14 ms·

Web3.0 Must Be Destroyed

56 points by bendtheblock 4y ago

yebyen 4y ago
> what happens when BTC does reach 100k? — presumably most will sell including the grifters in Miami, Dubai and so on LOL – if you think this is true, you don't know anything about greed or emotions. (To be a bit less obscurant, I'm saying they are both either boundless or unquantifiable. There's nothing special about 100K btc, nothing more special than 69K USD BTC.)
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Perhaps the author should not have chosen an exact number, but there will be a critical volume of sell-off which will trigger a further, massive sell-off from the majority token holders. The same principle that drove people to buy it in the first place will force them to sell. FOMO If you don't think this critical sell-off volume exists, then you are the one who misunderstands greed and emotion.
  - thebean11 4y ago
    People used to say this would happen at $1. Bitcoin price crashes every few years but so far it has bounced back higher.
  - yebyen 4y ago
    FWIW I am for sure the one misunderstanding, I get burned by this every time. Sell low, buy high – that's the name of the game isn't it?
- bendtheblock 4y ago
  author here - this is a reference to 'laser eyes', which means you believe BTC will reach 100k https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laser-eyes-bitcoin-trend-laserrayuntil100k https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laser-eyes-bitcoin-trend-lase...
  - yebyen 4y ago
    I am glad someone knows what "laser eyes" mean, I did not get that reference or know that meme. FWIW, I do not have laser eyes and I would not bet against BTC reaching 100k. But that does not mean I believe BTC should be the leader or that it's the best cryptocurrency, so that is not meant as an endorsement in any way. Great article, by the way. I have just skimmed most of it, I am knee-jerking, but my strongest impression after reading through most of it for the first time is "I'm with Keanu here" with the caveat that I do believe there are a handful of good Web3 projects out there, I'm not going to name one because I don't want to detract from your article, which is actually very good IMHO. (Edit: I guess I mean, I'm with queersamus, whose quote appears under the picture of Keanu...)
    - bendtheblock 4y ago
      Agreed it could reach 100k - main point is that a currency needs to be spent and BTC won't be by definition because most are into it as speculation. But wanted also to say thank you - means a lot to get the positive feedback.
      - yebyen 4y ago
        There's a lot of wrong ideas out there and we don't get people to have the right idea by shutting down discussion about it. I like your article better than Cory Doctorow's take, how's that for positive feedback? I'm sorry that it got flagged off the front page!
        bendtheblock 4y ago
        Yes shame about the flagging. And thanks!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikewarot 4y ago
There's no need for action, just wait it out. The "stable" coins used to route around US laws are starting to lose their peg. When Tether goes, it'll all drop at least 90%, if not 99.95%, as all the margins on the offshore exchanges get called.
- delaaxe 4y ago
  > at least 90% There's no middle ground with stablecoins, they're either worth $1 or zero.
  - the_gastropod 4y ago
    Hmm? Terra is currently trading at $0.91. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UST-USD https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UST-USD
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      I think the point is a stablecoin's value is in being stable. Otherwise it's just another coin. So if a stablecoin can't retain its peg, then it has no practical utility and it's effectively worth zero.
      - samatman 4y ago
        It's effectively worth what you can sell it for, so 0.91USD for Terra. This reflects a market consensus that there's about an 80% chance that it won't regain the peg, if you think about it.
        BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        Or it's an indication of how many people have sunk cash into the coin and are stuck HODLing in the hopes of it recovering, which... makes it just like any other coin.
  - PretzelPirate 4y ago
vmception 4y ago
> The thing here that NFTs references an asset. I find this part amusing. It makes me wonder if it is even possible to actually plagiarize an NFT. Like, sure if you copy a picture shown in an NFT, reupload it and wrap it in a new NFT, that's plaigarism, but the way around that is even simpler! Just deploy the new NFT and reference the location of the existing picture! If people are willing to purchase your NFT anyway, who cares? Its like buying a picture frame, holding it up over your face and looking through it to a picture hung 5 feet away. If people are willing to pay for that, then sell picture frames. NFT are the picture frames. The difference is that I find it merely amusing, while this person finds it like their missionary duty to stop the practice. But why? Who cares? The contract address of the digital picture frame is different and can't be plaigarized, its up to the consumer to discern. If consumers don't want to..... then sell digital picture frames! There are overlapping similarities to a selling a TV as well, or cable box, you can set the channel to one thing elsewhere, or you can change the channel. NFTs are the TV or cable box here. I think the most similarities would be like those digital photo frames you can buy at stores, the ones w/ tiny android computers in them that show a digital photo that you set. That's the NFT, except the NFT is completely digital, so its more akin to a digital digital photo frame. Maybe Matt Levine could write it that way and more people would get it that way. But maybe you're already perceiving the world correctly, congratulations, you perceive the world correctly. The market is saying sell those, so sell those.
- jgtrosh 4y ago
  I believe this is exactly the question Steve Mould asks the Legal Eagle in a recent video about NFTs [1]. Short answer: it's technically feasible but it would probably be deemed illegal according to the normal legal system. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaTd0hDtkI&t=1231 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaTd0hDtkI&t=1231
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    > Short answer: it's technically feasible but it's probably copyright infringement according to the normal legal system. That makes zero sense. If you're posting a new NFT that just references the existing URL, you aren't copying anything. Unfortunately I can't watch the video right now. Care to summarize the reasoning, here? Because it escapes me.
chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
A lot of people don't like these new financial toys like NFTs and tokens. But to say "they should be destroyed" seems... extreme? Just let nerds do their thing online. I don't tell furries to go fuck off because I find their subculture objectionable.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  > Just let nerds do their thing online. Except these grifters, scam artists, and rug pullers are fleecing more than just a few nerds and it isn't limited to just the online world.
- minimaxir 4y ago
  > Just let nerds do their thing online. Web3 is the unusual case where it has significant effects offline that affects people other than nerds, namely in the form of energy consumption and global warning.
  - solotronics 4y ago
    Christmas lights use 6.6 tWh per year. It's estimated that Bitcoin mining uses about the same amount of electricity as running clothes dryers. I never hear the argument that clothes drying is destroying the world.
    - agentultra 4y ago
      It's more than that and growing fast. There's also the yearly upgrades miners go through which shed piles of ASICs and extraneous e-waste which is, itself, constantly growing. It's using energy fast enough that it's holding us back from green energy deployments. There are studies picking this apart that you can Google if you're interested. The gist of it is that every unit of green energy added to the grid is gobbled up by miners forcing legitimate users of energy to rely on coal. PoW coins have expanded our use of coal over the last 10 years rather than reduced it. Update: "But proof of stake..." is green-washing. Claiming that something will be green in the future does not make it green today. Nor does it wash away the fact that this claim has been made for the last 6 years and has been delay yet again. It's release will likely continue to be "some time in the near future," indefinitely.
rvz 4y ago
> Newer revisions of the tech, such as Algorand, may have promise and deal with some of the issues I mentioned. So as long was we have Meta [0], Stripe [1], Signal [2] and others [3], [4] are still using them, it is NOT going to be 100% guaranteed to be destroyed and totally going away then? The die hard anti-crypto extreme who think it will be totally completely and totally destroyed are just as wrong as the religious crypto maximalists who think all projects are going to succeed to the moon. Don't be either of them. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/09/instagram-testing-nfts-select-creators https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/09/instagram-testing-nfts-sel... [1] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [2] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In... [3] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-hryvnia-pilot-launched-by-tascombank-and-bitt-on-stellar-301443773.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-... [4] https://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moneygram-announces-innovative-partnership-stellar-development https://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...
- the_gastropod 4y ago
  The New York Yankies, The Monarchy of the UK, McDonalds, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks, Paramount, and countless other massive organizations participated in the Beanie Baby craze. I guess you could argue that Beanie Babies aren't "completely and totally destroyed", but... it certainly took quite the tumble, despite these heavy-hitters participating.
  - rvz 4y ago
    I'm sure it would have ended quicker than the beanie babies did if cryptocurrencies had totally 'no use case'. As with those toys, it is safe to say that they had absolutely no use case and was all pure speculation. So why has cryptocurrencies lasted longer than that?, or even better is that why companies like Stripe re-entered again after dropping Bitcoin and using another cryptocurrency? Which that is the whole point of why I quoted this: > Newer revisions of the tech, such as Algorand, may have promise and deal with some of the issues I mentioned.
alfl 4y ago
This "isn't even wrong."[0] Users should own their own data, period. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
pmurt7 4y ago
"What I don't like must be destroyed." I hate cancel culture even more than web3.
- bendtheblock 4y ago
  author here - just a catchy title. nothing to do with cancel culture my man...
  - pheew 4y ago
    This seems a bit disingenuous since you conclude the post with: > I believe there is a moral imperative to destroy web3 and to protect those that have been infected
    - bendtheblock 4y ago
      ah yes - good point
kristianpaul 4y ago
There's still self hosting.
golergka 4y ago
> 2) no one spends BTC I'm awfully tired of these completely misinformed blog posts that seem to reflect HN's collective delusion about bitcoin. I don't know about US, but the whole drug trade, from the largest transactions to street level, have transitioned to crypto in Eastern Europe and at least few Middle Eastern countries. More and more of my friends who have never been interested in crypto as a ponzi scheme are using USDT to send and receive money across borders as their banks are hit with sanctions. If you don't see something, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
- bendtheblock 4y ago
  author here - ok was an exaggeration. what I mean is most folks are in it for pure speculation
  - iskander 4y ago
    The core financial infrastructure, like DAI and Curve, is weirdly robust: it's already been through quite a few crashes that would probably wipe out traditional financial plumbing. So, at the very least, keeping stablecoins on Curve and AAVE is a way to hedge against other kinds of systemic risks to the financial sector. This feels a little crazy in the US (where we don't anticipate systemic collapse) but less so in many other countries.
chairmanmow 4y ago
So the author registered this "webtwoboomer.com" domain and says their mission is "Poisoning my brain with web3 so you don’t have to." Skepticism is fine, but the bias is cringe. I can't see what value the author is adding to a thoughtful discussion, these web3 antagonists always think they are making some great points that no one has considered, but they aren't and they have a hard time moving past it. I don't see the value in this biased blog.
- bendtheblock 4y ago
  author here - just a suitable rebuttal to the pro-crypto hype everywhere in the media and social media
mdoms 4y ago
Stopped reading at "mansplaining".
mcantelon 4y ago
>web3 is a culmination of late capitalist grift, ironic meming, libertarianism and mansplaining, all resting on bad tech that is damaging the planet ... Proof of Stake is an alternative to validating transactions that doesn’t involve setting fire to the earth The very first sentence of this piece is dishonest: blanketly condemning "all" related tech as environmentally devastating. Later on in the piece it's admitted that innovations like Proof of Stake solve the problem of needless energy consumption. >To actually use this stuff is quite difficult, even the most simple thing, like buying something. Yeah, scanning a QR code with your phone - as one needs to do to buy something online with a mobile wallet - is super hard. ;) This article seems to be a cavalcade of shallow and dishonest criticism.
ant1oz 4y ago
That was the least technical analysis on web3, just a rant. The guy is like... DAO can only be wrapped in a corporation... Have you heard of Cooperative business structures where each employee have an equal vote and own the business? Same with Authentication... The idea of web3 is decentralisation... Once the app is operational, there are no more server fees. It's always online - heard of arwave? Web3 is not crypto man... Web3 is a design blueprint that is based on decentralised databases, decentralised Auth and decentralised payments and decentralised storage. It is way harder to implement web3 solutions today than web2. Travel back in 2002 at the early days of web2, and look at how miserable it was to create a webapp. There are actually no valid point, the guy doesn't even go technical, while talking about a technical subject- and the read is not short. The concept of web3 is that no more dependencies on AWS, Azure and cloud premises- which are all controlled by govt. Tor is Free??? What? Please share your server provider... As far as I know, you still have to host your TOR website on a physical server, and pay for it. Ahah. Maybe you talk about access? Well ipfs is free, arwave is free and Ethereum is free then. This article is a piece of opinionated incompetent crap written in good English.
40four 4y ago
I tried to make it through the article, but I bailed about halfway through, and skimmed the rest. I’m having trouble buying into the sentiment. It seems like just a big long negative rant about Bitcoin, NFTs, & crypto/ blockchain in general. Kind of just rehashing all the typical straw man criticisms of ‘crypto bros’ or early adopters. While these things are an aspect of Web 3.0, they are not the end all be all. There was no mention of other decentralized technologies. Things like Mastodon or Matrix. There is a huge selection of self-hostable, decentralized software projects available to us now. Nextcloud might be another good example. The point is we want to move away from highly centralized closed source services, that track our every move for profit, and we have no recourse over if something goes bad. We want to embrace open source, freely available software that we are in full control of. Web 3.0 is more than just crypto currency. I think the title of this would make more sense if it said, “Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Must Be Destroyed”.
agentultra 4y ago
Agreed. The political foundations that have permeated its design are intolerable alone. Austrian School, "sound money," economics put the liberty of the individual above that of society. The entire community walks and talks like a fascist movement: they celebrate masculinity and "strong leaders," authoritarianism and oligarchy, they see themselves as superior and righteous, and above the law. It's the preferred way to fund blockades, white nationalist movements, etc. Let alone that the technology is hot garbage and shouldn't even be out of the prototype stage. Hasn't your mother taught you not to eval a strangers code on your computer? Well that's what a smart contract does and it handles financial assets too. If you can read and understand proofs the attempts to formalize these machines have produced reams and reams of theorems and work in order to try and make this safe(r)... yet hackers continue to siphon off trillions of dollars in attack after attack. If the proof is so complex that you can't understand it then it's a sign your sniffing down the wrong path. But that doesn't even matter. Most of web3 tech is only good enough to pull off the grift. I suspect that's why most scammers have moved on to target holders of cryptoassets rather than old folks and banks: it's easier, less risky, and way more profitable. So go ahead, spend 20k and invest in an NFT and flex on all your socials. If you have already I guarantee you're on someone's list. If you're interested in following along with how much money has been lost, stolen, scammed, and simply disappeared: https://web3isgoinggreat.com https://web3isgoinggreat.com
uuee 4y ago
If you like this kind of topic Luke Smith's work might interest you... https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz Talks a lot about RSS, simple/minimalist websites, decentralization, fediverse, linux etc.

56 points by bendtheblock 4y ago

> what happens when BTC does reach 100k? — presumably most will sell including the grifters in Miami, Dubai and so on LOL – if you think this is true, you don't know anything about greed or emotions. (To be a bit less obscurant, I'm saying they are both either boundless or unquantifiable. There's nothing special about 100K btc, nothing more special than 69K USD BTC.)

algoatecorn 4y ago
Perhaps the author should not have chosen an exact number, but there will be a critical volume of sell-off which will trigger a further, massive sell-off from the majority token holders. The same principle that drove people to buy it in the first place will force them to sell. FOMO If you don't think this critical sell-off volume exists, then you are the one who misunderstands greed and emotion.
- thebean11 4y ago
  People used to say this would happen at $1. Bitcoin price crashes every few years but so far it has bounced back higher.
- yebyen 4y ago
  FWIW I am for sure the one misunderstanding, I get burned by this every time. Sell low, buy high – that's the name of the game isn't it?
bendtheblock 4y ago
author here - this is a reference to 'laser eyes', which means you believe BTC will reach 100k https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laser-eyes-bitcoin-trend-laserrayuntil100k https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laser-eyes-bitcoin-trend-lase...
- yebyen 4y ago
  I am glad someone knows what "laser eyes" mean, I did not get that reference or know that meme. FWIW, I do not have laser eyes and I would not bet against BTC reaching 100k. But that does not mean I believe BTC should be the leader or that it's the best cryptocurrency, so that is not meant as an endorsement in any way. Great article, by the way. I have just skimmed most of it, I am knee-jerking, but my strongest impression after reading through most of it for the first time is "I'm with Keanu here" with the caveat that I do believe there are a handful of good Web3 projects out there, I'm not going to name one because I don't want to detract from your article, which is actually very good IMHO. (Edit: I guess I mean, I'm with queersamus, whose quote appears under the picture of Keanu...)
  - bendtheblock 4y ago
    Agreed it could reach 100k - main point is that a currency needs to be spent and BTC won't be by definition because most are into it as speculation. But wanted also to say thank you - means a lot to get the positive feedback.
    - yebyen 4y ago
      There's a lot of wrong ideas out there and we don't get people to have the right idea by shutting down discussion about it. I like your article better than Cory Doctorow's take, how's that for positive feedback? I'm sorry that it got flagged off the front page!
      - bendtheblock 4y ago
        Yes shame about the flagging. And thanks!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mikewarot 4y ago

There's no need for action, just wait it out. The "stable" coins used to route around US laws are starting to lose their peg. When Tether goes, it'll all drop at least 90%, if not 99.95%, as all the margins on the offshore exchanges get called.

delaaxe 4y ago
> at least 90% There's no middle ground with stablecoins, they're either worth $1 or zero.
- the_gastropod 4y ago
  Hmm? Terra is currently trading at $0.91. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UST-USD https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UST-USD
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    I think the point is a stablecoin's value is in being stable. Otherwise it's just another coin. So if a stablecoin can't retain its peg, then it has no practical utility and it's effectively worth zero.
    - samatman 4y ago
      It's effectively worth what you can sell it for, so 0.91USD for Terra. This reflects a market consensus that there's about an 80% chance that it won't regain the peg, if you think about it.
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        Or it's an indication of how many people have sunk cash into the coin and are stuck HODLing in the hopes of it recovering, which... makes it just like any other coin.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago

vmception 4y ago

> The thing here that NFTs references an asset. I find this part amusing. It makes me wonder if it is even possible to actually plagiarize an NFT. Like, sure if you copy a picture shown in an NFT, reupload it and wrap it in a new NFT, that's plaigarism, but the way around that is even simpler! Just deploy the new NFT and reference the location of the existing picture! If people are willing to purchase your NFT anyway, who cares? Its like buying a picture frame, holding it up over your face and looking through it to a picture hung 5 feet away. If people are willing to pay for that, then sell picture frames. NFT are the picture frames. The difference is that I find it merely amusing, while this person finds it like their missionary duty to stop the practice. But why? Who cares? The contract address of the digital picture frame is different and can't be plaigarized, its up to the consumer to discern. If consumers don't want to..... then sell digital picture frames! There are overlapping similarities to a selling a TV as well, or cable box, you can set the channel to one thing elsewhere, or you can change the channel. NFTs are the TV or cable box here. I think the most similarities would be like those digital photo frames you can buy at stores, the ones w/ tiny android computers in them that show a digital photo that you set. That's the NFT, except the NFT is completely digital, so its more akin to a digital digital photo frame. Maybe Matt Levine could write it that way and more people would get it that way. But maybe you're already perceiving the world correctly, congratulations, you perceive the world correctly. The market is saying sell those, so sell those.

jgtrosh 4y ago
I believe this is exactly the question Steve Mould asks the Legal Eagle in a recent video about NFTs [1]. Short answer: it's technically feasible but it would probably be deemed illegal according to the normal legal system. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaTd0hDtkI&t=1231 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaTd0hDtkI&t=1231
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  > Short answer: it's technically feasible but it's probably copyright infringement according to the normal legal system. That makes zero sense. If you're posting a new NFT that just references the existing URL, you aren't copying anything. Unfortunately I can't watch the video right now. Care to summarize the reasoning, here? Because it escapes me.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago

A lot of people don't like these new financial toys like NFTs and tokens. But to say "they should be destroyed" seems... extreme? Just let nerds do their thing online. I don't tell furries to go fuck off because I find their subculture objectionable.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> Just let nerds do their thing online. Except these grifters, scam artists, and rug pullers are fleecing more than just a few nerds and it isn't limited to just the online world.
minimaxir 4y ago
> Just let nerds do their thing online. Web3 is the unusual case where it has significant effects offline that affects people other than nerds, namely in the form of energy consumption and global warning.
- solotronics 4y ago
  Christmas lights use 6.6 tWh per year. It's estimated that Bitcoin mining uses about the same amount of electricity as running clothes dryers. I never hear the argument that clothes drying is destroying the world.
  - agentultra 4y ago
    It's more than that and growing fast. There's also the yearly upgrades miners go through which shed piles of ASICs and extraneous e-waste which is, itself, constantly growing. It's using energy fast enough that it's holding us back from green energy deployments. There are studies picking this apart that you can Google if you're interested. The gist of it is that every unit of green energy added to the grid is gobbled up by miners forcing legitimate users of energy to rely on coal. PoW coins have expanded our use of coal over the last 10 years rather than reduced it. Update: "But proof of stake..." is green-washing. Claiming that something will be green in the future does not make it green today. Nor does it wash away the fact that this claim has been made for the last 6 years and has been delay yet again. It's release will likely continue to be "some time in the near future," indefinitely.

rvz 4y ago

> Newer revisions of the tech, such as Algorand, may have promise and deal with some of the issues I mentioned. So as long was we have Meta [0], Stripe [1], Signal [2] and others [3], [4] are still using them, it is NOT going to be 100% guaranteed to be destroyed and totally going away then? The die hard anti-crypto extreme who think it will be totally completely and totally destroyed are just as wrong as the religious crypto maximalists who think all projects are going to succeed to the moon. Don't be either of them. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/09/instagram-testing-nfts-select-creators https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/09/instagram-testing-nfts-sel... [1] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [2] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In... [3] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-hryvnia-pilot-launched-by-tascombank-and-bitt-on-stellar-301443773.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-electronic-... [4] https://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moneygram-announces-innovative-partnership-stellar-development https://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

the_gastropod 4y ago
The New York Yankies, The Monarchy of the UK, McDonalds, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks, Paramount, and countless other massive organizations participated in the Beanie Baby craze. I guess you could argue that Beanie Babies aren't "completely and totally destroyed", but... it certainly took quite the tumble, despite these heavy-hitters participating.
- rvz 4y ago
  I'm sure it would have ended quicker than the beanie babies did if cryptocurrencies had totally 'no use case'. As with those toys, it is safe to say that they had absolutely no use case and was all pure speculation. So why has cryptocurrencies lasted longer than that?, or even better is that why companies like Stripe re-entered again after dropping Bitcoin and using another cryptocurrency? Which that is the whole point of why I quoted this: > Newer revisions of the tech, such as Algorand, may have promise and deal with some of the issues I mentioned.

alfl 4y ago

This "isn't even wrong."[0] Users should own their own data, period. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

pmurt7 4y ago

"What I don't like must be destroyed." I hate cancel culture even more than web3.

bendtheblock 4y ago
author here - just a catchy title. nothing to do with cancel culture my man...
- pheew 4y ago
  This seems a bit disingenuous since you conclude the post with: > I believe there is a moral imperative to destroy web3 and to protect those that have been infected
  - bendtheblock 4y ago
    ah yes - good point

kristianpaul 4y ago

There's still self hosting.

golergka 4y ago

> 2) no one spends BTC I'm awfully tired of these completely misinformed blog posts that seem to reflect HN's collective delusion about bitcoin. I don't know about US, but the whole drug trade, from the largest transactions to street level, have transitioned to crypto in Eastern Europe and at least few Middle Eastern countries. More and more of my friends who have never been interested in crypto as a ponzi scheme are using USDT to send and receive money across borders as their banks are hit with sanctions. If you don't see something, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

bendtheblock 4y ago
author here - ok was an exaggeration. what I mean is most folks are in it for pure speculation
- iskander 4y ago
  The core financial infrastructure, like DAI and Curve, is weirdly robust: it's already been through quite a few crashes that would probably wipe out traditional financial plumbing. So, at the very least, keeping stablecoins on Curve and AAVE is a way to hedge against other kinds of systemic risks to the financial sector. This feels a little crazy in the US (where we don't anticipate systemic collapse) but less so in many other countries.

chairmanmow 4y ago

So the author registered this "webtwoboomer.com" domain and says their mission is "Poisoning my brain with web3 so you don’t have to." Skepticism is fine, but the bias is cringe. I can't see what value the author is adding to a thoughtful discussion, these web3 antagonists always think they are making some great points that no one has considered, but they aren't and they have a hard time moving past it. I don't see the value in this biased blog.

bendtheblock 4y ago
author here - just a suitable rebuttal to the pro-crypto hype everywhere in the media and social media

mdoms 4y ago

Stopped reading at "mansplaining".

mcantelon 4y ago

>web3 is a culmination of late capitalist grift, ironic meming, libertarianism and mansplaining, all resting on bad tech that is damaging the planet ... Proof of Stake is an alternative to validating transactions that doesn’t involve setting fire to the earth The very first sentence of this piece is dishonest: blanketly condemning "all" related tech as environmentally devastating. Later on in the piece it's admitted that innovations like Proof of Stake solve the problem of needless energy consumption. >To actually use this stuff is quite difficult, even the most simple thing, like buying something. Yeah, scanning a QR code with your phone - as one needs to do to buy something online with a mobile wallet - is super hard. ;) This article seems to be a cavalcade of shallow and dishonest criticism.

ant1oz 4y ago

That was the least technical analysis on web3, just a rant. The guy is like... DAO can only be wrapped in a corporation... Have you heard of Cooperative business structures where each employee have an equal vote and own the business? Same with Authentication... The idea of web3 is decentralisation... Once the app is operational, there are no more server fees. It's always online - heard of arwave? Web3 is not crypto man... Web3 is a design blueprint that is based on decentralised databases, decentralised Auth and decentralised payments and decentralised storage. It is way harder to implement web3 solutions today than web2. Travel back in 2002 at the early days of web2, and look at how miserable it was to create a webapp. There are actually no valid point, the guy doesn't even go technical, while talking about a technical subject- and the read is not short. The concept of web3 is that no more dependencies on AWS, Azure and cloud premises- which are all controlled by govt. Tor is Free??? What? Please share your server provider... As far as I know, you still have to host your TOR website on a physical server, and pay for it. Ahah. Maybe you talk about access? Well ipfs is free, arwave is free and Ethereum is free then. This article is a piece of opinionated incompetent crap written in good English.

40four 4y ago

I tried to make it through the article, but I bailed about halfway through, and skimmed the rest. I’m having trouble buying into the sentiment. It seems like just a big long negative rant about Bitcoin, NFTs, & crypto/ blockchain in general. Kind of just rehashing all the typical straw man criticisms of ‘crypto bros’ or early adopters. While these things are an aspect of Web 3.0, they are not the end all be all. There was no mention of other decentralized technologies. Things like Mastodon or Matrix. There is a huge selection of self-hostable, decentralized software projects available to us now. Nextcloud might be another good example. The point is we want to move away from highly centralized closed source services, that track our every move for profit, and we have no recourse over if something goes bad. We want to embrace open source, freely available software that we are in full control of. Web 3.0 is more than just crypto currency. I think the title of this would make more sense if it said, “Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Must Be Destroyed”.

agentultra 4y ago

Agreed. The political foundations that have permeated its design are intolerable alone. Austrian School, "sound money," economics put the liberty of the individual above that of society. The entire community walks and talks like a fascist movement: they celebrate masculinity and "strong leaders," authoritarianism and oligarchy, they see themselves as superior and righteous, and above the law. It's the preferred way to fund blockades, white nationalist movements, etc. Let alone that the technology is hot garbage and shouldn't even be out of the prototype stage. Hasn't your mother taught you not to eval a strangers code on your computer? Well that's what a smart contract does and it handles financial assets too. If you can read and understand proofs the attempts to formalize these machines have produced reams and reams of theorems and work in order to try and make this safe(r)... yet hackers continue to siphon off trillions of dollars in attack after attack. If the proof is so complex that you can't understand it then it's a sign your sniffing down the wrong path. But that doesn't even matter. Most of web3 tech is only good enough to pull off the grift. I suspect that's why most scammers have moved on to target holders of cryptoassets rather than old folks and banks: it's easier, less risky, and way more profitable. So go ahead, spend 20k and invest in an NFT and flex on all your socials. If you have already I guarantee you're on someone's list. If you're interested in following along with how much money has been lost, stolen, scammed, and simply disappeared: https://web3isgoinggreat.com https://web3isgoinggreat.com

uuee 4y ago

If you like this kind of topic Luke Smith's work might interest you... https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeSmithxyz Talks a lot about RSS, simple/minimalist websites, decentralization, fediverse, linux etc.