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Comment by jack_pp | Hacker News Reader

No they don't want to force anyone and there's no evidence of this. Just because there are a lot of evangelists doesn't mean anyone is forced to do anything

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There's plenty of evidence of this; there are proposals to move house deeds, drivers' licenses, elections, etc. onto the blockchain. These wouldn't be "oh, you can just not participate" sorts of scenarios.

A blockchain is not web3 or crypto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

The Venn diagram of web3, cryptocurrency, and blockchain proponents is substantially similar to a circle.

No it really is not, but nice try and great meme!

Can you give an example of web3 tech that doesn't involve a blockchain in any way?

Do you understand how a venn diagram works? I can give you plenty of examples of blockchains that are unrelated to cryptocurrency, any corporate run block chain. And examples of blockchains unrelated to web3, bitcoin is a well known example of this.

I'm not asking about that. I'm asking about the converse. If corporations want to waste their money on an internal blockchain, that's fine; it doesn't affect me. But we're talking about people evangelizing this technology to precipitate large-scale societal change, which is focused on the intersection of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and "web3".

No we are talking about how web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies are all separate yet related ideas. You are saying they are equivalent.

Well, until there's a better way to have some kind of token or currency, blockchains will be part of web3. Lack of incentives is why the first wave of open protocol design fizzled out, which is why they're so important this time around.

The way it's shaping up, improper or overzealous incentives will be the undoing of the second wave, but that movie has yet to play out.

web3 is explicitly, 100% blockchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3

I said a blockchain is not web3. Not web3 is not a blockchain. Bitcoin is a blockchain, bitcoin is not web3.

"no evidence of this" is too strong of a claim. The folks who argue that fiat currency is dead, or should be dead, are implying they want a world where fiat currency disappears and then cryptocurrency emerges as the replacement. In that scenario, it is correct to say that some people are trying to force crypto on the rest of the world.

That's like saying people who said that the telegraph is dead, and will be replaced by the telephone, were trying to force telephones on people.

Your comment only makes sense if the telegram was run by a government monopoly, since fiat currency is a government monopoly, and then if people were advocating for the government to close its telegram monopoly, then yes, those people could be said to be forcing telephones on people.

Crypto people aren't neutral observers simply predicting it will replace fiat, though. They are actively working to make that true. This is not an inevitable future for our society; if it happens, it will be because of activism from powerful people who stand to benefit.

El Salvador tried to force its residents to participate. The country's bitcoin law stipulates that "[e]very economic agent must accept bitcoin as payment": https://mobile.twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/14024468904662...

Predictably, this element of the law was not well received and is not being enforced after large scale protests

Force is a spectrum. Even a gun to the head isn't a force: you could just accept the bullet, after all.

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