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In 2022, Web3 went just great

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Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#111

Post by coldpie »

danaris wrote: post #70
onebot wrote: post #52

The problem I have with articles like these is that my definition of Web3 is quite a bit different. I tend to lump "crypto" more with NFTs, wild speculation, scams, heavily VC backed "decentralized" tokens, etc. But on the other hand, I want social networks not owned by businesses, I want other major utilities also not owned by major companies (I think gmail is used for 8bn addresses). I think the fediverse is nice s…

I really, really hope that we can "reclaim" that definition of web3 (which, from what I can tell, was the original one, hijacked by cryptocurrency proponents as the scams mounted and the value of Bitcoin rose in the last few years) as the cryptocurrency sphere collapses in on itself, because I'm right there with you on the desperate need for genuine decentralized internet and societal infrastructure. (I'm deeply, dee…

FWIW I keep hearing "decentralized web" and "fediverse".

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#112

Post by TedShiller »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #45

"The collector who dropped $2.9 million on an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet found himself in a bind in April, when he tried to resell the NFT and wound up with a top bid of… $280." Hahaha, wow. You couldn't even take a 2.899 million dollar write off loss on your taxes too! Just straight vaporizing nearly 3 million bucks.

The most shocking part for me was that someone was willing to pay $280

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#113

Post by coldpie »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #103
AndrewStephens wrote: post #14

I would love to know how much of that is real money, as in actually dollars. So much of the cryptocurrency world is based on terribly inflated prices and it has always been unclear to me how much money was actually put in by real people who aren't just self-dealing and wash trading. I am sure the answer is in the billions but I'll bet that it is much lower than some people would have you believe. Luckily crypto is st…

Where do you draw the line? For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet, do you care if it was 300,000 that he invested into bitcoin and cashed for the 2.9 million? If it bubble money too, does it "count"?

> For the clown that paid $2.9 million for the first tweet

He didn't pay for the first tweet, he paid for someone to create a hash of the URL of the first tweet. The distinction matters: the NFT scam works by tricking people into thinking they own the thing, instead of just a copy of a pointer someone made to the thing, which is what they actually "own."

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#114

Post by ElectricalUnion »

remram wrote: post #105
HN_is_for_gemes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not GP, but are we supposed to feel good for you? You're holding what those people lost. Some people got lucky, some people stole, a lot of people lost big time.

> You're holding what those people lost.

Not really, a bunch of "lost" crypto money isn't even "stolen"/"transfered" in the traditional sense, it's just lost as in "vanishes from the world because someone did a operational mistake" gone.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#115

Post by abetusk »

I would like to remind people, yet again, that things like "fuckedcompany.com" existed [0] and there was also a lot of hate for dot-com era startups during the late 1990s to 2000s.

From the article:

""" $4.27 billion was stolen in various hacks and scams this year alone, although that is a very conservative estimate ... """

One source claims $5 trillion lost during the dot-com crash as of 2002 [1].

I believe being critical of new technology and holding scammers accountable is great but I want more critical analysis of what's going on, not just a snarky middle finger against cryptocurrency and it's surrounding technology.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

[1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/equities/dot...

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#116

Post by remram »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #114
remram wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but are we supposed to feel good for you? You're holding what those people lost. Some people got lucky, some people stole, a lot of people lost big time.

> You're holding what those people lost. Not really, a bunch of "lost" crypto money isn't even "stolen"/"transfered" in the traditional sense, it's just lost as in "vanishes from the world because someone did a operational mistake" gone.

I'm not claiming GP is holding all that was ever lost, that is a bit much.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#117

Post by jrmg »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #14

I would love to know how much of that is real money, as in actually dollars. So much of the cryptocurrency world is based on terribly inflated prices and it has always been unclear to me how much money was actually put in by real people who aren't just self-dealing and wash trading. I am sure the answer is in the billions but I'll bet that it is much lower than some people would have you believe. Luckily crypto is st…

This is a really good point. If I ‘have’ $1bn because I spent $100 on crypto that rose, held it, and then the price just crashed again, nothing has actually been lost. But if I sold that crypto at the inflated value, the buyers have lost big time.

Unfortunately I suspect much of the real money came from uninformed non-rich people who believed the hype - and not just the ‘massive gainz!’ hype (maybe they even saw that for what it was), but the general excitement in that media over crypto in general.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#119

Post by lern_too_spel »

timdaub wrote: post #50
satellites wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a blatant straw man fallacy. No one here is insinuating that financial institutions are pure and innocent. If anything, crypto news over the past year has proven one thing: that the crypto space is just as corrupt as “traditional finance,” but with none of the guardrails that make it harder to commit blatant scams. Society developed immune responses to financial fraud in the form of regulations. They are insuf…

The difference between traditional finance and DeFi is that DeFi is so transparent that a single person (Molly) can run a blog to aggregate all things that went wrong. They can arise at a single number of error that the industry has created. This is an achievement of radical transparency; something that should be celebrated.

The difference between DeFi and traditional finance is that traditional finance is actually useful, while DeFi has absolutely no societal value. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34210334

If society deems that level of transparency beneficial, it can be implemented on centralized databases much more cheaply.

Re: In 2022, Web3 went just great

#120

Post by notahacker »

gizmo385 wrote: post #64
timdaub wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between traditional finance and DeFi is that DeFi is so transparent that a single person (Molly) can run a blog to aggregate all things that went wrong. They can arise at a single number of error that the industry has created. This is an achievement of radical transparency; something that should be celebrated.

DeFi is orders of magnitude smaller, which makes aggregation much simpler.

Not to mention that traditional finance helps billions of people and businesses buy their houses, spread out payments, invest in their futures, see their business through growth/lean periods etc. There are real world success stories - too many to aggregate even within people's own social circles.

On the other hand, if there are people using DeFi's ability to take out very short term overcollateralised loans at above tradfi rates to finance anything other than speculation on crypto, they're being very quiet about it...

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