20 ms·

Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

231 points by zxlk21e 5y ago

axbytg 5y ago
People like sdiehl and molly white are getting 100x their normal engagement sharing unresearched crypto hitpieces in the same way NFT bros are making 3 mill for a low effort monkey picture. its just the thing that all these people attach themselves to right now.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I would separate the crypto craze from Web3 to be honest. On its face it doesn't really have to do with crypto currency at all. A centralization is otherwise no really desirable for many users.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  The concept of web3 only exists to further the goals of cryptocurrency speculation, and the proposed technology is in no way distinguishable from cryptocurrency systems, so they really aren't unboxable.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Since any currency is merely an agreement about value between at least two parties, technology itself isn't going to differentiate what is and is not a "cryptocurrency" from "something using a blockchain".
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Yep, I was pretty blissfully ignorant of Web3 while into crypto for a long time. I eventually decided to make a deeper dive into it, but I could have easily kept ignoring it.
- asow92 5y ago
  Isn't the general thesis of Web3 partially based on the principles of decentralized blockchain technologies, a lot like crypto? If so they are certainly related to each other.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Well, then they are also related to a file checksum. I believe some ideas were around ledgers providing a means to authentication, which I don't like at all. For me it was about decentralized platforms to emancipate people from large social media moguls that have enough info on user behavior that they can influence behavior. Interconnectedness would ensure that the draw of peers using the same network would vanish. At least theoretically.
  - lukifer 5y ago
    There is no shortage of snake-oil and perverse incentives in the space; but the most charitable reading is that Web3 is a diverse family of technologies attempting to fill in two gaps from Web1: (a) self-sovereign identity, and (b) distributed value exchange. Their absence fueled the rise of the quasi-feudal [0] Web 2.0: outsourcing these functions to centralized firms (Google ID, PayPal). The proposed identity models sometimes involve blockchains and smart contracts, but can also use simple private keys, or trustful P2P models like holochains. The solutions for value exchange are where crypto-tokens enter the picture (setting aside the perverse incentives of Supply attempting to create its own Demand); but one could certainly envision the same technology working with state-backed digital currencies, while still disintermediating finance middlemen (credit card fees, eBay fees, brokerage fees, etc). [0] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/11/when_it_comes_to_sec.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/11/when_it_com...
- enumjorge 5y ago
  > A centralization is otherwise no really desirable for many users. I’d argue the opposite-the benefits of decentralization are too abstract for most people to appreciate.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    I'd argue the opposite-the benefits of decentralization are clear and concise. edit: Central point of failures, ownership, privacy, etc etc.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Can you enumerate them?
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        I said "I'd argue" like I would, just as GP said "I'd argue". That means we aren't yet. I just wanted to voice that I disagreed so others could pick it up. Central point of failures, ownership, privacy, etc etc. Obvious stuff I don't want to ramble about. Only HN would try to downplay decentralization, something we know the benefits of, only to bash crypto/web3.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        Actually, the benefits of decentralization are worth weighing against the costs of decentralization. There's a reason that the process of going from web1 to web2 involved quite a bit of centralization. If web3 cannot meet its goals in a way that either maintains those benefits or creates a new benefit that substantively offsets the cost of losing them, people won't care. And if people don't care, this web3 will be as much an empty buzzword as when web3 referred to Siri and Alexa.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Web2 will still exist if it's so great. I guess we'll see who is right in the end. I for one just like the progression and the technology, and the empowerment it gives users vs operators. I guess that's lost here.
- the_gastropod 5y ago
  They're absolutely inseparable. Web3, at least as I understand its fuzzy definition, is: websites, but... state stored on the blockchain! There are virtually 0 technical reasons for doing this—decentralization and most of the "neat" examples shown (e.g., logging into arbitrary websites without signing up) can be done much better sans-blockchain, using plain old asymmetric keys. What's motivating this is people with deeply vested interest (a16z investors, in no small part) in crypto tokens (e.g. ETH) increasing in price.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    Bitcoin doesn't have the capability to do smart contracts. There are bitcoin maximalists that are pretty anti-Web3. Jack Dorsey being one of those people.
    - the_gastropod 5y ago
      Web3 depends on "crypto" (blockchains). "Crypto" does not depend on Web3.
  - smrtinsert 5y ago
    Immutable websites aren't an interesting idea?
    - the_gastropod 5y ago
      No. And, frankly, I'd think anyone with a half-a-brain and 30 seconds to think through the ramifications of such a terrible idea would be able to figure out why.
      - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Then web.archive.org wouldn't exist.
        the_gastropod 5y ago
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Agreed. To the extent that web3 means anything (in he sense that web2 meant anything), it's a descriptor of the goal, not the technology involved. The goal is to give people control of their online experience again (like in web1) without throwing out the benefits that came along with web2 (simplicity for the end user and the ability to execute online commerce). In the goal-oriented mindset, blockchain is one of many solutions that could work, but predicting it will be the one is would have been like predicting that PayPal, Google, and Amazon were going to happen at the beginning of the dot-com boom. Too much focus on the technology increases the likelihood that nothing will happen. Remember, "web3" had already been used previously to refer to online assistants like Alexa and Siri before this blockchain craze; predicting the socioeconomic future by scrying technology is a fraught game.
- acdha 5y ago
  “Web3” is a marketing campaign created to drum up demand for cryptocurrencies. That’s why the sales people blow off technical concerns claiming that the answer is to buy the tokens they conveniently already own so you can then maybe help build a system which actually works later.
  - phyalow 5y ago
    No "Web3" really isnt just a marketing campign. Look up web3.js, which had its first release in 2015, it offers a set of tools for creating and interacting with ephemeral/emergent internet architecture which is what Web3 is really about. I dont disagree there are a number of less than scrupulous people floating around selling worthless tokens, BUT to solely focus on them is to ignore a real core of interesting computer science advances.
    - acdha 5y ago
      Are you not talking about https://github.com/ethereumproject/web3.js https://github.com/ethereumproject/web3.js? That’s built on Ethereum to encourage use of their microtransaction-based service. > BUT to solely focus on them is to ignore a real core of interesting computer science advances. Examples? Specifically, which advances are you referring to which solve a problem other than “now you can do something you could do before but by paying me instead”?
      - phyalow 5y ago
        >>Examples? See: Whisper [1] and Swarm [2] [1] https://eth.wiki/concepts/whisper/whisper-overview https://eth.wiki/concepts/whisper/whisper-overview [2] https://www.ethswarm.org/ https://www.ethswarm.org/
        acdha 5y ago
        How do those innovate beyond the decades of prior art in both cases? Proof of work means Whisper will be expensive so it must have a compelling advantage which helps the applications be correspondingly more capable to compensate for that. Similarly, storage using smart contracts does not seem like a game changer compared to similar projects' weak market demand.
fullshark 5y ago
The evidence to support the claim is pretty weak, basically there's some more anti-crypto blogposts and documentaries out. I could easily make an article with the reverse claim and point out the pro-crypto blogposts and documentaries.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Sentiment in online chatter correlates with price movement. It becomes a feedback loop. Maybe the criticism is finally overwhelming people's risk functions.
  - netcan 5y ago
    Or the reverse... price drops make people more open to "crypto is bullshit" arguments.
    - fzzzy 5y ago
      Why not both?
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      This is probably right. Bitcoin is down over 50% from ATH and continues to fall. People are probably confused and in panic.
    - nefitty 5y ago
      My mistake for the lack of clarity. That's what I mean to imply.
  - fullshark 5y ago
    My point is there's not even evidence to support online chatter turning negative. Any topic that is polarizing and growing in terms of chatter will produce more positive/negative blogposts and youtube videos. I could write this blogpost substituting in anti-vax sentiment for example pretty easily.
    - 5y ago
echelon 5y ago
I disagree with the article. > [...] as crypto becomes more mainstream and people experience its downsides, critics' warnings are starting to be heard. I'm not sure that public sentiment is actually being measured or is shown to be changing, or at least there's no evidence presented here. The biggest thing happening right now is the selloff, and I think that's happening due to the economic headwinds that face all asset classes. Look at the stock market - it's not doing any better. It looks like we're in for an extremely rough 2022, and people are selling off their crypto (and everything they can) to prepare for the storm. 7% inflation on cash is nothing compared to the loss in equity valuations. Now is the time to hold cash. (I'm a crypto skeptic, so don't take this as a defense of crypto.)
- the_gastropod 5y ago
  > it's not doing any better Really? As of writing, the S&P500 is down ~10% from its all-time-high. Bitcoin is currently down over 50% of its ATH. Other cryptocurrencies are faring even worse. The stock market is doing significantly better. This is an oft frustrating topic in the world of cryptocurrency enthusiasm. The contemporary American banking and finance system is awful. It's worthy of a great many of criticisms. But crypto solves none of them, and removes the few, feeble protections that are in place to protect average everyday people.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Crypto allow new middle men to come into existence which allows them to make money the "old fashioned way".
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    Crypto-currencies make a few people win out at the cost of others, who in hindsight mistakenly "invested". The ones who won evangelize it the most, but they don't stop and think about, where that money came from. Might be an uncomfortable thought. Then you have the hopeful ones, who hope to win out in the future. Basically all driven by volatility and the believe, that they will be able to exit at the right moment. And maybe they will be, but then others are the losers. I don't find this to be an ethically OK way to act.
schleck8 5y ago
Serious question: What problem does web3 or decentralization fix? - Oligopoly of the hyperscalers -> rent server from small provider like ovh/hetzner/netcup (there is plenty). The reason AWS, Azure and GCP are so popular is because people don't care. - Privavy intrusions -> Adblocker/DNS Blocker/Turn off JS/Use browser settings This won't be fixed by web3, ad monetization and tracking won't magically stop. They exist because there is a demand. So what is being fixed?
- yawnxyz 5y ago
  I don't think the point is to fix anything; it's to have remixes/alternatives to what's already out there. However, using AWS for some things and pinning stuff to IPFS and blockchain for others does prove convenient (I don't have to worry about egress costs w/ IPFS for example)
  - acdha 5y ago
    > I don't have to worry about egress costs w/ IPFS for example IPFS isn’t magic: you have to pay for hosting somewhere - you can use it like a CDN to pick cheaper networks but that’s maintenance optimization.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      Also moving bits is free. Just throw your static content on a non-greedy host.
      - acdha 5y ago
        It's only free for a small amount of content or when you're ad supported. If you get significant traffic or care about performance, someone needs to pay for it.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        No one pays for bits moving around on the internet, for the most part. See “peering internet.” Big companies just charge you for it to prevent it from being abused.
endisneigh 5y ago
Crypto has only existed during the greatest and longest bull market of all time. Jury is still out on whether it can survive a prolonged bear market. Web3 consequently is also bound by this. If people are still interested in Web3 when crypto goes down 10% YoY forever then maybe there’s some inherent value there.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  in theory, web3 has nothing to do with cryptocurrency per se, and only relies on some blockchain technology, which is itself not bound to the value of the currency it is used by. however, the fact that too many people seem to think that there is in fact a connection between web3 and cryptocurrency just adds to the smell.
  - hervature 5y ago
    How do you reconcile the fact that most of Web3 is built on Ethereum which only works because miners ("soon to be" stakers) are rewarded for running the blockchain?
    - flokie 5y ago
      this. the incentives are bound by the underlying tech.
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      There's more and more being built outside of Ethereum and the dominance has been shrinking. As to how I explain the dominance - shrinking first mover advantage.
      - spmurrayzzz 5y ago
        even for the other DVM-eqsue networks (solana, avalanche, et al), they still have the same constraint. the incentive to secure the network (either through PoW or PoS) is inherently tied to the underlying tokenomics, the currency has to have some value for the consensus mechanism to be successful.
tiku 5y ago
Ah yeah, the perfect time to post some extra negative news, kick crypto when it's down.
rr808 5y ago
Pretty sure this is because markets are going down. if/when prices go up again headlines will be skepticism disappears as people get into crypto again.
- deleted 5y ago
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- smrtinsert 5y ago
  My hindsight pretty clearly shows I know my stuff!
- rabuse 5y ago
  Bitcoin has "crashed" every year. This is nothing new to the crypto market.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    And its crashes are generally spiraling upwards. I remember playing a drinking game with the Bitcoin ATM at Google Campus in London back in 2014 guessing if it'd go up or down when the price updated as it fell dramatically from $1000 to $300.
- rideontime 5y ago
  These critics have been around for a while. Dan Olson started researching this video long before this recent crash. You should watch it. https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g
  - rr808 5y ago
    No doubt. Its just basic financial reporting, when XYZ is going up the headlines are about how great it is, when its going down publicity is given to the bears.
duxup 5y ago
Help me out here… Does it matter? It feels like most web3 discussion is just discussion and none of the core parts exist at all…. and some folks just threw nfts and crypto currency into the bucket to have something concrete to point to. I don’t have a problem with discussion about meta discussion but I’m also skeptical that it matters/ that this is just meta about meta …. with nobody doing any of this web3 stuff.
- mistercheph 5y ago
  A refreshing and fascinating new perspective. I will set my mind to the questions you have put forth.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  No it doesn't. Ultimately people and investors vote with their feet (and money) and then stuff is built and gets traction or not. The "debate" about whether web3 is a thing or not or should be a thing is not that interesting. I guess the reason it pops up on HN so often is that Y Combinator has some money in web3 related projects: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?query=blockchain https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?query=blockchain A lot of those investments strike me indeed as unlikely to have any ROI worth reporting on. But they did get lucky with Coinbase. So, a few of those achieving some level of success is not completely unthinkable.
- rideontime 5y ago
  You’re correct. NFTs only exist to justify the blockchain’s existence.
etothepii 5y ago
This is why we launched leatherboundledger.com if NFTs have value on their own their should be appetite too store their ownership the old fashioned way.
- anon9001 5y ago
  > Based in Bermuda the Leather Bound Ledger is bound by the laws of Bermuda and thus ultimately the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The privy council can trace its origins to the Witenagemot of the old Anglo Saxon Kingdoms over 1,000 years ago. Fascinating. How much interest have you had? Blockchain NFTs do about $800k/day in sales, mostly on the Ethereum book, which is worth about $23B. How many NFTs are being add to your book per day? How much is the total value of that book worth? If your book and the value of the ownership that it annotates is larger than Ethereum, then you've really got something special going on, and all these crypto bros should probably give up and join your project. Now you might be thinking "that's not fair, this is a growth project! we just started!". Ok, maybe you've not displaced Ethereum yet, but you will soon. Are you experiencing hypergrowth? Are investors clammoring for a share of your book? If so, I'd like to learn more about what they find interesting and how I might invest. If not, it sounds like your project might not be a good investment opportunity.
  - etothepii 5y ago
    You are, of course, correct that the leather bound ledger is not currently drowning in customers. But the underlying technology, that is to say, the law of contract supports a much larger market than web3.
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ttul 5y ago
It’s pretty cool that I can send $1M to someone without a bank intervening, not to mention that nobody can stop the transaction from happening. And then they can print that out onto a sheet a paper and put it into a vault. Crypto is really great if you’re a drug dealer or some other kind of criminal.
- techwiz137 5y ago
  That's a very disgusting generalization of the average crypto user. So since I've been using cryptocurrency for 11 years now, I am definitely a criminal or drug dealer...
  - shafyy 5y ago
    What do you use it for?
    - exdsq 5y ago
      I get paid across various countries (UK, EU, US) and it's sure easier to get paid with a stable coin than fiat. Ever dealt with a US business when you only have a UK account and they're asking for your routing number? Had a one-day $1000 contract last year to write a quick training document and it took an extra day of communicating with their accounting team to find a solution. And then it takes days to transfer across systems. My normal payment route is EU -> UK -> US which has fees and takes two days, or I can get paid with a stable coin from EU -> US in around two minutes.
      - shafyy 5y ago
        I routinely get paid from various countries (including US and EU), and Wise works great for that. The fees are rather low. I think my clients would show me the door if I asked them if they can pay me in some crypto...
        exdsq 5y ago
        I use Wise but it’s still two days. If it’s a startup that’s technical in nature they’ve all been happy with crypto!
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mikewarot 5y ago
I highly recommend Dan Olsen's documentary mentioned in the article. You'll have far more situational awareness after watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  I'll second that recommendation.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > I highly recommend Dan Olsen's documentary Me too. It's been posted on HN, without much uptake, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041948 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30036937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30036937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30032406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30032406 It's one of those articles that you don't plan to watch through, because it's extremely long, but watch all of anyway, because it's extremely and consistently good. I feel that I'm going to watch all 2h18 more than once before I'm done with it.
- deleted 5y ago
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- UncleMeat 5y ago
  It'll be interesting to see how it affects the mindshare in these discussions. For a long time environmental concerns have been the primary criticism of things like NFTs but he completely ignores this criticism and instead focuses on a broader anticapitalist criticism of the financialization of everything. This idea has been in the air for a while but hasn't ever really gained traction outside of a few thinkpieces.
blhack 5y ago
Web3 is distributed DNS. You own a pointer to an asset, and you can sell that pointer to other people. The DNS was a pretty big deal. There are some people who think that web3 is a pretty big deal as well.
axg11 5y ago
The relentless number of anti-crypto and anti-web3 articles on HN is tiring. Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Skepticism is healthy, but criticism without being constructive is not. There are clearly _some_ novel ideas in the crypto space, even if you think the state of the community today is not healthy. Thousands of teams are exploring ideas on many different fronts (e.g. L1s, L2s, NFTs). Most of them will fail and be forgotten, but there is a chance that _some_ of them will create genuinely novel and interesting products. Isn't that what Hacker News should be about?
- kahrl 5y ago
  How would you like us to be constructive when discussing fraud, scams, and Ponzi schemes?
- _pmf_ 5y ago
  > Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Like I wasn't forced to participate in the resolution and the fallout of the housing crash?
- monktastic1 5y ago
  Why is criticism without being constructive unhealthy? Isn't it possible to know that something is bad without having a clear answer of what to do instead other than simply stop?
- nikanj 5y ago
  I don't support robocall spammers, even if their tech stacks might contain interesting nuggets. At best your typical crypto project is just a planet-destroying unregulated casino, at worst it's criminal fraud. I don't care that it might contain cool tech. The same goes for e.g. ransomware. It might be innovative. It's still a huge blight on humanity.
  - jsharf 5y ago
    Usually I hate skeptical mean comments like this on hackernews. Right or wrong, there's a certain level of empathy missing. And yet... In this case I find myself guiltily agreeing.
apples_oranges 5y ago
I like crypto, at least it's interesting. But what still annoys me is that I have to pay so much for sending money. It's hilarious, SEPA and other methods are cheaper. I bet Western Union is cheaper, and they have airport prices...
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Those ETH gas fees are crazy. I recently had to pay ~25 USD to throw a few hundred bucks worth of TIME on wonderland.money (do not recommend if you like making money). I recently sent 1000 USD to Tunisia via Western Union using my debit card, and the fee was $7.
  - latchkey 5y ago
    The receiver in Tunisia needed to provide proof of identity to claim that money. If they are a foreigner in Tunisia, they might also need to provide a passport, valid visa, etc., as well as deal with someone in a foreign language. I'd prefer my money to go to my phone and not have to deal with anyone in person or give up my personal information, especially over small amounts like $1000. ETH is L1. There are alternative L2 blockchains that cost pennies to send funds.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  This is why BNB got huge. It's ETH but more centralized and with less fees. Made it easier to play with smart contracts. Made it easier to scam people too.
danschumann 5y ago
Is it possible to have a decentralized country? Take the united states... people are basically free to sneak in, without becoming residents, without "downloading the American OS into their brains" aka citizenship. Now, what if all countries allowed this? Or, what if a "decrentralized country" offered citizenship with no actual geographic location? Does American citizenship offer people benefits overseas? For example hostage situations? What if there was a better, decentralized country, that would come to your aid?
- danschumann 5y ago
  What is a religion, if not an extension of citizenship overlayed onto existing governments? It's basically additional rules you follow, with some benefits of membership.
  - danschumann 5y ago
    Moreover, what is the fundamental difference between a government and a religion? Should governments be compatible with religions, and should religions be compatible with governments?
- alexyz12 5y ago
  how are they supposed to come to your aid through hostile territory? its so much easier to protect you when you are within the borders.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > how are they supposed to come to your aid through hostile territory? Isn't that what american taxpayers fund the US military for?
- oreally 5y ago
  You underestimate things quite a bit. Decentralized ideologies are what's being practiced right now; and in fact, it's part of the USA's geopolitical strategy of pushing democracy onto countries, whether subtle or otherwise. And in any case, any individual should be focused on empowering other individuals to the point they can at least vote with their own wallets and migrate to another country or group should the need arise.
gfodor 5y ago
Diehl regularly neglects disclosing his conflict of interest when railing on crypto - he is CTO of a centralized block chain company that will be selling to governments and central banks.
- rideontime 5y ago
  And everybody pumping crypto owns crypto, but that isn’t a COI?
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - gfodor 5y ago
    ~it is~ But they don’t hide it
can16358p 5y ago
...of which will be forgotten when prices start rising again, mooning into ATH.
m3kw9 5y ago
Is it they listen because the price is down? I find how much they listen highly correlates with crypto prices.
aresant 5y ago
The part I don't understand about the crypto fear-uncertainty-doubt crowd is how binary they think the outcomes are going to be NFTs - yes you can right click and save as. No they haven't figured out at scale how to attach the image / work to the ledger. Yes hype and pyramiding is a fucking disaster and people would go to prison trying those antics in any other industry. But digital art, music, & culture has a real deficit in ownership, provenance, etc. Cryptocurrency - Yes there is pyramiding and wash trading galore. Maybe tether has inflated the entire market by a million percent. Yes proof of work uses too much energy. But gov't money printing, censorship, property rights, transfer complexity etc has left a vaccum for something that even resembles a currency that serves the individual. As others have noted many times over we are very early, it is unlikely that we've yet seen what will be a broadly used solution but there is real product market fit here already illustrating massive demand. On HN in particular how do you build something to serve to that end?
- spamizbad 5y ago
  > NFTs - yes you can right click and save as. No they haven't figured out at scale how to attach the image / work to the ledger. Yes hype and pyramiding is a fucking disaster and people would go to prison trying those antics in any other industry. But digital art, music, & culture has a real deficit in ownership, provenance, etc. There are several NFT "thought leaders" who have casually floated the idea of eliminating "right-click save-as" functionality for NFT'd images. So it seems to be slowly evolving in the direction of a DRM scheme.
  - boopboopbadoop 5y ago
    Their solution is to change browser functionality? Good luck.
    - spamizbad 5y ago
      I think the idea was lobbying browser makers to do so. You could of course still pull the image in via cURL or whatever so its pretty dumb.
  - 5y ago
boringg 5y ago
If anything the equity collapse happening in real time and in crypto might allow for the hype to deflate and something valuable to grow. Think of it like the regrowth in a forest. Hopefully all the hucksters will be so burnt that they won't touch the space again allowing space for those projects people deem to be valuable to grow. It sounds naive, but maybe thats the way forward. that's my hopefully take
- trenchgun 5y ago
  That's basically also Tim O'reilly's take. > Keep in mind that it was still early when the dot-com bubble popped. Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet, nor had the iPhone and Android. Online payments were in their infancy. No Twitter or Facebook. No AWS and cloud computing. Most of what we rely on today didn’t yet exist. > I suspect it will be the same for crypto. So much is yet to be created. Let’s focus on the parts of the Web3 vision that aren’t about easy riches, on solving hard problems in trust, identity, and decentralized finance. And above all, let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in, where, as Matthew Yglesias put it when talking about housing inequality, “a society becomes wealthy over time by accumulating a stock of long-lasting capital goods.” If, as Sal Delle Palme argues, Web3 heralds the birth of a new economic system, let’s make it one that increases true wealth—not just paper wealth for those lucky enough to get in early but actual life-changing goods and services that make life better for everyone.” https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excited-about-web3/ https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit... And I tend to agree.
- danaris 5y ago
  It's had over a decade now for "something valuable to grow". There is still no use case for cryptocurrency (that I've ever heard of) that isn't either done at least as well without it, anarcho-capitalist fantasy, or purely about making money off having more of it.
spoonjim 5y ago
I’m sad because it was keeping a lot of people out of competing with me.
AlexandrB 5y ago
On this note. This recent video is probably the most detailed and incisive critique of cryptocurrency and NFTs that I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g It not only covers the technical limitations, but also the ideological flaws.
boredumb 5y ago
My vague understanding is Web3 will be distributed assets being loaded by people who have wallets that can receive small funds for distributing them and users that have wallets that can receive a split of the proceeds from providers that are orchestrating ideas+assets into user data that is valuable for marketers. I don't actually see why people are skeptical of this, people who don't care about "data ownership", "distributed web", etc have incentive by some "free" money, decent amount of political incentive for some people to move to less "centralized" authorities of discussion and online socializing, and a growing political incentive for "privacy and ownership of your own data". Whether you care or agree that it's a problem, or if it's solving any of the issues and arguments has very little bearing on actual adoption of this stuff when being able to get "paid" (even in shitcoins) for seeing ads/seeding assets/doing computations when AFK, is alluring and marketable to a lot of people and I think there are enough smart folks that want to figure out a way to get a more distributed web along with a profit model that I don't know if i'm as bearish on this iteration of "web3" as the comments on HN tend to portray.
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toss1 5y ago
The article ends with: >>Even with the increased amplification of skepticism, the crypto and Web3 space continue to grow rapidly. Only time will tell if we will have a new decentralized blockchain-based utopia or if the skeptics were correct all along. So basically, this is now just falling off the "Peak Of Inflated Expectations" into the "Trough of Disillusionment" on the Gartner Technology Hype Cycle graph[0][1]. Perhaps notable that it is going through the cycle so quickly. I expected a more substantive analysis, but it seems to be merely pointing to the name-calling ("a solution in search of a problem". "con job") of a few skeptics. Actually I now recall lasers being called "a solution in search of a problem" for several decades, but now they are ubiquitous, although it does mean that the initial laser manufacturers were not necessarily the big winners. [0] https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/research/images/illustrations/researchmethodology-illustration-hype-cycle.jpg https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/research/image... [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...
mrkentutbabi 5y ago
I like crypto because I don’t like my government. When I like my government I don’t have to like crypto.
mgaunard 5y ago
The whole point of crypto is putting back trading in the hands of the people, rather than let banks, funds and other institutions be in control. In practice it results in one of the biggest retail markets. That's good for everyone involved.
n_time 5y ago
Free markets and network effects leads to the accumulation of wealth and power by the few. Piketty did the hard work of documenting this. Getting away from theory and into business strategy, network effects are an often discussed strategy in start-up culture to become a "unicorn". What is a unicorn? Usually the winner of a battle to seize a market leveraging "disruption" brought on by new technology. A truly decentralized, unregulated network will therefore lead to more power being seized by fewer. That is, a decentralized financial network will tend to lead towards the centralization of the value represented within that network. Without the ability for democracy to step in and regulate that network. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are an inherently anti-government project, through placing all governments in a single authoritarian perspective and insisting that they must be decentralized; "crypto" is fundamentally anti-democratic. Throwing the baby out with the bath water.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  The great thing about crypto is that anyone can make a coin. Crypto is not anti-democratic. It's not pro-democratic either. It's simply egalitarian in the classical sense of the word.
helen___keller 5y ago
A simple maxim: web3 cannot succeed when the underlying currency is a good investment. Actual web3 users, if they exist, have to convert IRL money to coin to power a dApp. Thus, the price of coin rising against IRL money represents inflation in the cost of using the dApp. In this fashion, web3 is similar to housing. The enthusiasts want it to be a great investment, but to be best for fulfilling human needs it should be a poor investment. The only difference is you can’t opt out of needing shelter.
yodegge 5y ago
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edwnj 5y ago
All this FUD is some ludite commie nonsense.. its one thing to see articles and stuff like this written by the bbc or something but tech people? Really? You guys don't see how solving byzantines general problem is ground breaking? You guys don't see any potential in decentralised networks resistant to sybil attacks? No value in being able to "own" things in the digital world? You guys couldn't imagine any uses for something like Zero Knowledge Proofs? Its just stupid. Most of you guys are over payed dorks who lack any sort of vision or imagination.. You don't need to be genius to see that we are in a euphoric bubble when jpegs of apes as selling for millions and its pretty cool to point out/warn people of the scammers and charlatans in this space.. but to dismiss the cambrian explosion of innovation happening here.. I mean.. I'm baffled.. tech people? I know this sounds harsh but the sheer stupidity in a phrase like "blockhains are a solution in search of a problem"...
antonber 5y ago
I am confident that people's concerns about crypto's impact on the environment is simply jealousy masked by virtue. What they are saying when they say "ban crypto" is actually - let's bankrupt these bastards who made all this money off crypto. Jealousy is a powerful force.
- 2fast4you 5y ago
  Is the environmental impact not real or you just don't care?
  - antonber 5y ago
    First, it assumes crypto is "stuck in time" and not evolving. Proof-of-Stake + Layer 2s are orders of magnitude more efficient. Like any new tech, it gets more efficient over time. Second, there's a distinction between energy usage and carbon emissions. Energy usage with zero carbon emissions is not bad for the environment. Bitcoin mining is perfect for carbon neutral energy sources because it can be mined anywhere, which is why Bitcoin mining energy sources are between 39% and 73% carbon neutral and growing [1]. Third, I think there is real value in a widely-used currency that is not centrally controlled. There is some cost to do this, manifest in the form of energy consumption. The fiat banking system also consumes substantial energy, and I would be curious to see a complete comparison. In general, I get a sentiment of "it's ridiculous all these people got rich" followed by "there's a reason to justify my outrage" and, without further research, calls to ban an entire technology. [1] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
BTCOG 5y ago
Yet another friendly reminder that only Bitcoin is real decentralized and freedom empowering finance. Saying that you cannot participate is reaching the same level of saying that you cannot participate in the use of the internet. In ten years or so, you'll likely be having to use Bitcoin whether you stand against it now or not. Just as someone that said the internet was a scam or a fad back in 1999-2003 era of the web. People who are anti-cryptocurrency often like to conflate Bitcoin with all these other scam coins. It's true that all of them are a scam besides bitcoin and that none of them have security or decentralization. There is only Bitcoin. It does not matter what is agreed upon, only the truth matters. Only the math matters. Only code matters.
b3nji 5y ago
A healthy criticism of things is great, however, I feel context needs to be brought to the table too. What is this Bitcoin being compared against? We need to understand the current fiat system, how is fiat money is made? How exactly is the USD brought into the world? Many of you might be quite shocked on how the current system works, all based on debt, or just arbitrary printed to suite the needs of big government. Its quite interesting. Did you know 40% of all USD in existence was create last year based on nothing for instance? Fiat, and crypto have their merits, and failures. Some obvious issues, others underlying, and needing to be addressed.

231 points by zxlk21e 5y ago

People like sdiehl and molly white are getting 100x their normal engagement sharing unresearched crypto hitpieces in the same way NFT bros are making 3 mill for a low effort monkey picture. its just the thing that all these people attach themselves to right now.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I would separate the crypto craze from Web3 to be honest. On its face it doesn't really have to do with crypto currency at all. A centralization is otherwise no really desirable for many users.

moron4hire 5y ago
The concept of web3 only exists to further the goals of cryptocurrency speculation, and the proposed technology is in no way distinguishable from cryptocurrency systems, so they really aren't unboxable.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Since any currency is merely an agreement about value between at least two parties, technology itself isn't going to differentiate what is and is not a "cryptocurrency" from "something using a blockchain".
cableshaft 5y ago
Yep, I was pretty blissfully ignorant of Web3 while into crypto for a long time. I eventually decided to make a deeper dive into it, but I could have easily kept ignoring it.
asow92 5y ago
Isn't the general thesis of Web3 partially based on the principles of decentralized blockchain technologies, a lot like crypto? If so they are certainly related to each other.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Well, then they are also related to a file checksum. I believe some ideas were around ledgers providing a means to authentication, which I don't like at all. For me it was about decentralized platforms to emancipate people from large social media moguls that have enough info on user behavior that they can influence behavior. Interconnectedness would ensure that the draw of peers using the same network would vanish. At least theoretically.
- lukifer 5y ago
  There is no shortage of snake-oil and perverse incentives in the space; but the most charitable reading is that Web3 is a diverse family of technologies attempting to fill in two gaps from Web1: (a) self-sovereign identity, and (b) distributed value exchange. Their absence fueled the rise of the quasi-feudal [0] Web 2.0: outsourcing these functions to centralized firms (Google ID, PayPal). The proposed identity models sometimes involve blockchains and smart contracts, but can also use simple private keys, or trustful P2P models like holochains. The solutions for value exchange are where crypto-tokens enter the picture (setting aside the perverse incentives of Supply attempting to create its own Demand); but one could certainly envision the same technology working with state-backed digital currencies, while still disintermediating finance middlemen (credit card fees, eBay fees, brokerage fees, etc). [0] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/11/when_it_comes_to_sec.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/11/when_it_com...
enumjorge 5y ago
> A centralization is otherwise no really desirable for many users. I’d argue the opposite-the benefits of decentralization are too abstract for most people to appreciate.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  I'd argue the opposite-the benefits of decentralization are clear and concise. edit: Central point of failures, ownership, privacy, etc etc.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Can you enumerate them?
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      I said "I'd argue" like I would, just as GP said "I'd argue". That means we aren't yet. I just wanted to voice that I disagreed so others could pick it up. Central point of failures, ownership, privacy, etc etc. Obvious stuff I don't want to ramble about. Only HN would try to downplay decentralization, something we know the benefits of, only to bash crypto/web3.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        Actually, the benefits of decentralization are worth weighing against the costs of decentralization. There's a reason that the process of going from web1 to web2 involved quite a bit of centralization. If web3 cannot meet its goals in a way that either maintains those benefits or creates a new benefit that substantively offsets the cost of losing them, people won't care. And if people don't care, this web3 will be as much an empty buzzword as when web3 referred to Siri and Alexa.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Web2 will still exist if it's so great. I guess we'll see who is right in the end. I for one just like the progression and the technology, and the empowerment it gives users vs operators. I guess that's lost here.
the_gastropod 5y ago
They're absolutely inseparable. Web3, at least as I understand its fuzzy definition, is: websites, but... state stored on the blockchain! There are virtually 0 technical reasons for doing this—decentralization and most of the "neat" examples shown (e.g., logging into arbitrary websites without signing up) can be done much better sans-blockchain, using plain old asymmetric keys. What's motivating this is people with deeply vested interest (a16z investors, in no small part) in crypto tokens (e.g. ETH) increasing in price.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't have the capability to do smart contracts. There are bitcoin maximalists that are pretty anti-Web3. Jack Dorsey being one of those people.
  - the_gastropod 5y ago
    Web3 depends on "crypto" (blockchains). "Crypto" does not depend on Web3.
- smrtinsert 5y ago
  Immutable websites aren't an interesting idea?
  - the_gastropod 5y ago
    No. And, frankly, I'd think anyone with a half-a-brain and 30 seconds to think through the ramifications of such a terrible idea would be able to figure out why.
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      Then web.archive.org wouldn't exist.
      - the_gastropod 5y ago
shadowgovt 5y ago
Agreed. To the extent that web3 means anything (in he sense that web2 meant anything), it's a descriptor of the goal, not the technology involved. The goal is to give people control of their online experience again (like in web1) without throwing out the benefits that came along with web2 (simplicity for the end user and the ability to execute online commerce). In the goal-oriented mindset, blockchain is one of many solutions that could work, but predicting it will be the one is would have been like predicting that PayPal, Google, and Amazon were going to happen at the beginning of the dot-com boom. Too much focus on the technology increases the likelihood that nothing will happen. Remember, "web3" had already been used previously to refer to online assistants like Alexa and Siri before this blockchain craze; predicting the socioeconomic future by scrying technology is a fraught game.
acdha 5y ago
“Web3” is a marketing campaign created to drum up demand for cryptocurrencies. That’s why the sales people blow off technical concerns claiming that the answer is to buy the tokens they conveniently already own so you can then maybe help build a system which actually works later.
- phyalow 5y ago
  No "Web3" really isnt just a marketing campign. Look up web3.js, which had its first release in 2015, it offers a set of tools for creating and interacting with ephemeral/emergent internet architecture which is what Web3 is really about. I dont disagree there are a number of less than scrupulous people floating around selling worthless tokens, BUT to solely focus on them is to ignore a real core of interesting computer science advances.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Are you not talking about https://github.com/ethereumproject/web3.js https://github.com/ethereumproject/web3.js? That’s built on Ethereum to encourage use of their microtransaction-based service. > BUT to solely focus on them is to ignore a real core of interesting computer science advances. Examples? Specifically, which advances are you referring to which solve a problem other than “now you can do something you could do before but by paying me instead”?
    - phyalow 5y ago
      >>Examples? See: Whisper [1] and Swarm [2] [1] https://eth.wiki/concepts/whisper/whisper-overview https://eth.wiki/concepts/whisper/whisper-overview [2] https://www.ethswarm.org/ https://www.ethswarm.org/
      - acdha 5y ago
        How do those innovate beyond the decades of prior art in both cases? Proof of work means Whisper will be expensive so it must have a compelling advantage which helps the applications be correspondingly more capable to compensate for that. Similarly, storage using smart contracts does not seem like a game changer compared to similar projects' weak market demand.

fullshark 5y ago

The evidence to support the claim is pretty weak, basically there's some more anti-crypto blogposts and documentaries out. I could easily make an article with the reverse claim and point out the pro-crypto blogposts and documentaries.

nefitty 5y ago
Sentiment in online chatter correlates with price movement. It becomes a feedback loop. Maybe the criticism is finally overwhelming people's risk functions.
- netcan 5y ago
  Or the reverse... price drops make people more open to "crypto is bullshit" arguments.
  - fzzzy 5y ago
    Why not both?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    This is probably right. Bitcoin is down over 50% from ATH and continues to fall. People are probably confused and in panic.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    My mistake for the lack of clarity. That's what I mean to imply.
- fullshark 5y ago
  My point is there's not even evidence to support online chatter turning negative. Any topic that is polarizing and growing in terms of chatter will produce more positive/negative blogposts and youtube videos. I could write this blogpost substituting in anti-vax sentiment for example pretty easily.
  - 5y ago

echelon 5y ago

I disagree with the article. > [...] as crypto becomes more mainstream and people experience its downsides, critics' warnings are starting to be heard. I'm not sure that public sentiment is actually being measured or is shown to be changing, or at least there's no evidence presented here. The biggest thing happening right now is the selloff, and I think that's happening due to the economic headwinds that face all asset classes. Look at the stock market - it's not doing any better. It looks like we're in for an extremely rough 2022, and people are selling off their crypto (and everything they can) to prepare for the storm. 7% inflation on cash is nothing compared to the loss in equity valuations. Now is the time to hold cash. (I'm a crypto skeptic, so don't take this as a defense of crypto.)

the_gastropod 5y ago
> it's not doing any better Really? As of writing, the S&P500 is down ~10% from its all-time-high. Bitcoin is currently down over 50% of its ATH. Other cryptocurrencies are faring even worse. The stock market is doing significantly better. This is an oft frustrating topic in the world of cryptocurrency enthusiasm. The contemporary American banking and finance system is awful. It's worthy of a great many of criticisms. But crypto solves none of them, and removes the few, feeble protections that are in place to protect average everyday people.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  Crypto allow new middle men to come into existence which allows them to make money the "old fashioned way".
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  Crypto-currencies make a few people win out at the cost of others, who in hindsight mistakenly "invested". The ones who won evangelize it the most, but they don't stop and think about, where that money came from. Might be an uncomfortable thought. Then you have the hopeful ones, who hope to win out in the future. Basically all driven by volatility and the believe, that they will be able to exit at the right moment. And maybe they will be, but then others are the losers. I don't find this to be an ethically OK way to act.

schleck8 5y ago

Serious question: What problem does web3 or decentralization fix? - Oligopoly of the hyperscalers -> rent server from small provider like ovh/hetzner/netcup (there is plenty). The reason AWS, Azure and GCP are so popular is because people don't care. - Privavy intrusions -> Adblocker/DNS Blocker/Turn off JS/Use browser settings This won't be fixed by web3, ad monetization and tracking won't magically stop. They exist because there is a demand. So what is being fixed?

yawnxyz 5y ago
I don't think the point is to fix anything; it's to have remixes/alternatives to what's already out there. However, using AWS for some things and pinning stuff to IPFS and blockchain for others does prove convenient (I don't have to worry about egress costs w/ IPFS for example)
- acdha 5y ago
  > I don't have to worry about egress costs w/ IPFS for example IPFS isn’t magic: you have to pay for hosting somewhere - you can use it like a CDN to pick cheaper networks but that’s maintenance optimization.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    Also moving bits is free. Just throw your static content on a non-greedy host.
    - acdha 5y ago
      It's only free for a small amount of content or when you're ad supported. If you get significant traffic or care about performance, someone needs to pay for it.
      - withinboredom 5y ago
        No one pays for bits moving around on the internet, for the most part. See “peering internet.” Big companies just charge you for it to prevent it from being abused.

endisneigh 5y ago

Crypto has only existed during the greatest and longest bull market of all time. Jury is still out on whether it can survive a prolonged bear market. Web3 consequently is also bound by this. If people are still interested in Web3 when crypto goes down 10% YoY forever then maybe there’s some inherent value there.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
in theory, web3 has nothing to do with cryptocurrency per se, and only relies on some blockchain technology, which is itself not bound to the value of the currency it is used by. however, the fact that too many people seem to think that there is in fact a connection between web3 and cryptocurrency just adds to the smell.
- hervature 5y ago
  How do you reconcile the fact that most of Web3 is built on Ethereum which only works because miners ("soon to be" stakers) are rewarded for running the blockchain?
  - flokie 5y ago
    this. the incentives are bound by the underlying tech.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    There's more and more being built outside of Ethereum and the dominance has been shrinking. As to how I explain the dominance - shrinking first mover advantage.
    - spmurrayzzz 5y ago
      even for the other DVM-eqsue networks (solana, avalanche, et al), they still have the same constraint. the incentive to secure the network (either through PoW or PoS) is inherently tied to the underlying tokenomics, the currency has to have some value for the consensus mechanism to be successful.

tiku 5y ago

Ah yeah, the perfect time to post some extra negative news, kick crypto when it's down.

rr808 5y ago

Pretty sure this is because markets are going down. if/when prices go up again headlines will be skepticism disappears as people get into crypto again.

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smrtinsert 5y ago
My hindsight pretty clearly shows I know my stuff!
rabuse 5y ago
Bitcoin has "crashed" every year. This is nothing new to the crypto market.
- exdsq 5y ago
  And its crashes are generally spiraling upwards. I remember playing a drinking game with the Bitcoin ATM at Google Campus in London back in 2014 guessing if it'd go up or down when the price updated as it fell dramatically from $1000 to $300.
rideontime 5y ago
These critics have been around for a while. Dan Olson started researching this video long before this recent crash. You should watch it. https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g
- rr808 5y ago
  No doubt. Its just basic financial reporting, when XYZ is going up the headlines are about how great it is, when its going down publicity is given to the bears.

duxup 5y ago

Help me out here… Does it matter? It feels like most web3 discussion is just discussion and none of the core parts exist at all…. and some folks just threw nfts and crypto currency into the bucket to have something concrete to point to. I don’t have a problem with discussion about meta discussion but I’m also skeptical that it matters/ that this is just meta about meta …. with nobody doing any of this web3 stuff.

mistercheph 5y ago
A refreshing and fascinating new perspective. I will set my mind to the questions you have put forth.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
No it doesn't. Ultimately people and investors vote with their feet (and money) and then stuff is built and gets traction or not. The "debate" about whether web3 is a thing or not or should be a thing is not that interesting. I guess the reason it pops up on HN so often is that Y Combinator has some money in web3 related projects: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?query=blockchain https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?query=blockchain A lot of those investments strike me indeed as unlikely to have any ROI worth reporting on. But they did get lucky with Coinbase. So, a few of those achieving some level of success is not completely unthinkable.
rideontime 5y ago
You’re correct. NFTs only exist to justify the blockchain’s existence.

etothepii 5y ago

This is why we launched leatherboundledger.com if NFTs have value on their own their should be appetite too store their ownership the old fashioned way.

anon9001 5y ago
> Based in Bermuda the Leather Bound Ledger is bound by the laws of Bermuda and thus ultimately the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The privy council can trace its origins to the Witenagemot of the old Anglo Saxon Kingdoms over 1,000 years ago. Fascinating. How much interest have you had? Blockchain NFTs do about $800k/day in sales, mostly on the Ethereum book, which is worth about $23B. How many NFTs are being add to your book per day? How much is the total value of that book worth? If your book and the value of the ownership that it annotates is larger than Ethereum, then you've really got something special going on, and all these crypto bros should probably give up and join your project. Now you might be thinking "that's not fair, this is a growth project! we just started!". Ok, maybe you've not displaced Ethereum yet, but you will soon. Are you experiencing hypergrowth? Are investors clammoring for a share of your book? If so, I'd like to learn more about what they find interesting and how I might invest. If not, it sounds like your project might not be a good investment opportunity.
- etothepii 5y ago
  You are, of course, correct that the leather bound ledger is not currently drowning in customers. But the underlying technology, that is to say, the law of contract supports a much larger market than web3.

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ttul 5y ago

It’s pretty cool that I can send $1M to someone without a bank intervening, not to mention that nobody can stop the transaction from happening. And then they can print that out onto a sheet a paper and put it into a vault. Crypto is really great if you’re a drug dealer or some other kind of criminal.

techwiz137 5y ago
That's a very disgusting generalization of the average crypto user. So since I've been using cryptocurrency for 11 years now, I am definitely a criminal or drug dealer...
- shafyy 5y ago
  What do you use it for?
  - exdsq 5y ago
    I get paid across various countries (UK, EU, US) and it's sure easier to get paid with a stable coin than fiat. Ever dealt with a US business when you only have a UK account and they're asking for your routing number? Had a one-day $1000 contract last year to write a quick training document and it took an extra day of communicating with their accounting team to find a solution. And then it takes days to transfer across systems. My normal payment route is EU -> UK -> US which has fees and takes two days, or I can get paid with a stable coin from EU -> US in around two minutes.
    - shafyy 5y ago
      I routinely get paid from various countries (including US and EU), and Wise works great for that. The fees are rather low. I think my clients would show me the door if I asked them if they can pay me in some crypto...
      - exdsq 5y ago
        I use Wise but it’s still two days. If it’s a startup that’s technical in nature they’ve all been happy with crypto!

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mikewarot 5y ago

I highly recommend Dan Olsen's documentary mentioned in the article. You'll have far more situational awareness after watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
I'll second that recommendation.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> I highly recommend Dan Olsen's documentary Me too. It's been posted on HN, without much uptake, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30041948 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30036937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30036937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30032406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30032406 It's one of those articles that you don't plan to watch through, because it's extremely long, but watch all of anyway, because it's extremely and consistently good. I feel that I'm going to watch all 2h18 more than once before I'm done with it.
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UncleMeat 5y ago
It'll be interesting to see how it affects the mindshare in these discussions. For a long time environmental concerns have been the primary criticism of things like NFTs but he completely ignores this criticism and instead focuses on a broader anticapitalist criticism of the financialization of everything. This idea has been in the air for a while but hasn't ever really gained traction outside of a few thinkpieces.

blhack 5y ago

Web3 is distributed DNS. You own a pointer to an asset, and you can sell that pointer to other people. The DNS was a pretty big deal. There are some people who think that web3 is a pretty big deal as well.

axg11 5y ago

The relentless number of anti-crypto and anti-web3 articles on HN is tiring. Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Skepticism is healthy, but criticism without being constructive is not. There are clearly _some_ novel ideas in the crypto space, even if you think the state of the community today is not healthy. Thousands of teams are exploring ideas on many different fronts (e.g. L1s, L2s, NFTs). Most of them will fail and be forgotten, but there is a chance that _some_ of them will create genuinely novel and interesting products. Isn't that what Hacker News should be about?

kahrl 5y ago
How would you like us to be constructive when discussing fraud, scams, and Ponzi schemes?
_pmf_ 5y ago
> Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Like I wasn't forced to participate in the resolution and the fallout of the housing crash?
monktastic1 5y ago
Why is criticism without being constructive unhealthy? Isn't it possible to know that something is bad without having a clear answer of what to do instead other than simply stop?
nikanj 5y ago
I don't support robocall spammers, even if their tech stacks might contain interesting nuggets. At best your typical crypto project is just a planet-destroying unregulated casino, at worst it's criminal fraud. I don't care that it might contain cool tech. The same goes for e.g. ransomware. It might be innovative. It's still a huge blight on humanity.
- jsharf 5y ago
  Usually I hate skeptical mean comments like this on hackernews. Right or wrong, there's a certain level of empathy missing. And yet... In this case I find myself guiltily agreeing.

apples_oranges 5y ago

I like crypto, at least it's interesting. But what still annoys me is that I have to pay so much for sending money. It's hilarious, SEPA and other methods are cheaper. I bet Western Union is cheaper, and they have airport prices...

devoutsalsa 5y ago
Those ETH gas fees are crazy. I recently had to pay ~25 USD to throw a few hundred bucks worth of TIME on wonderland.money (do not recommend if you like making money). I recently sent 1000 USD to Tunisia via Western Union using my debit card, and the fee was $7.
- latchkey 5y ago
  The receiver in Tunisia needed to provide proof of identity to claim that money. If they are a foreigner in Tunisia, they might also need to provide a passport, valid visa, etc., as well as deal with someone in a foreign language. I'd prefer my money to go to my phone and not have to deal with anyone in person or give up my personal information, especially over small amounts like $1000. ETH is L1. There are alternative L2 blockchains that cost pennies to send funds.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
This is why BNB got huge. It's ETH but more centralized and with less fees. Made it easier to play with smart contracts. Made it easier to scam people too.

danschumann 5y ago

Is it possible to have a decentralized country? Take the united states... people are basically free to sneak in, without becoming residents, without "downloading the American OS into their brains" aka citizenship. Now, what if all countries allowed this? Or, what if a "decrentralized country" offered citizenship with no actual geographic location? Does American citizenship offer people benefits overseas? For example hostage situations? What if there was a better, decentralized country, that would come to your aid?

danschumann 5y ago
What is a religion, if not an extension of citizenship overlayed onto existing governments? It's basically additional rules you follow, with some benefits of membership.
- danschumann 5y ago
  Moreover, what is the fundamental difference between a government and a religion? Should governments be compatible with religions, and should religions be compatible with governments?
alexyz12 5y ago
how are they supposed to come to your aid through hostile territory? its so much easier to protect you when you are within the borders.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > how are they supposed to come to your aid through hostile territory? Isn't that what american taxpayers fund the US military for?
oreally 5y ago
You underestimate things quite a bit. Decentralized ideologies are what's being practiced right now; and in fact, it's part of the USA's geopolitical strategy of pushing democracy onto countries, whether subtle or otherwise. And in any case, any individual should be focused on empowering other individuals to the point they can at least vote with their own wallets and migrate to another country or group should the need arise.

gfodor 5y ago

Diehl regularly neglects disclosing his conflict of interest when railing on crypto - he is CTO of a centralized block chain company that will be selling to governments and central banks.

rideontime 5y ago
And everybody pumping crypto owns crypto, but that isn’t a COI?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gfodor 5y ago
  ~it is~ But they don’t hide it

can16358p 5y ago

...of which will be forgotten when prices start rising again, mooning into ATH.

m3kw9 5y ago

Is it they listen because the price is down? I find how much they listen highly correlates with crypto prices.

aresant 5y ago

The part I don't understand about the crypto fear-uncertainty-doubt crowd is how binary they think the outcomes are going to be NFTs - yes you can right click and save as. No they haven't figured out at scale how to attach the image / work to the ledger. Yes hype and pyramiding is a fucking disaster and people would go to prison trying those antics in any other industry. But digital art, music, & culture has a real deficit in ownership, provenance, etc. Cryptocurrency - Yes there is pyramiding and wash trading galore. Maybe tether has inflated the entire market by a million percent. Yes proof of work uses too much energy. But gov't money printing, censorship, property rights, transfer complexity etc has left a vaccum for something that even resembles a currency that serves the individual. As others have noted many times over we are very early, it is unlikely that we've yet seen what will be a broadly used solution but there is real product market fit here already illustrating massive demand. On HN in particular how do you build something to serve to that end?

spamizbad 5y ago
> NFTs - yes you can right click and save as. No they haven't figured out at scale how to attach the image / work to the ledger. Yes hype and pyramiding is a fucking disaster and people would go to prison trying those antics in any other industry. But digital art, music, & culture has a real deficit in ownership, provenance, etc. There are several NFT "thought leaders" who have casually floated the idea of eliminating "right-click save-as" functionality for NFT'd images. So it seems to be slowly evolving in the direction of a DRM scheme.
- boopboopbadoop 5y ago
  Their solution is to change browser functionality? Good luck.
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    I think the idea was lobbying browser makers to do so. You could of course still pull the image in via cURL or whatever so its pretty dumb.
- 5y ago

boringg 5y ago

If anything the equity collapse happening in real time and in crypto might allow for the hype to deflate and something valuable to grow. Think of it like the regrowth in a forest. Hopefully all the hucksters will be so burnt that they won't touch the space again allowing space for those projects people deem to be valuable to grow. It sounds naive, but maybe thats the way forward. that's my hopefully take

trenchgun 5y ago
That's basically also Tim O'reilly's take. > Keep in mind that it was still early when the dot-com bubble popped. Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet, nor had the iPhone and Android. Online payments were in their infancy. No Twitter or Facebook. No AWS and cloud computing. Most of what we rely on today didn’t yet exist. > I suspect it will be the same for crypto. So much is yet to be created. Let’s focus on the parts of the Web3 vision that aren’t about easy riches, on solving hard problems in trust, identity, and decentralized finance. And above all, let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in, where, as Matthew Yglesias put it when talking about housing inequality, “a society becomes wealthy over time by accumulating a stock of long-lasting capital goods.” If, as Sal Delle Palme argues, Web3 heralds the birth of a new economic system, let’s make it one that increases true wealth—not just paper wealth for those lucky enough to get in early but actual life-changing goods and services that make life better for everyone.” https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excited-about-web3/ https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit... And I tend to agree.
danaris 5y ago
It's had over a decade now for "something valuable to grow". There is still no use case for cryptocurrency (that I've ever heard of) that isn't either done at least as well without it, anarcho-capitalist fantasy, or purely about making money off having more of it.

spoonjim 5y ago

I’m sad because it was keeping a lot of people out of competing with me.

AlexandrB 5y ago

On this note. This recent video is probably the most detailed and incisive critique of cryptocurrency and NFTs that I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g It not only covers the technical limitations, but also the ideological flaws.

boredumb 5y ago

My vague understanding is Web3 will be distributed assets being loaded by people who have wallets that can receive small funds for distributing them and users that have wallets that can receive a split of the proceeds from providers that are orchestrating ideas+assets into user data that is valuable for marketers. I don't actually see why people are skeptical of this, people who don't care about "data ownership", "distributed web", etc have incentive by some "free" money, decent amount of political incentive for some people to move to less "centralized" authorities of discussion and online socializing, and a growing political incentive for "privacy and ownership of your own data". Whether you care or agree that it's a problem, or if it's solving any of the issues and arguments has very little bearing on actual adoption of this stuff when being able to get "paid" (even in shitcoins) for seeing ads/seeding assets/doing computations when AFK, is alluring and marketable to a lot of people and I think there are enough smart folks that want to figure out a way to get a more distributed web along with a profit model that I don't know if i'm as bearish on this iteration of "web3" as the comments on HN tend to portray.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

toss1 5y ago

The article ends with: >>Even with the increased amplification of skepticism, the crypto and Web3 space continue to grow rapidly. Only time will tell if we will have a new decentralized blockchain-based utopia or if the skeptics were correct all along. So basically, this is now just falling off the "Peak Of Inflated Expectations" into the "Trough of Disillusionment" on the Gartner Technology Hype Cycle graph[0][1]. Perhaps notable that it is going through the cycle so quickly. I expected a more substantive analysis, but it seems to be merely pointing to the name-calling ("a solution in search of a problem". "con job") of a few skeptics. Actually I now recall lasers being called "a solution in search of a problem" for several decades, but now they are ubiquitous, although it does mean that the initial laser manufacturers were not necessarily the big winners. [0] https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/research/images/illustrations/researchmethodology-illustration-hype-cycle.jpg https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/research/image... [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...

mrkentutbabi 5y ago

I like crypto because I don’t like my government. When I like my government I don’t have to like crypto.

mgaunard 5y ago

The whole point of crypto is putting back trading in the hands of the people, rather than let banks, funds and other institutions be in control. In practice it results in one of the biggest retail markets. That's good for everyone involved.

n_time 5y ago

Free markets and network effects leads to the accumulation of wealth and power by the few. Piketty did the hard work of documenting this. Getting away from theory and into business strategy, network effects are an often discussed strategy in start-up culture to become a "unicorn". What is a unicorn? Usually the winner of a battle to seize a market leveraging "disruption" brought on by new technology. A truly decentralized, unregulated network will therefore lead to more power being seized by fewer. That is, a decentralized financial network will tend to lead towards the centralization of the value represented within that network. Without the ability for democracy to step in and regulate that network. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are an inherently anti-government project, through placing all governments in a single authoritarian perspective and insisting that they must be decentralized; "crypto" is fundamentally anti-democratic. Throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
The great thing about crypto is that anyone can make a coin. Crypto is not anti-democratic. It's not pro-democratic either. It's simply egalitarian in the classical sense of the word.

helen___keller 5y ago

A simple maxim: web3 cannot succeed when the underlying currency is a good investment. Actual web3 users, if they exist, have to convert IRL money to coin to power a dApp. Thus, the price of coin rising against IRL money represents inflation in the cost of using the dApp. In this fashion, web3 is similar to housing. The enthusiasts want it to be a great investment, but to be best for fulfilling human needs it should be a poor investment. The only difference is you can’t opt out of needing shelter.

yodegge 5y ago

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edwnj 5y ago

All this FUD is some ludite commie nonsense.. its one thing to see articles and stuff like this written by the bbc or something but tech people? Really? You guys don't see how solving byzantines general problem is ground breaking? You guys don't see any potential in decentralised networks resistant to sybil attacks? No value in being able to "own" things in the digital world? You guys couldn't imagine any uses for something like Zero Knowledge Proofs? Its just stupid. Most of you guys are over payed dorks who lack any sort of vision or imagination.. You don't need to be genius to see that we are in a euphoric bubble when jpegs of apes as selling for millions and its pretty cool to point out/warn people of the scammers and charlatans in this space.. but to dismiss the cambrian explosion of innovation happening here.. I mean.. I'm baffled.. tech people? I know this sounds harsh but the sheer stupidity in a phrase like "blockhains are a solution in search of a problem"...

antonber 5y ago

I am confident that people's concerns about crypto's impact on the environment is simply jealousy masked by virtue. What they are saying when they say "ban crypto" is actually - let's bankrupt these bastards who made all this money off crypto. Jealousy is a powerful force.

2fast4you 5y ago
Is the environmental impact not real or you just don't care?
- antonber 5y ago
  First, it assumes crypto is "stuck in time" and not evolving. Proof-of-Stake + Layer 2s are orders of magnitude more efficient. Like any new tech, it gets more efficient over time. Second, there's a distinction between energy usage and carbon emissions. Energy usage with zero carbon emissions is not bad for the environment. Bitcoin mining is perfect for carbon neutral energy sources because it can be mined anywhere, which is why Bitcoin mining energy sources are between 39% and 73% carbon neutral and growing [1]. Third, I think there is real value in a widely-used currency that is not centrally controlled. There is some cost to do this, manifest in the form of energy consumption. The fiat banking system also consumes substantial energy, and I would be curious to see a complete comparison. In general, I get a sentiment of "it's ridiculous all these people got rich" followed by "there's a reason to justify my outrage" and, without further research, calls to ban an entire technology. [1] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

BTCOG 5y ago

Yet another friendly reminder that only Bitcoin is real decentralized and freedom empowering finance. Saying that you cannot participate is reaching the same level of saying that you cannot participate in the use of the internet. In ten years or so, you'll likely be having to use Bitcoin whether you stand against it now or not. Just as someone that said the internet was a scam or a fad back in 1999-2003 era of the web. People who are anti-cryptocurrency often like to conflate Bitcoin with all these other scam coins. It's true that all of them are a scam besides bitcoin and that none of them have security or decentralization. There is only Bitcoin. It does not matter what is agreed upon, only the truth matters. Only the math matters. Only code matters.

b3nji 5y ago

A healthy criticism of things is great, however, I feel context needs to be brought to the table too. What is this Bitcoin being compared against? We need to understand the current fiat system, how is fiat money is made? How exactly is the USD brought into the world? Many of you might be quite shocked on how the current system works, all based on debt, or just arbitrary printed to suite the needs of big government. Its quite interesting. Did you know 40% of all USD in existence was create last year based on nothing for instance? Fiat, and crypto have their merits, and failures. Some obvious issues, others underlying, and needing to be addressed.