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Comment by timdaub | Hacker News Reader

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

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Or simply sour grapes. He is right that your investments cloud your thinking, but maybe he doesn't have enough experience to understand that the desire to see the price go down against something you decided to never buy, or recently sold, is driven by the same bias.

For context, I've been an early bitcoin core contributor and paid 7.5 btc for this old laptop. In all fairness, I've only profited from btc and am still invested, but it doesn't change the conclusions I've had to accept.

I stick to the index funds. I have no idea how web3 shenanigans affect me. I still haven't seen a comprehensible use case for it.

All good reasons not to get involved. But I don't think that's as cogent an argument to convince others despite it being used as such on this board quite often.

Both Google and FB have a clear value prop. Web3 and crypto don't, which is exactly what the poster was criticizing.

They don't according to you and the author, but others think it does have value, which makes your point moot also.

People say that, but almost everything brought forward has non-crypto equivalents that are likely superior, and don't involve the opportunity cost of burning large amounts of fossil fuel, and redirecting huge amounts of valuable compute resources towards merely sustaining it.

Maybe someday some clever smart contract thing will really take off; and maybe someday some non-PoW coin will really matter, and maybe one day all the stabilizing regulatory infrastructure will be replicated for that hypothetical coin. It could happen. But it hasn't happened yet; so far it looks more like a ponzi scheme. And even if the tech really does evolve into something truly valuable, the route to that promised land could still have some surprising ups and downs, and if coins really continue growing, real-world economic pains along the way. Also - the tech behind it all isn't the same thing as the specific instantiation of todays coins. Even if the tech finds a niche, todays coins could still turn out to be a ponzi scheme.

Thanks for describing how web3 will succeed that's not based on "number go up"

It's because you're comparing a company to a category.

If I were to say that Coinbase and Uniswap have a clear value prop but AI doesn't, it also wouldn't make much sense as I'm not comparing apples to apples.

Parent made that comparison, not I.

I'm the author of the parent comment and I haven't compared FB to e.g. a category like web3. Re-read it. I pointed out the unfairness of assuming that "everyone arguing for web3 is an investor" while simultaneously ignoring that anyone opposed to those ideas may have investment-bias too.

E.g. HN is known for being anti-crypto but suspects anyone pro crypto to be a crypto-invested shill.

But then at the same time I think it must be considered that e.g. anyone being anti-crypto also has a stake or interest in non-crypto related endeavors. I doubt there are people on here without some form of stake simply arguing for "the universal truth".

Google and Facebook will simply adopt web3 if it takes off (see Facebooks existing attempts). So maybe, but less so

Exactly. Recentralisation is under-appreciated by the decentralists; decentralisation is not a magic dust, and almost all decentralised services are made more convenient by intermediaries .. who will tend to consolidate. See e.g. OpenSea for NFTs.

If you've been following crypto currencies' history, you'll be aware that weakly decentralized (read: centralized) attempts always fall prey to decentralized protocols. The underlying principle is that a process controlled by nobody is more anti-fragile than one directly controlled by a few. Control is a liability.

Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted services. E.g. Automated market makers will be much longer around than any centralized exchange like e.g. Coinbase.

> Over the long term, protocols outcompete hosted service

The exact opposite happened with email

why? it's not a binary choice

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