Surely somewhere beyond the wall street grifters, the silicon valley data slurpers and the cryptomaniacs there is a fintech community that is actually worth being part of?
The Tinkerbell Griftopia
91–100 of 251 posts
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one of those non-crypto decentralized advocates, I am not super optimistic. I think the best case would be that we manage to build a bunch of generic decentralized infrastructure while all the easy money is being thrown around at the bottom of the Ponzi pyramid, and then that infrastructure manages to survive and continue to provide value even after the cryptocurrency house of cards collapses.
> then that infrastructure manages to survive and continue to provide value even after the cryptocurrency house of cards collapses. That's my optimistic forecast for what happens after the current speculative bubble pops. We'll be left with e.g. universal sign-on via crypto wallet that's not owned by any corporation and can be used for cryptographic signature / voting / &c. We'll also have increasingly robust decentr…
> That's my optimistic forecast for what happens after the current speculative bubble pops. We'll be left with e.g. universal sign-on via crypto wallet that's not owned by any corporation and can be used for cryptographic signature / voting / &c.
This seems entirely self-contradictory. How do you certify that a nominally anonymous cryptographic ID represents a particular individual for the purposes of signature/voting without some real-world (likely centralized!) entity establishing a connection between the two?
This seems like fundamentally the same problem that SSL certificates are trying to solve for website identity and I don't see how blockchain removes the need for a central authority somewhere if you want guarantees like "one person, one vote".
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#93The thing is, there isn't a bigger grifter than Stephen Diehl.
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> https://cryptoforthehomeless.org/ This seems like a well-intentioned project, but I have to ask: Why is crypto helpful, or even necessary here? Why not just use normal money?
Because there exist people who will donate crypto but not "normal money". Same reason why there are charities that accept cars, canned food, christmas trees, etc.
That kinda just reinforces the point though that all of this cryptononsense is a scam. Sure, here's a group exploiting Bitcoin Iditiots LLC for a good cause, but they're still exploiting.
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open source funding hits art. Anyone can view it and get the benefit of doing so, the artist got paid to create, somebody gets bragging rights. Everybody wins.
Yes, it is a completely contrived marketplace based on bragging rights. It seems to work, but it is incredibly stupid and eventually people will move on.
Welcome to the art world.
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#96From the article: "But truly that is the message of the Andersen folktale, that power begets the capacity to inspire delusion in the masses." Does the "Andersen folktale" refer to Tinkerbell? Has nothing to do with the merit of the article or his argument, but Tinkerbell was a character invented by J.M. Barrie for Peter Pan and not a folktale at all.
I believe the author was referring to The Emperor's New Clothes, which he also mentioned in the article
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#97I work in the crypto industry right now - my job is to keep bad guys from stealing XXX millions of dollars. I've also worked on a team that has done the tech side of several record breaking NFT's sales. And I've sold my own NFTS for fun, and strangers have bought them (wat!). I'm not a "believer". Crypto is indeed full of idiots - and scammers - and crazy people who will say anything to see the token they hold go up…
Well, you had me until you brought up Fidenza.
It’s something somebody with less than a CompSci or SWE bachelors could do. It looks like something a nerd who can program that just took an entry level mechanical engineering fluid dynamics course & thought it was cool made.
In other words, practically worthless, and hardly art. You would put them on your wall? Poor wall.
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Broadly speaking, people are not buying crypto assets "for the lulz" because they have too much darn money lying around, they are buying them on the speculation that they will appreciate--like Bitcoin--and can be dumped at a profit.
This is exactly the key insight in a post-scarcity environment, though: Beyond food and basic shelter, everything is lulz. A lot of people didn't grow up in that environment of abundance, so they still think that "profit" is serious business and not lulz, but then they use that profit for big houses or yachts or children or other lulz anyway.
Is it lulz, or is it a desperate attempt to find a financial/economic foothold when traditional footholds (bearable careers, houses, etc.) are increasingly out of reach for Millennials and onward?
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But, the main force for a return to decentralization is in crypto The more I watch this space, the more I realize that many of these projects are just an excuse to flip novel tokens for a quick profit. We reached the point where there are enough blockchains and crypto tokens for almost every conceivable purpose. At this point, many of the new entrants feel like they’re just arbitrarily bolting new coins and new tok…
I think you have to participate a bit in the non-speculative side to get a feel for the culture and social movement that's brewing there. New entrants aren't the ones to watch since they're probably jumping in to make money, look to the increasing interest in DAOs as social coordination mechanisms, they will keep evolving to empower groups of individuals to have outsized impacts.
> feel for the culture and social movement that's brewing there.
It might be slightly cool if they weren’t 99% either grifters or people who can’t actually do anything. Like, even basic programming that would actually make something real.
The current “culture” is literally just saying a lot of words and making absolutely zero point.
Sort of like Kanye said
“No one knows what it means, but it's provocative
Gets the people going”
Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia
#100I work in the crypto industry right now - my job is to keep bad guys from stealing XXX millions of dollars. I've also worked on a team that has done the tech side of several record breaking NFT's sales. And I've sold my own NFTS for fun, and strangers have bought them (wat!). I'm not a "believer". Crypto is indeed full of idiots - and scammers - and crazy people who will say anything to see the token they hold go up…
The article agrees with you that there is interesting math and good art in crypto. But disagrees about why it's being done.