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When I first heard of Bitcoin I thought "cool idea but will never take off". Then with the ICO madness I thought "ok, people are idiots". Now with DeFi, "Web3"

by Kiro 5y ago

When I first heard of Bitcoin I thought "cool idea but will never take off". Then with the ICO madness I thought "ok, people are idiots". Now with DeFi, "Web3" and all these articles I'm starting to think the cliché "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" may actually be true. Why are people spending so much time arguing against it if it wasn't significant? We see all these rational arguments and yet the industry keeps growing exponentially. What is actually going on? Is this a pivotal moment unfolding right in front of our eyes without us seeing it?

unboxingelf 5y ago
What is actually going on is the creation of a new infrastructure layer of the Internet. This is pivotal.
maxwell 5y ago
Developers of proprietary SaaS back-ends fighting the increasing irrelevance of their legacy skills?
pooper 5y ago
When I first learned of Dropbox, I thought that was stupid. A full 2 GB of storage for free online? How would they afford this? Turns out storage is cheap and more importantly it keeps getting cheaper over time. I am very willing to admit I was an idiot. However, that does not mean anything I say is stupid is NOT stupid. I still think NFT is stupid. I don't know how I can support cryptocurrency and not support NFT but I am sure people will laugh at me for not being practical for saying transaction fees should be as close to zero as possible if not zero.
- oldsecondhand 5y ago
  But it was never the question whether online storage is useful or not, unlike with NFTs.
m_ke 5y ago
Because it's a ponzi scheme that will probably end up getting to the "too big to fail" stage before the music stops. All of these new blockchain schemes like ICOs, NFTs and web3 are just a way to recruit new segments of the population into the crypto universe in order to pump up the value of crypto currencies. I have friends who are artists and musicians who completely drank the koolaid and are convinced that NFTs and web3 will liberate them from poverty. They will repeat all of the talking points about blockchains but have no idea what a database is. I ask them to show me a web3 website and they can't name one, show me someone they know who buys NFTs and they can't name any. Here are some recent quotes from one of my friends: "crypto is fairly new it’s quantum mechanics as well." "NFTs make you a shareholder" "yeah the Internet didn’t exist until people applied concepts to it as well. blockchain is a system where new concepts can exist on the Internet. " "the meta data you're able to embed can be anything now so creators can make any type of art. whereas before it was just mp3 or MP4 but now u can monetize any type of digital content" "You can protect your music or visual via an NFT and control the royalty split " "Having the ability to retain royalties to creators is a feature we’ve never had we can sell links to exclusive bonus content, recipes, any idea whereas u post it on reg social media and it’s unprotected w no protection "
- volkk 5y ago
  as someone who is a healthy skeptic of blockchain/crypto -- my theory is a bit more on the optimistic side. the hype/cultists that exist are kind of good for the community and is just a natural consequence of tech being released straight to the public instead of being consumed in the B2B technical world. there are plenty of people who understand it much better than "crypto is fairly new it’s quantum mechanics as well," and you just need to follow them instead of listening to the people that are in the "hype" layer of the tech. follow the developers and the scientists and you'll get a much better perception of what the future might hold. and the ponzi scheme argument is very tired. there are far better arguments against crypto at this point if youre going to be on the anti train.
  - m_ke 5y ago
    I don't know any serious developers nor scientists who have are bullish on crypto. Only developers I know who are into it spend most of their time hyping up their next rug pulls.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
panphora 5y ago
As mostly tech workers, HN readers are woefully disconnected from the lives of everyday people who have been promised a path to if not wealth, at least some kind of comfortable lifestyle by working really hard. And then the 2008 housing crisis happened. A massive betrayal by the government against its own people. Many people lost their houses, their retirement savings, and their investments. And who did the government bail out and prop up? The bankers, the elite, and the stock market. And this happens over and over again in countless banana republics across the world — the elite propping up the systems that support themselves and not really caring about anyone else. So now, you have this massive movement against wall street (r/wallstreetbets & GME/AMC), the elite (Trumpism), centralized financial institutions (Bitcoin & DeFi), and the upper class of tech workers (web3). And you wonder why? People were promised a path towards wealth and have had it stolen away from them countless times. Now they are rebelling. It doesn't matter if — technically & logically — Bitcoin, DeFi, and Web 3 aren't everything they're promising to be... People still need a place to turn to put their hopes that isn't the current system. They've just been burned too many times by it. But none of this is going to work out in the long run... It'll be just like every other mania throughout history. Tons of investment, tons of apparent growth fueled by FOMO, and then a massive collapse when people realize no one actually cares about this stuff for its intrinsic value... But enough effort & pain & money will have gone into it by then that it will have created a nascent industry that will maybe, one day 10-20 years from now, take over the world and become the new normal. TLDR: DeFi & Web 3 is an emotional reaction to a system that just doesn't work for most people, not the logical next step towards a better version of the status quo.
- anonymouse008 5y ago
  You have just described the value of currency. It is inevitable that these will be used, just a matter of when and if you need fiat to achieve your everyday aims.
- danjac 5y ago
  So basically Amway with technobabble?
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Sadly for the emotionally invested people if we do get to the point web3 is the new normal is likely to be more of the same just with different faces. Because the people who run web3 and their investors are tech elites and will still be at the top of the totem pole.
royaltheartist 5y ago
I see it less as some revolutionary moment or great sea change but more that people who already have and control wealth can move things in a direction that benefits them regardless of whether the rest of us will benefit or even care
zaphar 5y ago
Bad solutions to real problems can still win in the market. The market's definition of optimal can be different than an experts. I personally think that Crypto DeFI is a sub optimal in many cases actively harmful solution to real problems that exist. This does not presume that it can't succeed anyway.
shrikant 5y ago
> What is actually going on? Nobody actually knows yet. > Is this a pivotal moment unfolding right in front of our eyes without us seeing it? Yes I think so. I see parallels with the early days of the dotcom boom (mid to late 90s) when there was a mad gold rush by "entrepreneurs" for anything Internet or Web based, and a bunch of nerds (including me!) were scoffed at for twiddling with some computer and network based nonsense that was just glorified letters and phone calls and bulletin boards. I think the current web3 craze needs its version of the dotcom bust for the fundamentals of the tech to be truly allowed to shine through, away from the current blaring foghorns of the snake-oil peddlers and scam artists and rug pulls. At present, all web3 offers is various communities that come together around some sort of a totem (monkey pictures, lion pictures, "buy an old document", "play an mmorpg", "have a cryptocurrency-based TLD", whatever), but all these sound quite un-compelling to me personally. I have no idea what form the core of this "web3" stuff will ultimately take, and I don't think the nascent Google or Facebook or Netflix or Amazon of this space exists yet, but I truly believe there's something in the works, that is being obscured by an unfortunate amount of noise. Edited to add: I own exactly 0 of any cryptocurrency or NFT or ICO and don't even participate in those communities, and am in actual fact quite more anti-web3 (in whatever its current form is) than my tone above would indicate.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Responding to your edited-to-add: This is pretty much where I'm coming from now (except I did buy into Ethereum and a few PoS chains to see what the fuss is about, finding nothing of any interest to do there besides just hold onto the tokens, like glorified angel investments). But responding to your "but I truly believe there something in the works, being obscured by an unfortunate amount of noise": One passage of the article that really struck me was this one: > When an engineer looks into a problem, they will at first gather the requirements. What does the system they need to build need to do and how and for whom etc. Afterwards they will look at existing technologies and see which technology and platform fits best to the requirements. Notice how that implies the availability of "existing technologies" such that the engineer can choose whichever "technology and platform fits best to the requirements". There is a circularity to this argument! How do any of those existing technologies come to exist if all engineers are merely choosing existing technologies upon which to build the thing that meets their requirements? I'm still incredibly unsure about this, but I think the scriptable blockchains (ie. the ones that aren't Bitcoin) could well be the "existing technology" for some set of requirements (either in the future or in the present but in a way that is unclear) that I lack the vision to see.

by Kiro 5y ago

unboxingelf 5y ago

What is actually going on is the creation of a new infrastructure layer of the Internet. This is pivotal.

maxwell 5y ago

Developers of proprietary SaaS back-ends fighting the increasing irrelevance of their legacy skills?

pooper 5y ago

When I first learned of Dropbox, I thought that was stupid. A full 2 GB of storage for free online? How would they afford this? Turns out storage is cheap and more importantly it keeps getting cheaper over time. I am very willing to admit I was an idiot. However, that does not mean anything I say is stupid is NOT stupid. I still think NFT is stupid. I don't know how I can support cryptocurrency and not support NFT but I am sure people will laugh at me for not being practical for saying transaction fees should be as close to zero as possible if not zero.

oldsecondhand 5y ago
But it was never the question whether online storage is useful or not, unlike with NFTs.

m_ke 5y ago

Because it's a ponzi scheme that will probably end up getting to the "too big to fail" stage before the music stops. All of these new blockchain schemes like ICOs, NFTs and web3 are just a way to recruit new segments of the population into the crypto universe in order to pump up the value of crypto currencies. I have friends who are artists and musicians who completely drank the koolaid and are convinced that NFTs and web3 will liberate them from poverty. They will repeat all of the talking points about blockchains but have no idea what a database is. I ask them to show me a web3 website and they can't name one, show me someone they know who buys NFTs and they can't name any. Here are some recent quotes from one of my friends: "crypto is fairly new it’s quantum mechanics as well." "NFTs make you a shareholder" "yeah the Internet didn’t exist until people applied concepts to it as well. blockchain is a system where new concepts can exist on the Internet. " "the meta data you're able to embed can be anything now so creators can make any type of art. whereas before it was just mp3 or MP4 but now u can monetize any type of digital content" "You can protect your music or visual via an NFT and control the royalty split " "Having the ability to retain royalties to creators is a feature we’ve never had we can sell links to exclusive bonus content, recipes, any idea whereas u post it on reg social media and it’s unprotected w no protection "

volkk 5y ago
as someone who is a healthy skeptic of blockchain/crypto -- my theory is a bit more on the optimistic side. the hype/cultists that exist are kind of good for the community and is just a natural consequence of tech being released straight to the public instead of being consumed in the B2B technical world. there are plenty of people who understand it much better than "crypto is fairly new it’s quantum mechanics as well," and you just need to follow them instead of listening to the people that are in the "hype" layer of the tech. follow the developers and the scientists and you'll get a much better perception of what the future might hold. and the ponzi scheme argument is very tired. there are far better arguments against crypto at this point if youre going to be on the anti train.
- m_ke 5y ago
  I don't know any serious developers nor scientists who have are bullish on crypto. Only developers I know who are into it spend most of their time hyping up their next rug pulls.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

panphora 5y ago

As mostly tech workers, HN readers are woefully disconnected from the lives of everyday people who have been promised a path to if not wealth, at least some kind of comfortable lifestyle by working really hard. And then the 2008 housing crisis happened. A massive betrayal by the government against its own people. Many people lost their houses, their retirement savings, and their investments. And who did the government bail out and prop up? The bankers, the elite, and the stock market. And this happens over and over again in countless banana republics across the world — the elite propping up the systems that support themselves and not really caring about anyone else. So now, you have this massive movement against wall street (r/wallstreetbets & GME/AMC), the elite (Trumpism), centralized financial institutions (Bitcoin & DeFi), and the upper class of tech workers (web3). And you wonder why? People were promised a path towards wealth and have had it stolen away from them countless times. Now they are rebelling. It doesn't matter if — technically & logically — Bitcoin, DeFi, and Web 3 aren't everything they're promising to be... People still need a place to turn to put their hopes that isn't the current system. They've just been burned too many times by it. But none of this is going to work out in the long run... It'll be just like every other mania throughout history. Tons of investment, tons of apparent growth fueled by FOMO, and then a massive collapse when people realize no one actually cares about this stuff for its intrinsic value... But enough effort & pain & money will have gone into it by then that it will have created a nascent industry that will maybe, one day 10-20 years from now, take over the world and become the new normal. TLDR: DeFi & Web 3 is an emotional reaction to a system that just doesn't work for most people, not the logical next step towards a better version of the status quo.

anonymouse008 5y ago
You have just described the value of currency. It is inevitable that these will be used, just a matter of when and if you need fiat to achieve your everyday aims.
danjac 5y ago
So basically Amway with technobabble?
meheleventyone 5y ago
Sadly for the emotionally invested people if we do get to the point web3 is the new normal is likely to be more of the same just with different faces. Because the people who run web3 and their investors are tech elites and will still be at the top of the totem pole.

royaltheartist 5y ago

I see it less as some revolutionary moment or great sea change but more that people who already have and control wealth can move things in a direction that benefits them regardless of whether the rest of us will benefit or even care

zaphar 5y ago

Bad solutions to real problems can still win in the market. The market's definition of optimal can be different than an experts. I personally think that Crypto DeFI is a sub optimal in many cases actively harmful solution to real problems that exist. This does not presume that it can't succeed anyway.

shrikant 5y ago

> What is actually going on? Nobody actually knows yet. > Is this a pivotal moment unfolding right in front of our eyes without us seeing it? Yes I think so. I see parallels with the early days of the dotcom boom (mid to late 90s) when there was a mad gold rush by "entrepreneurs" for anything Internet or Web based, and a bunch of nerds (including me!) were scoffed at for twiddling with some computer and network based nonsense that was just glorified letters and phone calls and bulletin boards. I think the current web3 craze needs its version of the dotcom bust for the fundamentals of the tech to be truly allowed to shine through, away from the current blaring foghorns of the snake-oil peddlers and scam artists and rug pulls. At present, all web3 offers is various communities that come together around some sort of a totem (monkey pictures, lion pictures, "buy an old document", "play an mmorpg", "have a cryptocurrency-based TLD", whatever), but all these sound quite un-compelling to me personally. I have no idea what form the core of this "web3" stuff will ultimately take, and I don't think the nascent Google or Facebook or Netflix or Amazon of this space exists yet, but I truly believe there's something in the works, that is being obscured by an unfortunate amount of noise. Edited to add: I own exactly 0 of any cryptocurrency or NFT or ICO and don't even participate in those communities, and am in actual fact quite more anti-web3 (in whatever its current form is) than my tone above would indicate.

sanderjd 5y ago
Responding to your edited-to-add: This is pretty much where I'm coming from now (except I did buy into Ethereum and a few PoS chains to see what the fuss is about, finding nothing of any interest to do there besides just hold onto the tokens, like glorified angel investments). But responding to your "but I truly believe there something in the works, being obscured by an unfortunate amount of noise": One passage of the article that really struck me was this one: > When an engineer looks into a problem, they will at first gather the requirements. What does the system they need to build need to do and how and for whom etc. Afterwards they will look at existing technologies and see which technology and platform fits best to the requirements. Notice how that implies the availability of "existing technologies" such that the engineer can choose whichever "technology and platform fits best to the requirements". There is a circularity to this argument! How do any of those existing technologies come to exist if all engineers are merely choosing existing technologies upon which to build the thing that meets their requirements? I'm still incredibly unsure about this, but I think the scriptable blockchains (ie. the ones that aren't Bitcoin) could well be the "existing technology" for some set of requirements (either in the future or in the present but in a way that is unclear) that I lack the vision to see.