I'm not invested in cryptocurrency or other tokens, but this seems very unfair to the ecosystems that power them. Sure, there are centralized wallets, marketplaces, APIs, but that's just not the point, not the problem they're trying to solve.
If Google deletes your account, that's it. If OpenSea deletes your account, another app will happily connect to your wallet and let you continue where you left off.
You can’t be truly bullish about something and tell me at the same time that I missed the boat.
Those who invested two years ago have likely already made more money than anyone investing now can.
Bitcoin was $20 like… 10 years ago? What price would BTC have to reach for you to get the same level of return if you invested now compared to back then?
Frankly, a world where Bitcoin doesn't eventually see a 2100 times increase in value is also probably a world where it doesn't become a generally-used global currency. If the argument is that Bitcoin's valuation is going to slow down from this point on, then in my mind that is basically a concession that it's not going to revolutionize the world the way that its proponents claim.
I don't think people completely understand how incredibly niche cryptocurrency still is and how much it would have to grow before it overtook fiat currencies.
Of course, the question is whether BTC's utility actually is going to increase the way its proponents claim (which I am skeptical of). But if it did increase, it's hard to imagine an increasingly limited deflationary asset that's going up in utility value wouldn't also see proportional price increases.
Or not, because they all use the OpenSea API instead of bothering with the blockchain.
It's like when I give my credit card info to PayPal. There's a picture of a lock on the bottom of the page, so probably safe, right? I'm on OpenSea and it says the NFTs are "decentralized" and that I have absolute ownership if I buy one. So how come people can still right-click-save-as when I post the image on Twitter?
The tech is solid. There really are NFTs and they cannot be stolen etc etc (barring bugs and phishing of course!). It's just that there's no way for a layperson to confirm any of that. People are just as likely to use some random Django+Postgres app than they are a real blockchain system because they're indistinguishable as long as everything's going smoothly.
A better example might be a DEX like Uniswap. Uniswap goes-down/bans-you/whatever? Use PancakeSwap or 1Inch or Futureswap or some other equally-ridiculously-named service. They all connect to the wallet that you own and cant be taken away from you.
The trick is that the Uniswap API/service itself, the smart contract, cannot go down unless the entire Ethereum network itself is down.
But you're right. Decentralization is not the problem that the crypto community is trying to solve, because they don't actually care about a decentralized "Web3". They care about the parts of the system that make them rich. The "decentralization" cant is just social-good camouflage, no different from Facebook's claims about making lives better through the "metaverse".
That doesn't make legitimate projects null and void, or devalue the problems they're trying to solve.