For a while I have been losing faith in the crypto space, though I've known about it for a really long time I have never really made any significant money in it.<p>But I've been watching it with interest and what interested me the most was the governance aspects of it. But lately, when I look at the space, it is really difficult to see any real meaningful interest in doing things properly. I think I am invited everyday on discord or telegram to this or that "DAO", which really are nothing but pump and dump scams with a coat of governance onto them.<p>I do wonder, is this a feature or a bug? Humans might be naturally greedy and maybe these hyper-marketized mechanisms simply bring out the worst in us.<p>But I will say, I really admire Vitalik and his vision, I read his blog and I love it. It makes me hopeful but maybe he might just be too optimistic. Things are not how we'd like them to be but how they are, this is a very important lesson in politics.
So within 7 years of the start of Bitcoin, pretty much every original Bitcoin developer had become disillusioned, with claims like it was "an experiment" and "has failed"[0]. We're now heading towards 7 years since the start of Ethereum, and it sounds like Vitalik is now too beginning to realise that it has turned into something a lot worse than what it tried to replace, e.g. because it magnifies the most terrible aspects of human nature.<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7" rel="nofollow">https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...</a>
I feel sort of bad for Vitalik. If he genuinely hoped cryptocurrency would serve as a counterweight to authoritarian governments and Silicon Valley greed, I think he's going to be very disappointed. I think crypto is interesting and has utilities, but its not going to solve global social coordination.<p>I just think technologists need to "think dumber". Its easier to make money if you have money. Some people get lucky for no reason whatsoever. Some people win big out of raw talent or effort, and then they become criminals. It costs money to use computers. Some people like status and gambling.
As someone who has been working as a blockchain developer for nearly 4 years, I find it funny when Ethereum fanboys tell me things like "L1 was not designed for this type of throughput", "the high fees are good" and similar things. You can tell they got into crypto and NFTs recently and they don't know the initial promises made by the Ethereum team at the beginning and are just trying to hold onto their hype bubble. Ethereum was supposed to be capable of handling the world's bulk of decentralized application and finance transactions, and Ethereum devs at some point where making fun of Bitcoin for having high fees, now they are making excuses such as "L1 was not designed for this." as the dApps are leaving for other chains. Truly a funny show of denial and cover-up.
"I would rather Ethereum offend some people than turn into something that stands for nothing" - I love this call for more active political positioning in the community. This is political, it always has been. Let's embrace it. AssangeDao and Ukraine raising millions, proof of integrity received a lot of support during this round of gitcoin grants, it really feels like the community is ready to push hard - expect to see more politicians/co-ops/unions/welfare groups forming as digital orgs with crypto backends.
One good thing is that at least a mainstream media is getting quite details on what's actually going on despite the ratio of signal/noise is on floor.
I am truly and continually disappointed with the response to cryptocurrencies in this community. For a user-base that is so knowledgeable to be so pig-headed about this topic is frightening.
That's such odd (and against the rules) title editorializing that I had to click to confirm what's going on.<p>Edit: and now the title has been re-editorialized a second time even though the original one isn't misleading.
> powering a trillion-dollar ecosystem that rivals Visa in terms of the money it moves<p>It doesn't move that money. It moves around specialty tokens that people speculate are worth that much money.<p>> the infrastructure for entrepreneurs to build all sorts of new products, from payment systems to prediction markets, digital swap meets to medical-research hubs.<p>Yeah, no. Those products are a) not new, and b) most of them don't require either ethereum in particular or blockchain in general. It's all speculative smoke and mirrors, chasing investor money.<p>> Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong<p>Ah yes. "You're holding it wrong". This is the <i>only</i> outcome of crypto in particular and blockchains in general.<p>> Buterin hopes Ethereum will become the launchpad for all sorts of sociopolitical experimentation: fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects.<p>No, it won't. Because the tech not only doesn't solve these problems, but makes these problems significantly worse [1]<p>> ultimately the goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the real world<p>No. The ultimate goal of crypto is exactly to play million-dollar games. Just because it was used to send pretend tokens to desperate people who have no meaningful ways of using them, doesn't mean it's accomplished something meaningful in the world.<p>> The blockchain, he thought, could serve as an efficient method<p>Blockchain and efficient in one sentence.<p>> Buterin’s favorite projects on the blockchain. Take Proof of Humanity, which awards a universal basic income—currently about $40 per month—to anyone who signs up<p>I can't even.<p>And then they talk about how he "couldn't predict this", or "couldn't foresee that", or "watched with horror and dismay" when something easily predictable happened. All the while praising him for being "fluent in disciplines ranging from sociological theory to advanced calculus to land-tax history."<p>Clearly he's "fluent" as in "he can come off as knowledgable in a Twitter thread".<p>See the link below for how all this was clearly predicted.<p>[1] <a href="https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...</a>
The article summarizes crypto’s cardinal sins. Chiefly:<p>> Ethereum has made a handful of white men unfathomably rich<p>So if it were a handful of Indian women it would be better?<p>More to the point, what was the author’s point? Are we to believe that the white men who’ve gotten rich on crypto did something untoward to get those riches? And if so, did they do the bad thing because of their genitalia skin color?<p>It is stunning that these kinds of lazy, unexamined biases are accepted in non-fringe media outlets.
> Ethereum has made a handful of white men unfathomably rich, pumped pollutants into the air, and emerged as a vehicle for tax evasion, money laundering, and mind-boggling scams<p>Expected nothing less from Time...