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Web 3.0 – The Great Con

davegebler.com

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Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#121

Post by CPLX »

ThomPete wrote: post #107
CPLX wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really didn’t. The fact that it was really useful was blindingly obvious to everyone pretty quickly. Like nobody was confused thinking it was better to not be able to check your bank transaction history online. The question at the time was how useful, and how quickly things were going to be transformed and what it was all worth since the hype and valuations got out of control. And there were of course dumb ideas…

Again we are discussing it right now. You don't see the use, I do. Whether I will be right time will tell, I am pretty sure I will, and the idea that this is a useless technology is simply a question of vision. There are plenty of use cases which are theoretically possible with Web2 but not feasible without Blockchain.

What’s the use case?

If you can name one that’s not a word salad I’m definitely curious.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#122

Post by [deleted] »

tern wrote: post #116
qeternity wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is very much in the vein of the infamous Dropbox announcement. Dropbox was released a year before Bitcoin, and quickly went on to completely change file storage for the average person (alongside its many clones). Why has Bitcoin not achieved anything similar?

Bitcoin went on to create an entirely new industry employing tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, fund thousands of research projects and startups, create financial independence for thousands of people, allow thousands of people to transmit money in situations where it would have been difficult or impossible otherwise, and probably other things. It's a massive cultural phenomenon with global reach and real co…

[deleted]

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#123

Post by lern_too_spel »

maxisrelaxed wrote: post #103

One of the worst facets of the whole web3 movement is the "thought leaders" and community talking very confidently about how blockchain will replace very well established ways of doing business (FTA "airlines selling tickets"). The author takes a very dim view of the whole blockchain space, and uses the worst possible interpretation of parts of it to make their case, but I don't disagree on this point. Whether web3 b…

Somebody else could build a centralized trading platform, and if you use that, it will be cheaper for all parties.

Whether web3 becomes a thing is not anybody's guess. Anybody who thinks about it clearly can easily conclude that it will never be a thing except among scammers and their marks.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#124

Post by vikinghckr »

ajross wrote: post #94
jaimex2 wrote: post #46

For a con, blockchain has served me extremely well. Its allowed me to pay when paypal/credit cards/my bank have decided they're going to not allow payment to a service. It's allowed me to get paid cash in hand without having to involve entities who its none of their business why that money has been paid to me. It's allowed me to bypass currency exchange issues and fleecing.

1. Are all crimes, right? Banks will take your consumer money (provider management does get more complicated) for gambling and porn these days. The stuff you can't get past them is almost exclusively criminal. If you don't like the fact that the government made something illegal, why are you blaming money ? Also: crimes don't stop being crimes just because you paid in BTC, and those transactions aren't as anonymous a…

> Are all crimes, right? Banks will take your consumer money (provider management does get more complicated) for gambling and porn these days

Not necessarily. For example, PayPal has recently introduced "acceptable use policy" where they can freeze your account without you violating the law. Banks also have done the same for being "racist", "sexist", "anti-vaxx" etc. All of those things are perfectly legal in the US. So your assertion that only illegal activities require use of crypto is false.

And that's before we get to the fact that just because something is "illegal" doesn't mean it's good to have this banned. Pretty sure the ongoing Iranian protests are illegal.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#125

Post by ajross »

vikinghckr wrote: post #124
ajross wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Are all crimes, right? Banks will take your consumer money (provider management does get more complicated) for gambling and porn these days. The stuff you can't get past them is almost exclusively criminal. If you don't like the fact that the government made something illegal, why are you blaming money ? Also: crimes don't stop being crimes just because you paid in BTC, and those transactions aren't as anonymous a…

> Are all crimes, right? Banks will take your consumer money (provider management does get more complicated) for gambling and porn these days Not necessarily. For example, PayPal has recently introduced "acceptable use policy" where they can freeze your account without you violating the law. Banks also have done the same for being "racist", "sexist", "anti-vaxx" etc. All of those things are perfectly legal in the US.…

> just because something is "illegal" doesn't mean it's good to have this banned

No, but it means that the question has nothing to do with money. Using BTC to launder or evade tracking for a transaction that is illegal is simply committing another crime. If you want to be free of prosecution, talk to your government, don't just cheat and figure it's OK because it's crypto. That's how you end up in jail.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#126

Post by vikinghckr »

ajross wrote: post #125
vikinghckr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are all crimes, right? Banks will take your consumer money (provider management does get more complicated) for gambling and porn these days Not necessarily. For example, PayPal has recently introduced "acceptable use policy" where they can freeze your account without you violating the law. Banks also have done the same for being "racist", "sexist", "anti-vaxx" etc. All of those things are perfectly legal in the US.…

> just because something is "illegal" doesn't mean it's good to have this banned No, but it means that the question has nothing to do with money . Using BTC to launder or evade tracking for a transaction that is illegal is simply committing another crime. If you want to be free of prosecution, talk to your government, don't just cheat and figure it's OK because it's crypto. That's how you end up in jail.

First of all, the fact that you completely ignored the first point about perfectly legal "racist", "sexist", "anti-vaxx" behavior being enough to get you banned from PayPal/banks means you accept that there are valid LEGAL use cases of crypto.

As for your suggestion to "talk to your government", yeah I'm sure that will go down well with the Iranian regime trying to crack down on anti-hijab protestors.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#127

Post by qeternity »

tern wrote: post #116
qeternity wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is very much in the vein of the infamous Dropbox announcement. Dropbox was released a year before Bitcoin, and quickly went on to completely change file storage for the average person (alongside its many clones). Why has Bitcoin not achieved anything similar?

Bitcoin went on to create an entirely new industry employing tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, fund thousands of research projects and startups, create financial independence for thousands of people, allow thousands of people to transmit money in situations where it would have been difficult or impossible otherwise, and probably other things. It's a massive cultural phenomenon with global reach and real co…

> The appropriate comparison would be between "blockchain/crypto" and "cloud."

Ok fine, Amazon S3 was launched in 2006, only two years before bitcoin. The entire cloud industry is just a smidge older than crypto.

> Also, for what it's worth, you can send money to anyone in the world instantly now.

You could do that without crypto before, and you can still do it now without crypto. I'm not saying that nobody gets any use from crypto. What I'm saying is that these arguments that we're early in the adoption curve just aren't true. The lack of adoption might be because crypto isn't solving problems for most people.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#128

Post by maxisrelaxed »

dwgebler wrote: post #115
maxisrelaxed wrote: post #103

One of the worst facets of the whole web3 movement is the "thought leaders" and community talking very confidently about how blockchain will replace very well established ways of doing business (FTA "airlines selling tickets"). The author takes a very dim view of the whole blockchain space, and uses the worst possible interpretation of parts of it to make their case, but I don't disagree on this point. Whether web3 b…

You raise a good point. As a sceptic of this space, I would counter the UX issue you mention - which is a huge hurdle for any larger scale adoption of blockchain - will realistically only be solved by billion-dollar enterprise involvement, which will inevitably mean centralization, which in turn means we might as well drop the blockchain part.

I tend to agree with that. If I were to predict how blockchain and web3 will play out I'd say it ends in mostly centralization. The majority of people don't care about the decentralized and "trustless" parts of blockchain, but they care about usability, and I just don't see how a fully decentralized system beats a centralized one in terms of usability (or cost, or scalability). Just look at the internet; it started out as something that was (for some definition) decentralized, and in the end centralization won.

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#129

Post by jdmg94 »

I mostly agree with this critique but OP is coming from a privileged 1st world perspective. I think we should be looking at low trust societies which have different challenges than what you might expect in the "developed" world

Re: Web 3.0 – The Great Con

#130

Post by RockRobotRock »

radicalriddler wrote: post #24
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents are still going strong and quite useful if you need (say) a movie or TV show that's legally unobtainable in your country.

Or if I want an Ubuntu iso in less than 3 hours

It's gotten better for me. I'm able to download from the closest mirror (University of Arizona) at 30 MB/s
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