this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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What frustrates me is that the crypto scene didn't have to develop in this direction. While I'm not sure how to get around the electricity requirements necessary for any "coin" to exist on a large scale, the concept of a blockchain doesn't seem to me like an inherently predatory idea. The idea that coins or NFTs were investment vehicles really provided the opportunity for those with the knowledge and resources to manipulate a poorly regulated market and literal con artists to move in and be the main influence as to how everything played out. Although it's somewhat of a relief that it's widely recognized by most people as being a racket, the missed opportunity of the concept of permanent and intangible "objects" to be used for some purpose other than scamming does bum me out a bit.
when you pair finances (a realm filled with scams and con artists) to gamers (people who are notoriously more gullible than the average person) then it's not a great mix.
"You can make real money by playing this game" is genuinely one of the oldest scams on the internet, like at all. And gamers keep falling for it.
To be fair, you could make real money by playing games… if you were a gold farmer or an account seller
or by actually being good and play it professionally.
Tbh I keep forgetting we live in a reality where that’s a thing
Also, if you’re popular enough on Twitch or YouTube you can make money playing games and hot tub streams
The thing is, what use case can benefit from a blockchain?
Scamming, gambling, crime and speculation benefited from the lack of regulation, but barely cared about the underlying concept of a bitcoin.
But for anything real, much better solutions have existed for decades or centuries.
Blockchain is a solution without a problem and has been that for 25 years now.
If you have a solution that hasn't found a problem in 25 years, chances are that there will never be an actual problem that solution would solve.
So the killer apps of blockchain remain scamming, gambling, speculation and crime. Until there are more stringent regulations, then they'll go back to Western Union and Paysafe cards.
For technological innovation to take place, two things need to happen. First, the idea needs to occur in the first place and second the idea has to be adopted in a widespread way. Many examples of technology we use were invented many times in the past and applied to processes where it didn't take. Because of this I think it's very possible that innovative people throughout the world have indeed come up with use cases for this technology which could fundamentally improve something which we are not aware of because for whatever reason the idea hasn't spread.
Tech specialists are not often also expert marketers for their own ideas. At the same time, expert marketers involved with blockchain technology are typically involved on the scamming side so even if an idea is offered to the public which would otherwise sell itself it wouldn't have a chance in this environment. Blockchain experts, being primed to view this technology in its current context, may not even recognize how powerful a non-traditional use might be.
This is all speculation of course, but this is why I'm not ready to rule the technology out entirely.
I won't argue there aren't some use cases for it, but it was massively oversold for what it actually is. It's essentially just shared spreadsheets, but almost always described in a way that make it seem inscrutable to most people (further sinking any propect of mass-adoption) and cool to people who want to feel like they're intelligent and in-the-know about tech. And it was pushed primarily for things it was unsuited for, like replacing regulated banks with FDIC insurance.
I think it has potential niche uses, though. Not every technology has to be widespread or applied to a wide variety of different things.
Tbh I think the same overselling/over-applying is happening to large language models/LLM "AI" now, though at least LLMs legitimately do have a lot of potential use cases. Just not as many as the everything people are trying to apply it to, and not as overpoweringly as many assume.
Proof of stake gets around the electricity usage. Of the chains that are still big it's really only bitcoin and it's derivatives that still use a lot of energy.
That would mean something if Ethereum wasn't effectively dead in a ditch and being pissed on by a vagrant.
ETH is higher than it was a few years ago. I was watching it at 400, 500, 900, 1200, it went to 4500 in the boom and is now 2000. How is that dead?
Haven’t checked it in a while, but is it still impossible to withdraw staked coins?
Wait back up.
Hahahahaha holy shit.
Seems like they’ve fixed it now, but there was a time when they had proof of stake without withdrawal functionality
If you filter out the noise and ignore the omnipresent hate, there's still cool stuff there. The technology still works. The prevailing narrative doesn't change that. But the problems were inevitable, for the simple reason that the world is full of pent up financial desperation, and crypto is an incredibly powerful tool for letting people do what they choose with money in a way that isn't locked down by some payment provider or banking middleman. Borderless, permissionless. So naturally the main thing people went to do with it is competing to take each other's money somewhere on the spectrum between gambling and theft. It's non-crypto problems finding an outlet, and no amount of pushback from whatever non money crazed "scene" was out there could have done anything to stop that.
I'm not disagreeing at all but maybe my point is a little to the side of yours.
The main problem with people's perception is that people don't really know what they are talking about and conflate cryptocurrency with blockchain rather than knowing that cryptocurrency is a use-case for blockchain. For people who do know some about it, they may say that blockchain can't do anything that other pre-existing solutions can and do better.
But as I see it blockchain is a unique technology and that does make it a good solution for some sorts of problems. Not every problem and maybe not even many problems but some. The power usage argument is mainly a red herring at this point because most chains that people would use for something functional do not/no longer use proof-of-work (which is what was eating the power) and now use proof-of-stake which is as power efficient as any old server.
NFTs as a form of digital authenticity seem pretty interesting and blockchain in general in a logistics/tracking contact makes sense to me. In the context of web3, which I admittedly know little about, rather than a money grab play-to-earn or whatever it is called, seems like blockchain could be used for transferability of assets and decentralization. How about a creative game where you create things and their ownership is maintained via NFT. Build a contraption or costume in one game and bring it into another. Maybe something that benefits all like a "folding at home" where new solutions/tech is created via crowd-sourced activity and shares of the product are authenticated via blockchain storage.
I assume one day we will be past the new tech -> apply old scams cycle.
Yeah, I think a big part of that is that people see this idea of digital permanence you're describing, and it gets misrepresented to shit.