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Comment by TomSwirly | Hacker News Reader

> Banking the unbanked

I first heard this line eight years ago and so far this hasn't happened.

If you are unbanked, it's because you have little money, and you want to put it into something stable and something where you are protected - in other words, the exact opposite of cryptocurrencies.

> protection against hyperinflation,

In 2022, cryptocurrencies have experienced over 100% inflation. Your one bitcoin today will buy less than half the goods and services it would have half a year ago.

Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever.

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> Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone. You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever.

I’m generally pretty bearish on crypto and the current state of web3, so I’m not here to evangelize for it.

But comparing crypto to a smartphone is arbitrary, and the nature of one does not help us understand the acceptable timeframe for development of the other.

When I see the “it’s existed for X time and isn’t popular yet so it must not be viable”, a follow up question immediately comes to mind.

What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop? The modern web took decades to evolve into what it is today (for better or worse).

Depending on who you talk to, web3’s goals are just as lofty, and a similar time horizon doesn’t seem unreasonable.

With that said, the space still struggles to articulate the real problems it will solve, and time and time again it’s just a solution to those problems, and not necessarily the best one.

All of this to say - I’m a web3 skeptic, but we need a better measure of health than the passage of time, or we need a better definition of what an acceptable amount of time actually looks like.

> What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop?

Suggestion: it depends on the harm it causes in the meantime.

If an emerging technology isn’t living up to its promise and the downside is the creators wasting their time, let it go on indefinitely. Maybe they’re having fun. As long as no one is getting hurt, it’s a hobby.

If the emerging technology is solving nothing and actively creating new problems, allowing bad actors to consistently hurt others with little to no consequences, and accelerating our demise so a handful of egoistic maniacs can see a number go up in their bank accounts, perhaps it’s time to stop. Put an end to it even sooner if the biggest proponents repeatedly lie and make promises which fail to materialise year after year.

I think this is an interesting way to look at it, and probably a good one. But it focuses only on the crypto side of web3, which to me is the least interesting part.

To be clear, I personally feel that the next generation of the Internet needs a full reboot. Web3 is the web in name only, and the ideals that crypto bros extol have been hijacked to further these currencies.

But until some separation between web3 and “the future of the open web” is clearly created, the current problems with the web3 space will continue to proliferate.

What IS web3 then? if we take Crypto out, isn't Web 3 basically Web 1? Instead of monolithic social networks of Web 2, We go back to independent self ownership of Web 1 when anybody could run a email or Web server as first class citizen?

And if so, hasn't market effectively spoken against it? We CAN have independent self owned systems now ; populace just doesn't give a damn - you need to be on social network to be seen or heard :-(

> creating new problems, allowing bad actors to consistently hurt others with little to no consequences, and accelerating our demise so a handful of egoistic maniacs can see a number go up in their bank accounts

You are 100% correct. It is time to End The Fed.

You left out the beginning of the quote, “solving nothing”. If you want to use my own comment as rebuttal, I ask you argue in good faith.

Even if as a thought exercise we equate the two, responding to criticism with “but other systems also have problems” doesn’t absolve you:

— Chief, we caught the murderer!

— What about the thief that escaped last month?

— You’re right chief, I’ll let the murderer go.

> What is a reasonable amount of time for an emerging technology like this to develop?

However much it needs to prove itself, I guess; cryptocurrencies have not proven themselves, I want to add 'yet', but they've had over a decade now and they're STILL suffering from extremely high value variability, energy costs, and scams / crime. That's not a basis to keep building on. And every attempt at moving away from those negatives has failed or ended up being a scam itself.

>>protection against hyperinflation,

>In 2022, cryptocurrencies have experienced over 100% inflation.

To be fair, my ignorant self assumed that for much of its timeline, Crypto fought hyperinflation by hyperdeflation. It is intentional design point of most Crypto to increase its value. This deflationary philosophy I assume goes immediately counter pretence of Crypto as currency - if my 1 token will be worth a significant X multiplier at timescale Y, I have zero incentive to exchange it for goods and services and full incentive to hoard it with assumption it'll be worth more tomorrow.

Exactly; I don't understand why people are still trying to defend cryptoCURRENCY as a currency.

I mean in theory Tether and other stablecoins try to fulfill that promise, but these are dodgy in their own rights - and they have no protections either, as the SafeMoon thing from a while back showed.

> You can't keep promising something useful and never delivering, forever.

As long as there’s a chump willing to buy the idea of getting rich quick, there will be a weasel selling them a bridge. These days it’s a receipt for a picture of a bridge where they own neither the bridge nor the picture, but you do get an immaterial useless receipt. Pass it on to the next dope, and try to not be scammed again and get your receipt stolen.

>100% inflation

Volatility is not great but it is not hyperinflation, where your money never comes back.

>promising something useful and never delivering, forever.

Forever is a long time. Still lots of progress to be made. Cardano and Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin are my top picks right now.

It seems that the Lightning Network requires some degree of centralization which defies the main premise of Bitcoin, no?

Or the unbanked are criminals who need something other than fat stacks

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