7 ms·

Web3 is 'the future' if you're invested in crypto. If you're not (or have been and got out), then it's nothing but the delusion of a sect of believers who want

Web3 is 'the future' if you're invested in crypto. If you're not (or have been and got out), then it's nothing but the delusion of a sect of believers who want to wish it into existence. Being invested fundamentally changes the way people think and allows them to come up with any justification for their investment. It's not just crypto, but pretty much everything else where people expect easy returns at the expense of other people, nature, other countries, the future, etc. There is nothing special or magical about this technology. Just because it uses an immutable data structure called 'block chain' and cryptographic hashes left and right, doesn't automatically make it useful or needed. In fact, the opposite is true due to the POW being a race to burn as much (mostly) coal for the benefit of very few. The fact that the vast majority of crypto enthusiasts, who have absolutely no idea how it works and what it represents, decided to part with their fiat in the hope that money grows on Merkle trees and pushed the price to astronomical levels does not validate the technology itself, but rather is an example of human psychology and greed at work. I hope the whole crypto delusion crumbles as quickly as possible before it takes down the whole world economy with it. Or maybe that is exactly what must happen so that the world wakes up to reality. Maybe that is the whole point of it.

timdaub 5y ago
For fairness then I think we should consider that everyone that is anti web3 and has no crypto might have too much Google and FB stock according to your logic?
- malermeister 5y ago
  Both Google and FB have a clear value prop. Web3 and crypto don't, which is exactly what the poster was criticizing.
  - jakupovic 5y ago
    They don't according to you and the author, but others think it does have value, which makes your point moot also.
    - emn13 5y ago
      People say that, but almost everything brought forward has non-crypto equivalents that are likely superior, and don't involve the opportunity cost of burning large amounts of fossil fuel, and redirecting huge amounts of valuable compute resources towards merely sustaining it. Maybe someday some clever smart contract thing will really take off; and maybe someday some non-PoW coin will really matter, and maybe one day all the stabilizing regulatory infrastructure will be replicated for that hypothetical coin. It could happen. But it hasn't happened yet; so far it looks more like a ponzi scheme. And even if the tech really does evolve into something truly valuable, the route to that promised land could still have some surprising ups and downs, and if coins really continue growing, real-world economic pains along the way. Also - the tech behind it all isn't the same thing as the specific instantiation of todays coins. Even if the tech finds a niche, todays coins could still turn out to be a ponzi scheme.
      - jakupovic 5y ago
        Thanks for describing how web3 will succeed that's not based on "number go up"
  - timdaub 5y ago
    It's because you're comparing a company to a category. If I were to say that Coinbase and Uniswap have a clear value prop but AI doesn't, it also wouldn't make much sense as I'm not comparing apples to apples.
    - malermeister 5y ago
      Parent made that comparison, not I.
      - timdaub 5y ago
        I'm the author of the parent comment and I haven't compared FB to e.g. a category like web3. Re-read it. I pointed out the unfairness of assuming that "everyone arguing for web3 is an investor" while simultaneously ignoring that anyone opposed to those ideas may have investment-bias too. E.g. HN is known for being anti-crypto but suspects anyone pro crypto to be a crypto-invested shill. But then at the same time I think it must be considered that e.g. anyone being anti-crypto also has a stake or interest in non-crypto related endeavors. I doubt there are people on here without some form of stake simply arguing for "the universal truth".
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  Or simply sour grapes. He is right that your investments cloud your thinking, but maybe he doesn't have enough experience to understand that the desire to see the price go down against something you decided to never buy, or recently sold, is driven by the same bias.
  - delegate 5y ago
    For context, I've been an early bitcoin core contributor and paid 7.5 btc for this old laptop. In all fairness, I've only profited from btc and am still invested, but it doesn't change the conclusions I've had to accept.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I stick to the index funds. I have no idea how web3 shenanigans affect me. I still haven't seen a comprehensible use case for it.
    - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      All good reasons not to get involved. But I don't think that's as cogent an argument to convince others despite it being used as such on this board quite often.
- lentil_soup 5y ago
  why? it's not a binary choice
- igorkraw 5y ago
  Google and Facebook will simply adopt web3 if it takes off (see Facebooks existing attempts). So maybe, but less so
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Exactly. Recentralisation is under-appreciated by the decentralists; decentralisation is not a magic dust, and almost all decentralised services are made more convenient by intermediaries .. who will tend to consolidate. See e.g. OpenSea for NFTs.
    - timdaub 5y ago
      If you've been following crypto currencies' history, you'll be aware that weakly decentralized (read: centralized) attempts always fall prey to decentralized protocols. The underlying principle is that a process controlled by nobody is more anti-fragile than one directly controlled by a few. Control is a liability. Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted services. E.g. Automated market makers will be much longer around than any centralized exchange like e.g. Coinbase.
      - brokensegue 5y ago
        > Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted service The exact opposite happened with email
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
For all your trivia recitations you failed on a crucial point. > POW being a race to burn as much (mostly) coal for the benefit of very few. POW is a consensus mechanism that secures the entire Bitcoin network. At times that has represented over one trillion USD worth of value. The benefit of Bitcoin's consensus is to all the money locked up in it, without it, or even if the profit to hack Bitcoin were only slightly marginal, the whole thing would fall apart, almost one trillion in value. It is not for the very few that consensus mechanisms reward, it is for the whole network (in the ideal case). So in a way, when Bitcoin is driven to astronomical prices, and the incentive to break into it becomes irresistible to the most powerful people in the world yet they still cannot accomplish it, it does validate the technology.
- delegate 5y ago
  The trillion dollars is a dream, it's not real.. Fugazzi. Once the price starts falling, the scared 'investors' will get rid of it at any price to reduce loss. The network won't handle the load, so the price will drop even more. It happened before with BTC, where the 'billions' evaporated in hours, it will happen to the 'trillions'.
  - _Algernon_ 5y ago
    And the price will go up again after a great buying opportunity for the people who see the value of the technology. As has happened before.
    - lottin 5y ago
      What value do you think people see in Dogecoin, for example?
      - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
        Funnily enough Dogecoin started as something completely antithetical to all the things about web3 'culture' HN hates the most. It was something to make fun of the venture capitalists wowing novices with buzzwords to part them from their money. I would say its now obviously overvalued considering the amount of money which flows there rather than to projects making real innovations. But then again, how do price a meme anyways?
djohnston 5y ago
Do you think not being invested and watching the value grow 500x over the past few years leaves you embittered and too pessimistic to see the value? Or is it only the one side of the coin that clouds judgement?
- igorkraw 5y ago
  I think it's both sides, but asymmetrically: I'm not being paid to not (re-)invest into crypto, and while I might make less than the true believers, there's an incentive to not be idologically skeptical (unlike some narratives, nothing stops banks, notaries, paypal etc. from simply absorbing crypto instead of being replaced by it, cryptocurency coding isn't fundamentally more difficult than other payment and distributed systems). But if you are invested into crypto, you have a double incentive for delusion: you need to convince yourself and others that it will grow so it can grow and for the price not too collapse.All while having to deal with the temptation to cash out. If real value is created, this problem doesn't exist as much. And of course, I might be biased and this might be a just so story, but I buy it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rvz 5y ago
> There is nothing special or magical about this technology... I hope this is not the same thing as the 'use rsync' response when Dropbox was introduced. [0] > I hope the whole crypto delusion crumbles as quickly as possible before it takes down the whole world economy with it. Or maybe that is exactly what must happen so that the world wakes up to reality. Maybe that is the whole point of it. Right. Let us make a start rather than continuously talking about it since it is very difficult for everyone here to ignore it and we will see yet another HN post about cryptocurrencies, Web 3, etc. How do we get rid of crypto entirely then? Stop everyone using it, shut it down and ban all of it? EDIT: Good luck attempting to ban cryptocurrencies entirely. Either way, the undeniable trend in all of this is going towards regulations for cryptocurrencies. It is not going away and we will still continue to keep talking about it and for many on this thread, it will be excruciatingly difficult to ignore it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I think 10-15% of the web3 bag is potentially a good idea to do what Dropbox did to many parts of society. Constant, transparent, ubiquitous tracking of shit. A task no one wants to do but causes a lot of friction.
- Traster 5y ago
  My big problem with crypto at the moment is that 99% of normal investors are just using exchanges. It’s like we’ve claimed to invent a new technology to replace rsync and it really does exist but it’s worse than rsync, and everyone who thinks they’ve bought in to the new technology are actually buying things from companies that claim to use the new technology and do genuinely have the ability to use the new technology but actually are using rsync 99.99% of the time. Or to put it another way - almost all the transactions are actually off-chain.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Eyeballing the numbers on Coingecko DEXs seem to have a lot more than 1% of the volume (and this has been steadily growing). Further, most of web3 isn't about payments and where people invest and trade in them has little to do with whether those projects have potential.
echopurity 5y ago
berberous 5y ago
>> Web3 is 'the future' if you're invested in crypto. While investors for sure talk and promote their bags, I do think this statement of yours is overly cynical and ignores the fact that professional educated investors also invested in the first place because they truly believe it is the future. A16Z and USV, for example, could certainly be wrong about web3. But they are both some of the best early stage investors of all time, and have consistently had a thesis about the future, bet on it in face of ridicule, and been proven right in the end. I frankly think both A16Z and USV genuinely believe in the future of this technology, and betting billions on it reflects that, and is not some cynical pump n dump scheme. And given their history of being correct versus the average HN commentator, my money is on them being right.
- abeppu 5y ago
  But surely one of the hallmarks of VC is to bet on multiple possible futures, only a minority of which needs to have a large payout? You could coherently believe that the web3 future is only 15% likely to arrive, but still justify investing in it -- and then once you've put in the money of _course_ you want it that future to be realized, and so you may as well act in ways that support it.

timdaub 5y ago

For fairness then I think we should consider that everyone that is anti web3 and has no crypto might have too much Google and FB stock according to your logic?

malermeister 5y ago
Both Google and FB have a clear value prop. Web3 and crypto don't, which is exactly what the poster was criticizing.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  They don't according to you and the author, but others think it does have value, which makes your point moot also.
  - emn13 5y ago
    People say that, but almost everything brought forward has non-crypto equivalents that are likely superior, and don't involve the opportunity cost of burning large amounts of fossil fuel, and redirecting huge amounts of valuable compute resources towards merely sustaining it. Maybe someday some clever smart contract thing will really take off; and maybe someday some non-PoW coin will really matter, and maybe one day all the stabilizing regulatory infrastructure will be replicated for that hypothetical coin. It could happen. But it hasn't happened yet; so far it looks more like a ponzi scheme. And even if the tech really does evolve into something truly valuable, the route to that promised land could still have some surprising ups and downs, and if coins really continue growing, real-world economic pains along the way. Also - the tech behind it all isn't the same thing as the specific instantiation of todays coins. Even if the tech finds a niche, todays coins could still turn out to be a ponzi scheme.
    - jakupovic 5y ago
      Thanks for describing how web3 will succeed that's not based on "number go up"
- timdaub 5y ago
  It's because you're comparing a company to a category. If I were to say that Coinbase and Uniswap have a clear value prop but AI doesn't, it also wouldn't make much sense as I'm not comparing apples to apples.
  - malermeister 5y ago
    Parent made that comparison, not I.
    - timdaub 5y ago
      I'm the author of the parent comment and I haven't compared FB to e.g. a category like web3. Re-read it. I pointed out the unfairness of assuming that "everyone arguing for web3 is an investor" while simultaneously ignoring that anyone opposed to those ideas may have investment-bias too. E.g. HN is known for being anti-crypto but suspects anyone pro crypto to be a crypto-invested shill. But then at the same time I think it must be considered that e.g. anyone being anti-crypto also has a stake or interest in non-crypto related endeavors. I doubt there are people on here without some form of stake simply arguing for "the universal truth".
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
Or simply sour grapes. He is right that your investments cloud your thinking, but maybe he doesn't have enough experience to understand that the desire to see the price go down against something you decided to never buy, or recently sold, is driven by the same bias.
- delegate 5y ago
  For context, I've been an early bitcoin core contributor and paid 7.5 btc for this old laptop. In all fairness, I've only profited from btc and am still invested, but it doesn't change the conclusions I've had to accept.
- recursive 5y ago
  I stick to the index funds. I have no idea how web3 shenanigans affect me. I still haven't seen a comprehensible use case for it.
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    All good reasons not to get involved. But I don't think that's as cogent an argument to convince others despite it being used as such on this board quite often.
lentil_soup 5y ago
why? it's not a binary choice
igorkraw 5y ago
Google and Facebook will simply adopt web3 if it takes off (see Facebooks existing attempts). So maybe, but less so
- pjc50 5y ago
  Exactly. Recentralisation is under-appreciated by the decentralists; decentralisation is not a magic dust, and almost all decentralised services are made more convenient by intermediaries .. who will tend to consolidate. See e.g. OpenSea for NFTs.
  - timdaub 5y ago
    If you've been following crypto currencies' history, you'll be aware that weakly decentralized (read: centralized) attempts always fall prey to decentralized protocols. The underlying principle is that a process controlled by nobody is more anti-fragile than one directly controlled by a few. Control is a liability. Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted services. E.g. Automated market makers will be much longer around than any centralized exchange like e.g. Coinbase.
    - brokensegue 5y ago
      > Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted service The exact opposite happened with email

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

For all your trivia recitations you failed on a crucial point. > POW being a race to burn as much (mostly) coal for the benefit of very few. POW is a consensus mechanism that secures the entire Bitcoin network. At times that has represented over one trillion USD worth of value. The benefit of Bitcoin's consensus is to all the money locked up in it, without it, or even if the profit to hack Bitcoin were only slightly marginal, the whole thing would fall apart, almost one trillion in value. It is not for the very few that consensus mechanisms reward, it is for the whole network (in the ideal case). So in a way, when Bitcoin is driven to astronomical prices, and the incentive to break into it becomes irresistible to the most powerful people in the world yet they still cannot accomplish it, it does validate the technology.

delegate 5y ago
The trillion dollars is a dream, it's not real.. Fugazzi. Once the price starts falling, the scared 'investors' will get rid of it at any price to reduce loss. The network won't handle the load, so the price will drop even more. It happened before with BTC, where the 'billions' evaporated in hours, it will happen to the 'trillions'.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  And the price will go up again after a great buying opportunity for the people who see the value of the technology. As has happened before.
  - lottin 5y ago
    What value do you think people see in Dogecoin, for example?
    - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      Funnily enough Dogecoin started as something completely antithetical to all the things about web3 'culture' HN hates the most. It was something to make fun of the venture capitalists wowing novices with buzzwords to part them from their money. I would say its now obviously overvalued considering the amount of money which flows there rather than to projects making real innovations. But then again, how do price a meme anyways?

djohnston 5y ago

Do you think not being invested and watching the value grow 500x over the past few years leaves you embittered and too pessimistic to see the value? Or is it only the one side of the coin that clouds judgement?

igorkraw 5y ago
I think it's both sides, but asymmetrically: I'm not being paid to not (re-)invest into crypto, and while I might make less than the true believers, there's an incentive to not be idologically skeptical (unlike some narratives, nothing stops banks, notaries, paypal etc. from simply absorbing crypto instead of being replaced by it, cryptocurency coding isn't fundamentally more difficult than other payment and distributed systems). But if you are invested into crypto, you have a double incentive for delusion: you need to convince yourself and others that it will grow so it can grow and for the price not too collapse.All while having to deal with the temptation to cash out. If real value is created, this problem doesn't exist as much. And of course, I might be biased and this might be a just so story, but I buy it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rvz 5y ago

> There is nothing special or magical about this technology... I hope this is not the same thing as the 'use rsync' response when Dropbox was introduced. [0] > I hope the whole crypto delusion crumbles as quickly as possible before it takes down the whole world economy with it. Or maybe that is exactly what must happen so that the world wakes up to reality. Maybe that is the whole point of it. Right. Let us make a start rather than continuously talking about it since it is very difficult for everyone here to ignore it and we will see yet another HN post about cryptocurrencies, Web 3, etc. How do we get rid of crypto entirely then? Stop everyone using it, shut it down and ban all of it? EDIT: Good luck attempting to ban cryptocurrencies entirely. Either way, the undeniable trend in all of this is going towards regulations for cryptocurrencies. It is not going away and we will still continue to keep talking about it and for many on this thread, it will be excruciatingly difficult to ignore it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

agumonkey 5y ago
I think 10-15% of the web3 bag is potentially a good idea to do what Dropbox did to many parts of society. Constant, transparent, ubiquitous tracking of shit. A task no one wants to do but causes a lot of friction.
Traster 5y ago
My big problem with crypto at the moment is that 99% of normal investors are just using exchanges. It’s like we’ve claimed to invent a new technology to replace rsync and it really does exist but it’s worse than rsync, and everyone who thinks they’ve bought in to the new technology are actually buying things from companies that claim to use the new technology and do genuinely have the ability to use the new technology but actually are using rsync 99.99% of the time. Or to put it another way - almost all the transactions are actually off-chain.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Eyeballing the numbers on Coingecko DEXs seem to have a lot more than 1% of the volume (and this has been steadily growing). Further, most of web3 isn't about payments and where people invest and trade in them has little to do with whether those projects have potential.

echopurity 5y ago

berberous 5y ago

>> Web3 is 'the future' if you're invested in crypto. While investors for sure talk and promote their bags, I do think this statement of yours is overly cynical and ignores the fact that professional educated investors also invested in the first place because they truly believe it is the future. A16Z and USV, for example, could certainly be wrong about web3. But they are both some of the best early stage investors of all time, and have consistently had a thesis about the future, bet on it in face of ridicule, and been proven right in the end. I frankly think both A16Z and USV genuinely believe in the future of this technology, and betting billions on it reflects that, and is not some cynical pump n dump scheme. And given their history of being correct versus the average HN commentator, my money is on them being right.

abeppu 5y ago
But surely one of the hallmarks of VC is to bet on multiple possible futures, only a minority of which needs to have a large payout? You could coherently believe that the web3 future is only 15% likely to arrive, but still justify investing in it -- and then once you've put in the money of _course_ you want it that future to be realized, and so you may as well act in ways that support it.