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Confession: I Barely Use Web3

research.auditless.com

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Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#21

Post by victorbjorklund »

willtemperley wrote: post #16

The democratisation of access to financial markets has had some beneficial knock-on effects like much cheaper cross-border payments. Prior to 2010, banks were charging around 5% for a GBP-EUR transaction. This is a benefit we all see - banks now can't get away with ripping people off like they used to, when I could make a cross border payment for less than 0.5% using a crypto exchange. Also having the ability to hedg…

or it could be fintech startups like Revolut and Wise. You know stuff people actually use that is actual competition for banks. A normal person does not use crypto just to exchange money from GDP-EUR for a vacation trip.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#22

Post by dartos »

hnbad wrote: post #13
dartos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, web3 is just the web with a new payment processor (a blockchain) That payment processor just has no support, no UX team, no security team, and nobody to hold accountable. It’s actually a more trust based system than what we have. Instead of trusting a single payment provider, you need to trust a wallet extension, the website you’re on, and the contract you’re interacting with. Any failure in ju…

Web3 is more than that because some people genuinely thought the future was running actual code on the blockchain and using that as part of the backend. Of course that works reasonably well as long as your code is terse, straightforward, trustworthy, easy to read, bug-free and you have no performance requirements for execution speed or deployment speed.

> thought the future was running actual code on the blockchain and using that as part of the backend

What did that code do besides process transactions and distribute tokens?

Almost nothing.

It’d be the payment gateway layer of any backend. Processing payments and returning proof of purchase.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#23

Post by willtemperley »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #21
willtemperley wrote: post #16

The democratisation of access to financial markets has had some beneficial knock-on effects like much cheaper cross-border payments. Prior to 2010, banks were charging around 5% for a GBP-EUR transaction. This is a benefit we all see - banks now can't get away with ripping people off like they used to, when I could make a cross border payment for less than 0.5% using a crypto exchange. Also having the ability to hedg…

or it could be fintech startups like Revolut and Wise. You know stuff people actually use that is actual competition for banks. A normal person does not use crypto just to exchange money from GDP-EUR for a vacation trip.

Yes but they came shortly after Bitcoin with comparable fees. This is not a coincidence.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#24

Post by [deleted] »

numbsafari wrote: post #8
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

> Confession: I Barely Use Web3 Barely anyone uses Web3, Crypto is just about entirely for financial speculation now. In context the author is a founder of Auditless - "a strategic partner to crypto companies helping design & develop new protocols".

> financial speculation And money laundering and sanctions avoidance… and bribery.

[deleted]

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#25

Post by jncfhnb »

willtemperley wrote: post #23
victorbjorklund wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or it could be fintech startups like Revolut and Wise. You know stuff people actually use that is actual competition for banks. A normal person does not use crypto just to exchange money from GDP-EUR for a vacation trip.

Yes but they came shortly after Bitcoin with comparable fees. This is not a coincidence.

It’s a coincidence

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#26

Post by rcxdude »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #21
willtemperley wrote: post #16

The democratisation of access to financial markets has had some beneficial knock-on effects like much cheaper cross-border payments. Prior to 2010, banks were charging around 5% for a GBP-EUR transaction. This is a benefit we all see - banks now can't get away with ripping people off like they used to, when I could make a cross border payment for less than 0.5% using a crypto exchange. Also having the ability to hedg…

or it could be fintech startups like Revolut and Wise. You know stuff people actually use that is actual competition for banks. A normal person does not use crypto just to exchange money from GDP-EUR for a vacation trip.

Indeed. Crypto is actually very fee-heavy in my experience, from exchange fees to transaction fees and so on. It's got quite a high-friction interface to the existing financial system. As a means of doing forex for the average person I doubt it'd be competitive with even old high-fee banks.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#27

Post by zcw100 »

dartos wrote: post #5
throwpoaster wrote: post #4

I'm a web3 guy. Big believer in blockchain, and I know web3 is not limited to that. I think the consequences of blockchain tech might take several decades / centuries to become apparent ("the Romans had steam engines", etc). When you take a break from it and come back you notice the significant usability hurdles with little-to-no functionality payoff to justify them. The vast majority of people simply do not need a l…

At the end of the day, web3 is just the web with a new payment processor (a blockchain) That payment processor just has no support, no UX team, no security team, and nobody to hold accountable. It’s actually a more trust based system than what we have. Instead of trusting a single payment provider, you need to trust a wallet extension, the website you’re on, and the contract you’re interacting with. Any failure in ju…

...and the crypto it's based on. ...and it's implementation.

I can't wait for the biggest bank heist in history due to an exploit in a crypto algorithm.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#28

Post by Havoc »

I suspect its largely because the one place where it could have world altering potential - replacement of fiat currency as general currency - got massive pushback. The reasons are varied & ultimately don't matter, just that it did.

That leaves just memes, speculation and illegal stuff basically.

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#29

Post by tadeegan »

donatj wrote: post #12

The level to which Crypto has complicated my taxes in previous years has largely sucked the fun out of the concept. I just sit on my existing hoard like some sort of digital dragon. A younger, more idealistic me thought some day it would replace cash, but having to track the value of every buy and sell is just too punitive for that purpose.

Agree sadly. I shy away from web3 investment strategies like participating in liquidity pools because I'm scared about reporting the taxes correctly. I'm now considering ways of anonymizing my self-custody so that I can avoid this burden. Im basically forced to act illegally to avoid this toil

Re: Confession: I Barely Use Web3

#30

Post by kennu »

There are many interesting Web3 apps, like decentralized social media, decentralized web (IPFS), decentralized domain names, decentralized organization management, etc, but they have not seemed to mature enough to become mainstream. They all have various kinds of problems with usability especially for "ordinary people". But the core idea is there and it's good: Make the Internet truly decentralized and peer-to-peer again, and enable it by incentivization via crypto transactions. But it's going to take time.
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