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I’m surprised how little I hate this piece; cryptocurrency is much more palatable when it’s claiming to be the tor of money and not the future of money. But I t

I’m surprised how little I hate this piece; cryptocurrency is much more palatable when it’s claiming to be the tor of money and not the future of money. But I think it downplays the extent to which the latter claim is harmful, and just how inescapable it was over the past few years. Lots of average Joes saw a superbowl ad, put their money into a large, well-respected exchange that didn’t promise impossible returns, and lost everything! I had a nontechy relative call and ask me how she should go about selling her (literal traditional paint-on-canvas) paintings as NFTs! For a little bit there it seemed like there might be enough momentum for cryptocurrency to become too-big-to-fail before skeptics even had time to object. It also underplays the extent to which the kind of cryptocurrency stuff techies react negatively to is still explicitly or implicitly boosting that vision. Cryptocurrency as the tor of money is reasonable but also not something that for-profit companies have much incentive to be involved with. But next time I see a project whose target market are those living in countries with completely nonfunctional financial systems, people trying to escape authoritarian governments, or sex workers, I’ll think twice before being negative.

nfw2 4y ago
If blockchain bulls were only claiming it to be the future of money, that would already be a huge improvement to the full claim implied by “web3” — which is that it will be the future of the entire internet
livueta 4y ago
My local NPR station aired a story a few months ago about a local "NFT museum" that was 100% uncritical boosterism. IIRC, it featured a conversation with people affiliated with the NFT org (and nobody to provide counterpoints, and nobody with any significant amount of technical nous to point out the clear bullshit a la Moxie's thing[1]) that painted NFTs as the future of all art. The combination of the apparent veracity of the source with the absolute lack of nuance in the story was pretty striking; I think that was the only time in a lifetime of listening to public radio that I submitted a complaint about something I'd heard. It really felt like journalistic malpractice, although I guess I'm not sure how much blame to apportion to evil lying techbros vs. credulous underinformed journalists. Anyway, a few days later I had to explain the whole situation to an artist friend who'd heard the story and wanted in. Argh. --- [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
- alephaleph 4y ago
  This is one of the really gross things about it. It felt like finance assholes disguising themselves in t-shirts and jeans in order to cash out on two decades of breathless techno-optimism being regurgitated by the press, in order to get regular people to buy into what amounts to an unregulated online casino. (Not that the tech industry needed the help cashing out on hype.) To me it feels of a kind with the sports betting sites you see advertised everywhere nowadays and those CSGO skin betting sites that steamers were (and still are! See the People Make Games video on this) advertising to twelve year olds.
sinity 4y ago
> Lots of average Joes saw a superbowl ad, put their money into a large, well-respected exchange that didn’t promise impossible returns, and lost everything! Happens in everything. Corporations can fail. Trad-finance institutions can fail. Sovereign currencies can fail. I still think that beats centralized finance, where I'm barred from investing in, say, startups. Because I'm not ~~rich~~ accredited investor, lol. Ofc that's for my safety, because apparently reducing opportunities of non-rich people is 'protecting' them. For some bizarre reason one doesn't need to be an 'accredited' to start their own business. I wonder what's the logic here? Government should clearly fix that issue - after all, if investing into sth like OpenAI (for example) is considered risky, then starting your own business is straight up delusional. > I had a nontechy relative call and ask me how she should go about selling her (literal traditional paint-on-canvas) paintings as NFTs! What's wrong with that? Is selling physical merchandise bad too? Or digital goods in general? Commissioned digital art? Why is it illegitimate and, say, autographs aren't? Frankly, I find it to be a more elegant system than these other approaches. It would be nice if it caught on someday. > For a little bit there it seemed like there might be enough momentum for cryptocurrency to become too-big-to-fail before skeptics even had time to object. How great! "Skeptics" are a bit of a weird name for this. Tech innovation doomers is more fitting, I think. Narratively, I'll admit, you guys are currently on top somehow. VR, Metaverse, AI, whatever Musk ever does... (well, AI doomerism isn't quite universal yet, maybe). Truly amazing, let's not ever do anything different or new, it's all shit after all. (also, maybe I'm delusionally optimistic, but I don't think it's quite over yet)
- alephaleph 4y ago
  My objection to her minting her art as an NFT was that she was going to lose money on it! She was about to become a bagholder in a market she probably didn’t even realize was a market! The fundamental value of physical artworks is getting something pretty to put on your wall. The fundamental value of a digital commission is the existence of an image that otherwise would not exist. The NFT-theoretic concept of digital ownership isn’t inherently invalid or meaningless, but it’s not something that most regular people were ever going to find valuable, and it was being used as a smokescreen to obscure the fact that most of the value of NFTs came from speculation. That call really soured me on the whole thing because it was firsthand evidence that cryptocurrency boosters were scamming ordinary people by convincing them that they were opening an Etsy store when they were actually buying casino chips.

nfw2 4y ago

If blockchain bulls were only claiming it to be the future of money, that would already be a huge improvement to the full claim implied by “web3” — which is that it will be the future of the entire internet

livueta 4y ago

My local NPR station aired a story a few months ago about a local "NFT museum" that was 100% uncritical boosterism. IIRC, it featured a conversation with people affiliated with the NFT org (and nobody to provide counterpoints, and nobody with any significant amount of technical nous to point out the clear bullshit a la Moxie's thing[1]) that painted NFTs as the future of all art. The combination of the apparent veracity of the source with the absolute lack of nuance in the story was pretty striking; I think that was the only time in a lifetime of listening to public radio that I submitted a complaint about something I'd heard. It really felt like journalistic malpractice, although I guess I'm not sure how much blame to apportion to evil lying techbros vs. credulous underinformed journalists. Anyway, a few days later I had to explain the whole situation to an artist friend who'd heard the story and wanted in. Argh. --- [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

alephaleph 4y ago
This is one of the really gross things about it. It felt like finance assholes disguising themselves in t-shirts and jeans in order to cash out on two decades of breathless techno-optimism being regurgitated by the press, in order to get regular people to buy into what amounts to an unregulated online casino. (Not that the tech industry needed the help cashing out on hype.) To me it feels of a kind with the sports betting sites you see advertised everywhere nowadays and those CSGO skin betting sites that steamers were (and still are! See the People Make Games video on this) advertising to twelve year olds.

sinity 4y ago

> Lots of average Joes saw a superbowl ad, put their money into a large, well-respected exchange that didn’t promise impossible returns, and lost everything! Happens in everything. Corporations can fail. Trad-finance institutions can fail. Sovereign currencies can fail. I still think that beats centralized finance, where I'm barred from investing in, say, startups. Because I'm not ~~rich~~ accredited investor, lol. Ofc that's for my safety, because apparently reducing opportunities of non-rich people is 'protecting' them. For some bizarre reason one doesn't need to be an 'accredited' to start their own business. I wonder what's the logic here? Government should clearly fix that issue - after all, if investing into sth like OpenAI (for example) is considered risky, then starting your own business is straight up delusional. > I had a nontechy relative call and ask me how she should go about selling her (literal traditional paint-on-canvas) paintings as NFTs! What's wrong with that? Is selling physical merchandise bad too? Or digital goods in general? Commissioned digital art? Why is it illegitimate and, say, autographs aren't? Frankly, I find it to be a more elegant system than these other approaches. It would be nice if it caught on someday. > For a little bit there it seemed like there might be enough momentum for cryptocurrency to become too-big-to-fail before skeptics even had time to object. How great! "Skeptics" are a bit of a weird name for this. Tech innovation doomers is more fitting, I think. Narratively, I'll admit, you guys are currently on top somehow. VR, Metaverse, AI, whatever Musk ever does... (well, AI doomerism isn't quite universal yet, maybe). Truly amazing, let's not ever do anything different or new, it's all shit after all. (also, maybe I'm delusionally optimistic, but I don't think it's quite over yet)

alephaleph 4y ago
My objection to her minting her art as an NFT was that she was going to lose money on it! She was about to become a bagholder in a market she probably didn’t even realize was a market! The fundamental value of physical artworks is getting something pretty to put on your wall. The fundamental value of a digital commission is the existence of an image that otherwise would not exist. The NFT-theoretic concept of digital ownership isn’t inherently invalid or meaningless, but it’s not something that most regular people were ever going to find valuable, and it was being used as a smokescreen to obscure the fact that most of the value of NFTs came from speculation. That call really soured me on the whole thing because it was firsthand evidence that cryptocurrency boosters were scamming ordinary people by convincing them that they were opening an Etsy store when they were actually buying casino chips.