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I wish we didn't need this "Bitcoin not Crypto" correction. I guess it's needed, to help people understand.
But...
NFTs are mostly money laundering, but it's a carrot for n00b-artists and novel game-engine builders...that may lead to fun new games.
DeFi is mostly just on-chain credit, but it's a carrot for venture capitalists and devs...that may lead to interesting new financial engineering.
Web3 is mostly just a third and mostly redundant architecture component (1 - front-end, 2 - back-end, 3 - blockchain), but it's a carrot for experimentation surrounding property rights and control over data...that may lead to innovation surrounding that.
There are smaller parallels here, to the dot-com boom. It financed the speculation that allowed for the rails necessary to solve the chicken-egg game of getting as many people "online" as possible. Majority went bust. But that asset (the over-built telecom lines), became a dividend to society in the long-run. There is similar history surrounding the rail-road boom/speculation leading to a dividend to society in the long-run.
Bitcoin can be a thing, but so can these other things. Other things, or trends, or tech, will come and go with their own horizon, adoption rates and utility. Some will be hype or vapour-ware. Some maybe not.
We should just focus on money and payments. The correction we should be standing our ground on, is...
"Bitcoin, not USD" "Can I pay you in real money?" "Bitcoin is real money" "Can you pay me in real money, Bitcoin?" "What do you mean, you don't take real money?"
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"It probably sounded as convoluted as the fat kid’s explanation in summer camp as to why he doesn’t have a picture of his really pretty girlfriend from back home."
As convoluted as the geeky Asian kid's explanation?
While agreeing with the articles thesis, that there's one original and regular "hot new things," I don't appreciate the presumption that fat kid's can't have attractive girlfriends and are thus forced to lie.
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When I say that NFTs, Web3 and Defi (aka “crypto”) are scams, I’m not saying so flippantly or as an exaggeration to make a point, I’m saying that they’re “scams” in the strictest sense of the word.
Have you ever seen anyone who had a problem in the real world, searched for a solution and found it in Web3/NFTs/DeFi? Unless it was to raise money from gullible people, I’m guessing you haven’t.
Do you know that the people doing this marketing have huge premines of the coins themselves and have a strong vested interest in getting more people to buy? The venture capitalists that are funding this stuff get a huge number of tokens at a significant discount before the public. Their job is to convince you to buy, regardless of whether it’s useful or not.
Have you looked at the people involved in these projects? Many have sketchy pasts, to put it mildly. At best, the founders of these tokens have “successfully” launched another token as their credentials. Did they fulfill their promises on that token? No. But they sure got returns for the early people.
The returns are the only reason anyone’s interested in this stuff, because the tech certainly isn’t there. What you have in these things are lots of promises. These promises get hyped up by a lot of marketing. A frenzy develops and eventually there’s a crash when the promises fail to materialize.
The only coin that doesn’t require you to trust someone is bitcoin. Everything else is like borrowing money from Tony Soprano. You’re playing a dangerous game.
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I find this "Bitcoin not Crypto" discussion unnecessary tbh. Crypto just means Cryptography - it just means protocols and maths - it has nothing to do with shitcoins.
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