have a 'legitimate' usecase (bypass the taxation laws).
[+] [-] only_human|3 years ago|reply
It has no other real legal or legitimate use case, it otherwise works the same as other cryptos. You could just pay those developers in cash. Most developers I've known that aren't hardcore crypto zealots prefer to get paid in cash.
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggawatts|3 years ago|reply
The only reason DID exists is to push crypto. Nobody wants their identity to be put on a public ledger. That's has identity theft built-in as a "feature"!
[+] [-] osigurdson|3 years ago|reply
There are many great cons, the current monetary system could easily be considered one of them. Fractional reserve banking is a fraudulent concept at its core. Yet, we keep it because it kind of works to create the right incentives (we accept some level of corruption for this reason). It isn’t (at all) clear to me that we have landed on an optimal system.
[+] [-] john_snowden|3 years ago|reply
Bitcoin on the other hand, as it was presented by Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, is the disruptive technology. Took existing technologies and combine them in a way making something unique. It is not a currency, it is a platform of trust. For the first time in human history there is a tool that enables online exchange of value, which is peer-to-peer, permissionless, censorship resistant, borderless, neutral and open.
The rest of the applications that are built on this idea may be "useless" as the author believes, maybe not. I don't know that and I don't think anyone can be sure.
When the current financial system is a fraud and rigged the only bad thing that web 3.0 and cryptocurrencies could do is not making it better.
MIT course MAS.S62 Cryptocurrency Engineering and Design is free in youtube and helped me understand more about money, the tech and what problems is solving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJquEYhiq_U&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...
[+] [-] only_human|3 years ago|reply
All of this is false. Every word of it. If that's what you heard from an MIT course then what that professor is doing is shameful. Here, let's go through it.
- Bitcoin isn't peer-to-peer or permissionless and it never has been. The network is de-facto run by mining pools who have exclusive permission to determines who gets to write to the blockchain. In order for two users to send payments to each other they must go through the miners and must pay them fees to gain permission. Peer-to-peer would be if the two users directly sent messages to each other to exchange funds, but that isn't how Bitcoin works. The core design of it intentionally has middlemen and gatekeeping built in.
- Bitcoin isn't censorship resistant or borderless. Have some articles:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/eu-issues-bitcoin-crypto-ban...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/08/politics/fbi-north-korea-hack...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-seizes-1-billion-bi...
- Bitcoin isn't neutral. The political leanings of bitcoin have been known for a very long time. Satoshi intentionally put political statements in the whitepaper and the genesis block. The early adoption by wikileaks and silk road wasn't a coincidence, they had a very specific goal they had in mind.
- Bitcoin isn't open. The code itself is available on github but only a small number of people have commit access. A random person can't just go in and start modifying the bitcoin code at will. The best you can do is try to fork the network and launch your own token, which has happened a lot of times but none succeeded at causing the system to actually become open.
>The rest of the applications that are built on this idea may be "useless" as the author believes, maybe not. I don't know that and I don't think anyone can be sure.
I can say for sure that it's useless because every single positive claim I've ever seen about it has been completely false.
[+] [-] tim333|3 years ago|reply
"Blockchain is the greatest technological fraud" - It's just a hashed data structure. Maybe people use it for fraud but that's like saying accounts are a fraud because someone had bad ones once.
"[Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies] are functionally useless as currencies outside the realms of criminal activity and a Ponzi scheme in effect if not name for everyone else." - they are used a fair bit in speculation which is not actually illegal. With bitcoin there is no ponzi schemer, the thing doesn't collapse ponzi like - it just goes up and down.
Not to say they don't have flaws but there is interesting stuff too.
[+] [-] only_human|3 years ago|reply
There doesn't need to be a single person collecting the dollars for it to be a ponzi-esque scheme. The reason people call it a ponzi is because there is no actual profit anywhere in the system nor is there any reasonable mechanism for any typical investors to get stable profits. It's all speculation. The only way you can make a profit from "investing" in crypto is by selling to someone else at a higher price. Yes, ponzi schemes can continue indefinitely if people keep dumping money into it and nobody shuts them down.
[+] [-] simple-thoughts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismarlow9|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] earthboundkid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] traes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JadeNB|3 years ago|reply
Everyone's greedy or shortsighted if you hit the right cognitive levers, which is why cons work on everyone, especially on people who think cons don't work on them.
[+] [-] a4isms|3 years ago|reply
In that sense, web/3 might be a called a great con.
[+] [-] juunpp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illiac786|3 years ago|reply
Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. It's just much less useful than the hype makes it out to be.
Making absolute statements like this isn't helpful, it makes it easy to demolish the argument for the actual scammers.
[+] [-] dwgebler|3 years ago|reply
The other part is the article already comes in at something like 3800 words. I could write five, ten times that on the subject and still not be done. I have to pick and choose what I cover and in what detail.
The primary use case of cryptocurrencies (and in particular Bitcoin) today, when used directly as currency, as a means of purchase, is criminal activity. The article glossed over that there are other niche use cases where coins are used as currencies but they are very much a niche, particularly when weighed against the biggest use of crypto today which is simply as a form of something analogous to stock trading only without the regulation.
But this is almost a secondary point; the article is about "Web 3" hype, these points are relevant insofar as the thing which is really being challenged is this idea that crypto and blockchain will be the foundation of a major new era in the web.
I'll certainly take it as constructive feedback on my writing if that isn't clear enough. Thanks.
[+] [-] bertman|3 years ago|reply
You say this, and yet fail to mention a legitimate use case, which is exactly what a big part of the article is about.
[+] [-] fiddlerwoaroof|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tapatio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokerru66|3 years ago|reply
Cryptocurrency were supposed to mimic decentralized cash but there are still some problem that needs fixing.
> Imagine, for example, a world where you're out at a restaurant, or something, and you accidentally drop your keys. Someone else picks them up off the floor, only instead of handing them back to you, they now legally own your house and car. You call the police, but they say they have no power to insist this person gives you back your property. It's their property now, because possession is ownership, access is authorization.
Cryptocurrency should mimic cash, they don't have any intrinsic value just like cash. So correct example would be if you drop cash in restaurant not keys of your car. Just like cash whoever picks it up is there new owner & police can't do anything about it except for locking him in jail.
> In October 2017, JP Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon called the idea a fraud and said he would fire any employee trading Bitcoin for being "stupid".
Ofcourse he will say that, JP Morgan creates money out of thin air by using fractional reserve, just like cryptocurrency. So basically bitcoin is taking away there business.
Author also misses important use like voting where we want record to be public, accountable & certifiable.
And about the criminal part. For criminals, CASH IS STILL THE KING.
[+] [-] jaimex2|3 years ago|reply
Its allowed me to pay when paypal/credit cards/my bank have decided they're going to not allow payment to a service.
It's allowed me to get paid cash in hand without having to involve entities who its none of their business why that money has been paid to me.
It's allowed me to bypass currency exchange issues and fleecing.
[+] [-] maxisrelaxed|3 years ago|reply
Whether web3 becomes a mainstream "thing" is anyone's guess, but if it makes any headway, it won't be large enterprises leading the charge. Exactly like the author states; "Do airlines have any problem selling [tickets] to you? Of course not; this process is already efficient and optimal." Where it potentially could be used is by smaller entities that don't have well established processes, and don't necessarily have the means to build out some of the required systems.
If I want to build any kind of digital asset (an item in a game*, access to a forum, etc) and I want to allow it to be traded, I have to build that trading platform. If I want it to be traded outside of my platform, then I have to deal with endless integrations. If I'm a multi-billion dollar enterprise that's fine, I can do that. If I'm a small company, that may not be feasible. If I use a blockchain to store that asset (or at least to track who owns it) then I only need to integrate to that blockchain, that is, check that a user owns the asset before I allow them to use it in my system. I'm not saying this is simple, or even currently desirable for most people or companies, but what I am saying is that it is something that is feasible and potentially of value to an end user.
Where this will struggle in the short-term is in the end-user experience. Wallets are awful, most people don't want self-custody, and honestly, the space is filled with slimy individuals that don't exactly inspire trust. I could write for hours about all the things that I view as wrong with with web3 (some of them are technical, the majority are about the people), but to outright dismiss it as a scam/only for criminals/the worst thing on Earth is blindly emotive and is (almost) as bad as the fanatics that are just as emotional about promoting it.
* I'm only referring to tracking ownership, not interoperability across different games. That can go in the "unrealistic things web3 people say" basket.
[+] [-] fuckstick|3 years ago|reply
I mean but you came up with one maybe kinda plausible use case just to better than I could dismiss why it would be a piece of shit anyway - and that most importantly it doesn’t solve the hard problems. It’s not emotive - I just want an existence proof of something useful that isn’t purchases or transactions I want off the grid.
I don’t think money laundering or concealing transactions is necessarily criminal - but the only real use of crypto assets for transactions is to do stuff someone powerful doesn’t think you should be doing.
[+] [-] dwgebler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|3 years ago|reply
Whether web3 becomes a thing is not anybody's guess. Anybody who thinks about it clearly can easily conclude that it will never be a thing except among scammers and their marks.
[+] [-] mmcnl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroclip|3 years ago|reply
The post is riddled with fallacies. For example:
> Imagine, for example, a world where you're out at a restaurant, or something, and you accidentally drop your keys. Someone else picks them up off the floor, only instead of handing them back to you, they now legally own your house and car.
This framing is ridiculous and reveals either that the author has no idea what they are criticizing, or is being deliberately obtuse. Nobody in Web3 is suggesting you hold all of your assets in a single private key that you physically carry to a restaurant.
The root of this blog post is this:
> it's the sheer absence of any explanation or detail as to what problem [web3] advocates believe they are solving
And this is the primary complaint. Web3 is too vague a term, and encompasses too many unrealistic hype ideas like houses-on-the-blockchain, and the author has not bothered to look further than these claims.
Why not take aim at actual Web3 products that are live today: Uniswap, Aave, ENS. These all fit under the umbrella of Web3 and are able to secure billions of dollars worth of assets while meeting the promised goals: a set of trustless, permissionless, and decentralized tools for transferring and owning value on the internet.
[+] [-] dwgebler|3 years ago|reply
I'm not suggesting that, either. It's a metaphor. In the metaphor, we're not talking about crypto wallet keys, we're talking about actual, physical keys which open doors. But many people do of course keep all their crypto keys in a single, vulnerable location, or hand the contents of their wallets over to another wallet for some other purpose such as lending - typically this is on centralized exchanges or defi markets and platforms, for example Celsius - which I haven't checked in a while but can only assume is still in business, doing well and allowing customers to access their funds.
[+] [-] bertman|3 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, I know this isn't reddit, but: fucking lol.
What do you even mean? What does "owning value on the internet" mean? This is exactly the kind of handwaving the article is about.
[+] [-] wppick|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rippercushions|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
(More stridently: even as "failures," both XMPP and BitTorrent have probably been significantly better for the world, on net, than blockchain projects have been.)
[+] [-] jslaD|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|3 years ago|reply
Same thing with the first .com bubble. AI have been through this too and is now having a revival.
Blockchain and Web 3 is not going anywhere it will just not be championed by the current generation. The coming will use this as it was the most normal in the world.
[+] [-] jdmg94|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pshc|3 years ago|reply
I don’t know about optimal, there are middlemen everywhere.
[+] [-] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
Airline ticketing itself is suboptimal for historic reasons (complicated fare class coding), but middlemen are no longer a major factor in that. Travel agents no longer dominate booking.
[+] [-] qeternity|3 years ago|reply
Where middlemen exist in travel these days, it's mostly this. I personally don't want to have to search dozens are individual airline websites for fares.
[+] [-] coldtea|3 years ago|reply
The only reason to get to a middleman is so that you have a bigger variety of options to chose from, as they can sell from multiple airlines (and also bear some costs and buy in bulk in advance from the airline and sell cheaper).
[+] [-] jakelazaroff|3 years ago|reply