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The web is fraught with scams because it's grown to the point now where the only remaining ways of making next-level Internet money on the web are to resort to

The web is fraught with scams because it's grown to the point now where the only remaining ways of making next-level Internet money on the web are to resort to wildly complex and unethical tactics and/or deception to get attention, to fake success, or to spend a lot of money to gain attention. Social media is also not accurate in it's portrayals of potential for many because they simply are too big to allow users to succeed or even to be organically visible now. Something like NFTs, which are totally worthless digital files in real life, are marketed as "valuable goods", and it's literally insanity... Trust me, I've seen plenty of pitches even when I didn't want to on social media... Non stop. If you lose your wallet your money is gone? No FDIC protections? Good luck waiting for government to catch up on proper regulations. Even if this poorly though out pyramid scheme of branding the online greed heist as "Web 3" succeeds, it will be short lived once the rich cash out, and all that will be left is a totally broken internet with no commerce flowing through it, and the value of real world products and services will be severely corrupted by it all. Everyone will suffer for it, from the rich that get literally mugged on streets by the disenfranchised to the disenfranchised that spend years trying to find success with their last dollar. The solution is to stop supporting platforms that are peddling this phony pyramid scheme, and to reinvest in keeping the Internet open, and to stop money and influence from changing how the Internet worked 5 years ago, but even if you don't change this terrible course, you'll suffer too when you realize that everything has been dumbed down or made overly-complex on the Internet and function and utility have been corrupted to get you to pay for upgrades each month... Internet-based business had been making record breaking profits for years based on fair payment for advertising space, and for selling tangible goods and services. If you start a high-overhead business for free and then try to convert it into a paid service then that's where the business model went wrong, not because users are now dependent on the service and primed for milking that dependency. The only people advocating the schemes are people who are invested in them, but they're too caught up to admit the simple truth. We will learn how to communicate in real life again probably while the Web3 dumpster fire burns out, and then rebuild hopefully... :/

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>If you lose your wallet your money is gone? No FDIC protections? Good luck waiting for government to catch up on proper regulations. You can use a smart wallet where you assign your own set of n guardians (even your own phone can be a guardian), and m and n of those guardians can recover your wallet, with you deciding on m and n. Such wallets can even have software enforced daily withdrawal limits, which can only be overriden with the approval of the guardians. It's a completely open system which can be configured any way one wants. A one-size-fits-all government solution destroys innovation and breeds rent-seeking bureaucracy. I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment. One thing I could agree on is the multitude of scams, deceptive marketing etc in the Web 3.0 space. This is a consequence of money being freed from its reigns. It has both positive and negative consequences, and those are the negatives. But finance is on the balance beneficial to humanity, by facilitating more sophisticated coordination, so when you turbo-charge finance, you get a net boost to human coordination.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment. Crypto shills are not the underprivileged, poor/homeless class of society either? They’re usually well-paid, educated tech/finance bros.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if crypto holders started off as wealthier. They're certainly overly-represented amongst the wealthy now. But they'll be under-represented amongst the centralized establishment. Some interesting facts about crypto asset holders: Nearly half of Millennial millionaires have more than 25% of their wealth in crypto. Millennials have otherwise been floundering relative to older generations in terms of wealth. Crypto is a rare bright spot for the younger generations, so it's unsurprising much of the older establishment wants to crush it. Also, 44% of crypto holders in the US are non-white: https://archive.md/slVPj https://archive.md/slVPj I recall crypto ownership is 2X more common amongst hispanic Americans, and 3X more common amongst black Americans, relative to white Americans.
przeor 5y ago
what govt in Zimbabwe can do to protect their citizens life? Probably only steal and cheat. Web3 is not for you, but for people excluded from internet commerce in 1990-2010. You are already rich in comparision to them.
- martin_a 5y ago
  Bullshit. If the government wants to harass or harm you, they will simply turn off the internet and all of your crypto stuff will not work. It's easy as that.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    It's at least possible to smuggle a wallet/brain wallet passphrase (or a signed offline transaction) out of the country via sneakernet, homebuilt amateur radio, "professional" smuggling operations that can relay a message to your family outside of the country, point-to-point across the border, or a coded letter/telephone conversation if you suspect you're under surveillance. There's always a strategy to get the money out of the country (though I admit, not necessarily in the other direction). You can't do that with a bar of gold, or a bundle of banknotes.
    - martin_a 5y ago
      > You can't do that with a bar of gold, or a bundle of banknotes. I think especially this has been done for decades, if not centuries, and is probably one of the core definitions of smuggling.
      - bko 5y ago
        Its a lot easier and more secure with an encrypted usb drive or a piece of paper with a seed phrase.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        What I mean is that while traditional stores of value are portable, they are harder to hide and easier to confiscate. A wallet or offline transaction is just a piece of info that can be scribbled on a piece of paper that a customs agent or border guard won't look twice at. Even if they do confiscate it, you've lost nothing because they can't change the destination of the offline transaction, or decrypt the wallet (if encrypted). Not to mention that it's exactly as easy to smuggle and disguise a $50 worth of digital currency as it is to smuggle and disguise $50k worth of digital currency. This can't be said of banknotes, especially if all you have available is lower face value notes.
zozbot234 5y ago
> Something like NFTs, which are totally worthless digital files in real life, are marketed as "valuable goods", and it's literally insanity... I agree that marketing NFT's as investments is outright insane, but a NFT is not just a "file". It is simply a certified, non-forgeable stake in a crowdfunded endeavor. NFT's can thus be used to promote openness, no different than any other form of patronage.
- winternett 5y ago
  That's a really overly-complex way of stating in jargon that it's a digital file with another (encrypted) digital file attached to it that means absolutely nothing if it's lost by hardware or connectivity failure or if the power goes out. Tom Selleck selling reverse mortgages was bad enough. In reality, a lot of NFTs are ultimately purchased by their owners in the course of laundering money due to the lack of oversight, and there's a lot of profiteering in the process of minting NFTs, so there's a vested interest in recruiting people into the establishment. People that trust it without proper research are getting ripped off in droves, victimization at it's worst... A Lot by this hustle. The modern way of downloading a car. Really makes me wonder if anyone (except corporations) really is making honest money over the Net any more to be frank.
  - tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
    Reminds me of that early Facebook game where you could "buy" your friends, and every time someone buys them, they become more expensive. (with extra steps)
- Yizahi 5y ago
  > It is simply a certified, non-forgeable stake in a crowdfunded endeavor. No it's not. It is not non-forgeable (blockchain can always do a "Vitalik" and rollbback whole database), it also doesn't certify anything because there is literally no space inside NFT for certificate of any kind. (technically there are a few bytes, but that's not enough) > NFT's can thus be used to promote openness No they can't. Again, there is nothing in the NFT to facilitate this.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

>>If you lose your wallet your money is gone? No FDIC protections? Good luck waiting for government to catch up on proper regulations. You can use a smart wallet where you assign your own set of n guardians (even your own phone can be a guardian), and m and n of those guardians can recover your wallet, with you deciding on m and n. Such wallets can even have software enforced daily withdrawal limits, which can only be overriden with the approval of the guardians. It's a completely open system which can be configured any way one wants. A one-size-fits-all government solution destroys innovation and breeds rent-seeking bureaucracy. I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment. One thing I could agree on is the multitude of scams, deceptive marketing etc in the Web 3.0 space. This is a consequence of money being freed from its reigns. It has both positive and negative consequences, and those are the negatives. But finance is on the balance beneficial to humanity, by facilitating more sophisticated coordination, so when you turbo-charge finance, you get a net boost to human coordination.

yunohn 5y ago
> I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment. Crypto shills are not the underprivileged, poor/homeless class of society either? They’re usually well-paid, educated tech/finance bros.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if crypto holders started off as wealthier. They're certainly overly-represented amongst the wealthy now. But they'll be under-represented amongst the centralized establishment. Some interesting facts about crypto asset holders: Nearly half of Millennial millionaires have more than 25% of their wealth in crypto. Millennials have otherwise been floundering relative to older generations in terms of wealth. Crypto is a rare bright spot for the younger generations, so it's unsurprising much of the older establishment wants to crush it. Also, 44% of crypto holders in the US are non-white: https://archive.md/slVPj https://archive.md/slVPj I recall crypto ownership is 2X more common amongst hispanic Americans, and 3X more common amongst black Americans, relative to white Americans.

przeor 5y ago

what govt in Zimbabwe can do to protect their citizens life? Probably only steal and cheat. Web3 is not for you, but for people excluded from internet commerce in 1990-2010. You are already rich in comparision to them.

martin_a 5y ago
Bullshit. If the government wants to harass or harm you, they will simply turn off the internet and all of your crypto stuff will not work. It's easy as that.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  It's at least possible to smuggle a wallet/brain wallet passphrase (or a signed offline transaction) out of the country via sneakernet, homebuilt amateur radio, "professional" smuggling operations that can relay a message to your family outside of the country, point-to-point across the border, or a coded letter/telephone conversation if you suspect you're under surveillance. There's always a strategy to get the money out of the country (though I admit, not necessarily in the other direction). You can't do that with a bar of gold, or a bundle of banknotes.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    > You can't do that with a bar of gold, or a bundle of banknotes. I think especially this has been done for decades, if not centuries, and is probably one of the core definitions of smuggling.
    - bko 5y ago
      Its a lot easier and more secure with an encrypted usb drive or a piece of paper with a seed phrase.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      What I mean is that while traditional stores of value are portable, they are harder to hide and easier to confiscate. A wallet or offline transaction is just a piece of info that can be scribbled on a piece of paper that a customs agent or border guard won't look twice at. Even if they do confiscate it, you've lost nothing because they can't change the destination of the offline transaction, or decrypt the wallet (if encrypted). Not to mention that it's exactly as easy to smuggle and disguise a $50 worth of digital currency as it is to smuggle and disguise $50k worth of digital currency. This can't be said of banknotes, especially if all you have available is lower face value notes.

zozbot234 5y ago

> Something like NFTs, which are totally worthless digital files in real life, are marketed as "valuable goods", and it's literally insanity... I agree that marketing NFT's as investments is outright insane, but a NFT is not just a "file". It is simply a certified, non-forgeable stake in a crowdfunded endeavor. NFT's can thus be used to promote openness, no different than any other form of patronage.

winternett 5y ago
That's a really overly-complex way of stating in jargon that it's a digital file with another (encrypted) digital file attached to it that means absolutely nothing if it's lost by hardware or connectivity failure or if the power goes out. Tom Selleck selling reverse mortgages was bad enough. In reality, a lot of NFTs are ultimately purchased by their owners in the course of laundering money due to the lack of oversight, and there's a lot of profiteering in the process of minting NFTs, so there's a vested interest in recruiting people into the establishment. People that trust it without proper research are getting ripped off in droves, victimization at it's worst... A Lot by this hustle. The modern way of downloading a car. Really makes me wonder if anyone (except corporations) really is making honest money over the Net any more to be frank.
- tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
  Reminds me of that early Facebook game where you could "buy" your friends, and every time someone buys them, they become more expensive. (with extra steps)
Yizahi 5y ago
> It is simply a certified, non-forgeable stake in a crowdfunded endeavor. No it's not. It is not non-forgeable (blockchain can always do a "Vitalik" and rollbback whole database), it also doesn't certify anything because there is literally no space inside NFT for certificate of any kind. (technically there are a few bytes, but that's not enough) > NFT's can thus be used to promote openness No they can't. Again, there is nothing in the NFT to facilitate this.