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IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” an

IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. (Please don’t respond talking about some “$ECO coin” or such business.)

dragonwriter 5y ago
> IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. It's not consistent with what Web3-invested VCs want people to take from that, though.
- pxc 5y ago
  > That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. In an ironic sense, definitely. It shows that they have better sense of the real value of web3 than the people pushing it
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Gen Z hates crypto and web3[1]. They are also partaking in the backlash. [1]: From my experience a lot of the crypto “community” online is Gen Z, but most of Gen Z is not pro-crypto. All thumbs are fingers sort of logic.
  - raunak 5y ago
    You are very right. Tiktok loves NFTs, but only NFTTok, which is a very tiny subsection of Gen Z. On the other hand, the other 99% of gen z regularly comments about how they’ve “stolen” your NFT after screenshotting it.
Barrin92 5y ago
and in so far as gen-z is 'pro-crypto' at least from my experience it's large nihilistic attitude towards economic progress and having adopted a casino-capitalism style mentality where gambling on the newest crypto-asset is just a means to get rich quick. Which to be fair isn't much different from the general attitude towards it in any other generation.
moonchrome 5y ago
Even if it had nothing to do with climate change I find the entire space to be deplorable. I see it as a heavy negative in terms of things it enables (mostly scams and crime), it creates other issues (like significantly contributing to GPU shortages), people involved in it are like some cult similar to other MLM schemes. I've been interested in it around the time ETH came into picture, smart contracts sounded interesting. Seeing how it played out in practice convinces me the tech is fundamentally inferior to status quo for the things they propose it solves, and at this point I think it's been long enough to judge. The only people I know using crypto in personal circles use it to dodge income taxes, order drugs or gamble (not particularly judgemental towards either, just super annoyed how it keeps polluting public discourse).
- jasonhansel 5y ago
  Agreed. Making money off crypto is a lot like making money from running a casino or offering payday loans...there's plenty of demand, and you can get rich doing it, but the societal costs seem to outweigh the potential benefits.
- runarberg 5y ago
  When one observes technological solutions failing to address societal problems time and time again, one has to wonder if societal solutions might be better suited.
- MarkPNeyer 5y ago
  > the tech is fundamentally inferior to status quo for the things they propose it solves, and at this point I think it's been long enough to judge. What do you know about bitcoin's lightning network? How would you respond to people in el salvador who are very happy with it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVVZXUFItZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVVZXUFItZY
  - rekoil 5y ago
    Or Loopring, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism. Complete Ethereum L1s move to Proof of Stake, and use one of the above for actual transactions and you have a super fast decentralised way of making transactions that's orders of magnitude more energy efficient than Bitcoin.
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
Cost/benefit and proof of stake. Pull your head out of the sand.
mattdesl 5y ago
also may be an indicator that the average person doesn’t realize crypto need not be tied to high energy use. it is like saying trains are a bad idea because they burn coal - but now years later, we have far more energy efficient trains.
- rvs-ie 5y ago
  Bad analogue. When trains ran on coal there was pretty much no alternative. Also more economical trains generally were in preference. There is alternative to crypto _today_ which does not require unreasonable amounts of energy. Cryptobros don't care just like they don't care that crypto energy consumption only seems to go up.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Look at railway electrification: this has been happening since the late 1800s; in 2012 electric railways only accounted for 1/3 of the world's tracks. Point being: decarbonisation typically does not happen overnight, and this shouldn't stop us from decrying an entire technology. The scale of ETH's decarbonisation feels slow by our typical software standards (although it is not a single piece of versioned software nor owned by a single company) - but shorter relative to some other global-scale decarbonisation efforts; it is slated to merge this year. No matter... there is no need to engage with PoW if this is your primary concern. If desired, Mozilla could have led a stronger force toward PoS chains by only accepting crypto donations in (say) Tezos, rather than just closing the possibility of donations entirely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

dragonwriter 5y ago

> IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. It's not consistent with what Web3-invested VCs want people to take from that, though.

pxc 5y ago
> That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. In an ironic sense, definitely. It shows that they have better sense of the real value of web3 than the people pushing it
uncomputation 5y ago
Gen Z hates crypto and web3[1]. They are also partaking in the backlash. [1]: From my experience a lot of the crypto “community” online is Gen Z, but most of Gen Z is not pro-crypto. All thumbs are fingers sort of logic.
- raunak 5y ago
  You are very right. Tiktok loves NFTs, but only NFTTok, which is a very tiny subsection of Gen Z. On the other hand, the other 99% of gen z regularly comments about how they’ve “stolen” your NFT after screenshotting it.

Barrin92 5y ago

and in so far as gen-z is 'pro-crypto' at least from my experience it's large nihilistic attitude towards economic progress and having adopted a casino-capitalism style mentality where gambling on the newest crypto-asset is just a means to get rich quick. Which to be fair isn't much different from the general attitude towards it in any other generation.

moonchrome 5y ago

Even if it had nothing to do with climate change I find the entire space to be deplorable. I see it as a heavy negative in terms of things it enables (mostly scams and crime), it creates other issues (like significantly contributing to GPU shortages), people involved in it are like some cult similar to other MLM schemes. I've been interested in it around the time ETH came into picture, smart contracts sounded interesting. Seeing how it played out in practice convinces me the tech is fundamentally inferior to status quo for the things they propose it solves, and at this point I think it's been long enough to judge. The only people I know using crypto in personal circles use it to dodge income taxes, order drugs or gamble (not particularly judgemental towards either, just super annoyed how it keeps polluting public discourse).

jasonhansel 5y ago
Agreed. Making money off crypto is a lot like making money from running a casino or offering payday loans...there's plenty of demand, and you can get rich doing it, but the societal costs seem to outweigh the potential benefits.
runarberg 5y ago
When one observes technological solutions failing to address societal problems time and time again, one has to wonder if societal solutions might be better suited.
MarkPNeyer 5y ago
> the tech is fundamentally inferior to status quo for the things they propose it solves, and at this point I think it's been long enough to judge. What do you know about bitcoin's lightning network? How would you respond to people in el salvador who are very happy with it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVVZXUFItZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVVZXUFItZY
- rekoil 5y ago
  Or Loopring, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism. Complete Ethereum L1s move to Proof of Stake, and use one of the above for actual transactions and you have a super fast decentralised way of making transactions that's orders of magnitude more energy efficient than Bitcoin.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

Cost/benefit and proof of stake. Pull your head out of the sand.

mattdesl 5y ago

also may be an indicator that the average person doesn’t realize crypto need not be tied to high energy use. it is like saying trains are a bad idea because they burn coal - but now years later, we have far more energy efficient trains.

rvs-ie 5y ago
Bad analogue. When trains ran on coal there was pretty much no alternative. Also more economical trains generally were in preference. There is alternative to crypto _today_ which does not require unreasonable amounts of energy. Cryptobros don't care just like they don't care that crypto energy consumption only seems to go up.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Look at railway electrification: this has been happening since the late 1800s; in 2012 electric railways only accounted for 1/3 of the world's tracks. Point being: decarbonisation typically does not happen overnight, and this shouldn't stop us from decrying an entire technology. The scale of ETH's decarbonisation feels slow by our typical software standards (although it is not a single piece of versioned software nor owned by a single company) - but shorter relative to some other global-scale decarbonisation efforts; it is slated to merge this year. No matter... there is no need to engage with PoW if this is your primary concern. If desired, Mozilla could have led a stronger force toward PoS chains by only accepting crypto donations in (say) Tezos, rather than just closing the possibility of donations entirely.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]