Hacker News Reader

Comment by pg_bot | Hacker News Reader

How many of these "very smart" people were just early adopters of cryptocurrencies? Usually there is a financial conflict of interest which causes people to overlook the extremely negative aspects of web3/cryptocurrencies. Anecdotally I have seen a lot of people who were previously gung-ho cash out and sour on the whole space.

View on HN

My take on smart people in the crypto space comes down to the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Ironically the same quote also describes the extreme feelings of the opposite camp.

Established tech companies and their employees have a lot to lose if web3 and related tech would actually become successful.

Really? Why? I don't see anything concrete coming out of web3 that would threaten the established big tech companies.

The whole selling pitch is about replacing intermediaries, and that's what most tech giants are.

P2P payment systems and P2P collateralized loans are already there more or less working with a clear path to scaling. If they gain adoption they directly obsolete existing fintech companies.

I'm not saying there's much concrete stuff there yet, but web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse, so it's natural that reactionary feelings arise when web3 gets hype (deserved or not, that's not the point).

Big tech isn't fintech and that's about the only thing that could be threatened.

Even for fintech there's a lot of value in providing a streamlined user experienced on top of crypto so there's still room for intermediaries. See how many people primarily use CEXs.

> Web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse

I really don't see it. There's nothing in web3 that threatens any of these companies.

Large companies try not to be stupid. If they had a lot to lose if web3 became successful wouldn't they invest resources into it?

See Facebook trying to make a cryptocurrency and then abandoning their plans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com