Web3 also doesn‘t care about anything else than holding up just enough hype and credibility so the original creators of the Ponzi scheme can cash out.
My take on crypto at this point is very simple: At least we have the transparency. There are so many scams going on in the financial industry. But it's hard to undercover, because all is opaque.
It is the same with energy costs. Has anyone dared to calculate the CO2 release of traditional core banking systems or even running a large network of physical branches. No, because it's difficult and opaque. With the public blockchain these things actually can be calculated, which is a good thing I believe.
Same with art. Is the broad public aware of the crazy price tags paid in the art scene over the last two decades? NFTs make this public.
If more people would embrace the transparency created instead of complaining about the space all the time, we would create a better world.
I never met anyone who got scammed by a real bank.
> Has anyone dared to calculate the CO2 release of traditional core banking systems or even running a large network of physical branches
Yes and it's pretty negligible compared to PoW, obviously.
> If more people would embrace the transparency created instead of complaining about the space all the time, we would create a better world.
Transparency is not a magic cure-all. Plus, privacy is crucial to protect vulnerable people.
Congrats on the first world privilege.
Basically it's great for poorer countries, first world criminals and potentially for a dystopian future.
I find that curious. Usually people get lost on the tech side.
Decentralized systems don't provide cryptographically-assured accountability, they require cryptographically-assured accountability in order to function correctly. If you give up the decentralization requirement, and instead federate authority across well-regulated entities, then you don't need the crypto, not as a base requirement anyway. And you still need the regulation, because all this fancy cryptographical assurance does is prevent man-in-the-middle attacks that arise from the decentralization requirement, and you still need to regulate the input and output--which is where all fraud occurs anyway.
You can't solve a social problem with a computer/tech solution. It just doesn't work.
You could say that Turkey was a well functioning democracy. But look now with Erdogan, and Turkeys inflation is at 49%.
Having access to some stablecoin like UST could saved a lot of people troubles. Without really having the burden to go buy dollars or euro's in some form or another.
The borders are gerrymandered, fair voting is hamstrung by FPTP, funding is withheld from constituencies where the MP doesn't tow the party line, and both public money and foreign bribes go into the pockets of the elite few. Clearly a well functioning democracy, a pillar of the West, where government officials may place themselves above the law. Lying in Parliament? Free pass. Calling out lying in Parliament? Ejected from the discourse.
But at least Sir Boris led an inquiry into Sir Boris and found Sir Boris free of guilt.
I really don't think it's so crazy to think that the adequate application of crypto can lead to well-functioning democracies for precisely this reason; we can have real accountability.
But you don't say how.
Turkey was a well functioning democracy, until it wasn't, that was my point.
Did I say cryptocurrency fixes governments? No, I said you can store value in stablecoins when you have malfunctioning governments.
If I lived in Turkey, my wealth was largely stored in UST and NOT Lira.
Not goldbars, not USD or EUR cash, not in banks or any service they provide (except day to day needs of course).
So if you lived in Turkey and had about $200K, where would you store it?
So do you consider a country like Turkey first world or not? Did you think 10 years ago it was first world?
I have (indirectly) in this bank run. It was the fourth largest bank in an EU country.
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_of_Bulgaria%27s_Corp...
We solved them with... more regulation :-)
I think every major bank has got some folks doing that. It's a prerequisite of green washing.
Most companies monitor their power bills in order to ensure they are not needlessly wasting money by leaving lights or air-conditioning on etc.
Once you know your power consumption it's a pretty simple calculation to get CO2 usage.
But I work for a bank and our money laundering systems and processes automatically kick in for suspicious transactions and those over a certain amount. We will freeze transactions until we conduct due diligence aiming to identity the true parties e.g by unsheathing shell companies as well as the nature and intent of the transaction.
And this is through a range of methods including requesting supplemental documentation and involving law enforcement.
Can you clarify for any of the million dollar Bored Ape Yacht Club purchases who the true parties are given that supposedly this information can be derived from the blockchain ?
In most cases the money can’t be recovered because it gets quickly wired to countries like Nigeria or HK. It’s a whole industry. Completely opaque because no company likes to talk about the losses. These things are handled quietly.
On a different level: I believe many structured products purchased by private consumers are at least a rip-off and could be categorized as scam. Take for example life insurances sold by brokers with lifetime contracts yielding almost no interest whatsoever. There is a constant battle between regulators, lawyers and companies.
Whoever's going to push web3 will still want that opacity, it's a feature, not a bug. They'll want it to make money and to protect and hide their money.
Plus you can't have it both ways, either cryptocurrencies are somehow, magically, privacy protecting and anonymous, or you have transparency. It's impossible to have both.
Which has unquestionably benefited consumers.
If you look at the financial system 50 years ago and compare it to today consumers have far more rights and protections. And the system continues to learn and improve e.g. requiring banks to hold more reserve capital and increasing the amount of deposit insurance.
Problem for Web3 is that governments, regulators and the legal system do not play a central role like in Web2. And so all of the safety nets built up over these years will evaporate and consumers will suffer.
Realistically, the buyers of bored apes are not really of interest to anyone and the NFTs probably won't be worth anything in the future.
When crypto is used to purchase things that actually matter then it will most likely be a trivial matter to identify whether the coins are "tainted".
How do you square this idea with the fact that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is widely recognized as being disproportionately riddled with scams?
What scams?
But just a very public example: Look-up the company Wirecard or google cum-ex fraud. Fraud on a huge level. All going on behind the curtains. We sometimes get a sneak peak when something on the level of Wirecard blows up. Just extrapolate that for a second to the entire economy.
If that is true why do so many of the principles behind various web3 things keep their identities hidden? That is the opposite of transparency
With web3 you just need to login into twitter and follow-up the transactions. That's a huge advantage from my perspective.
I just realized I haven't had coffee so off to have that so I can write in a way that doesn't make me sound like a jerk.
I'm interested in large 3D virtual worlds with user created content. I've read at least twenty metaverse "white papers" and "roadmaps" which go on and on about their "tokenomics" but have little or no info about how they actually intend to build a 3D world. The contribution of the crypto crowd to actually making it happen is near zero. I'm disappointed. I've seen "fake it til you make it" before, but a lot of those guys aren't even trying.
Bitcoin ponzi: “store of value” is utility!
Filecoin: storing files is actual utility
ERC20 memecoin ponzis: “shibaMUSKinu community .. utility is coming… we will um, fork an open source wallet or dex”
NFT ponzis: “join the bored ape punk community, utility is working out in our gym on a private island, only 1% ever bother to show up”
Metaverse: “virtual worlds and real estate is utility! Accessorize your avatars. First people who come get to be the kings, next people can be the landowner class, later people will work their way up from serf. You’ll be able to fight and win virtual land, play to earn…”
The thing is, many of these things can legitimately be considered something of a utility for someone.
And frankly, this is STILL better than Web2 corporations owning the metaverse. It’s bad enough they employ psychologists to figure out how to make you more addicted to your phones and spending your time outraged, contributing content in political arguments while ignoring your kids. Imagine now you will be spending hours in virtual reality. What’s next, computer chips in your brain via neuralink?
If it was open source software, at least I can sort of control the economics of it. Otherwise… by 2040… you are a slave, Neo! Think about it.
Centralization is worse in NFT land. The NFT industry is Axie Infinity, OpenSea, and the little guys. Back end mostly goes through Metamask. Few people interact with the blockchain directly.
Metamask can and does blacklist coins and wallets. OpenSea can and does blacklist NFTs. While in theory you can go around them, they can seriously reduce the value of assets at whim.
To get an NFT onto Decentraland, there's a US$500 "curation fee".
That means that they will easily crush their competition and cement themselves as the home of NFTs. And then of course their "filtered view" of NFTs will become the source of truth and not the blockchain itself. And they have shown they are happy to do this filtering when asked [2].
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/opensea/company_fina...
[2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-freezes-2-2m-of-stole...
This comment only adds a poorly informed opinion to this discussion, while not being very relevant.
> which is false by definition
I mean, why?
> the apparent centralization of web3 being supposed to be p2p, there are several different web3 providers (eth, poly, ipfs) with different incentives.
> a pessimistic example of what's possible with web3 tech.
I want to engage on these points in good faith. I'm asking you to expand these because I'm curious.
I think crypto economics are a blight in practice, while the theory might be sound.
You've presented a head and no body work, and I am genuinely curious to hear the expansion.