this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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A lot of people hate crypto, and I can understand, however... (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by noctisatrae@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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… the founding ideas are promising, and something I dream of.

Before I start, just a little bit of background on me so you can understand how biased I am (😅): I’m a 16 years old programmer and I won a few crypto hackathon/funding rounds and I made a lot of friends in the field. It allowed me to get quite a bit of ETH/XMR along the way!

I see cryptocurrencies getting a lot of hate, rightly so for the number of scams, shitcoins, NFTs bullshit, “governance”, DAOs and all those often useless & snob terms.

However the founding ideas of decentralisation and freedom with your money are very appealing to me. Smart contracts are really interesting for creating your own banking operation and tokens can represent anything! It’s a world of possibilities to play with, and you get to build something useful for people!

I’d just like to add a bit of nuance tho: I see a lot of apps being built and what’s really making me laugh is the lack of open-source, decentralisation and auditing on privacy. Granted, there is a lot of fake promises, but it’s like everything, you have to find the talented people to follow.

I find it fascinating to build unstoppable, decentralised, user-first apps. I just hope that web3 stays true to its founding principles.

Hope it was interesting, tell me what you think!

EDIT: title+typos+the game is not comfortably played in Act 2

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Congrats on winning some funding rounds, spend them wisely.

Crypto is great, but almost for all the opposite reasons:

  • Smart contracts and DAOs, are the basis for a lot of financial instruments that would otherwise be a bureaucratic hell, properly used they're beneficial for both investors and clients.
  • NFT tokens (yes, I know what I did there) are worthless without an external element to recognize them (whether automated, legal, or human), but they tie well into the "code as law" ideal, and are a good fit for other... well, code. That means stuff like actually buying and owning digital goods, instead of the "buying" (until they decide to take it away) that media/software platforms are currently selling everyone onto (now that's a scam). Or to be not worse, but quicker and more versatile, than a digitally signed notarized document.
  • Decentralization is nearly worthless, except as the basis for independent verification of transactions. Whether they come from a more or less centralized source, is secondary.
  • Self-custody is only for the really dedicated; 99% of the population doesn't need it, doesn't care, doesn't want it, and would more likely be hurt by it. Check out the PGP "web of trust", and Namecoin, for cautionary tales. Banks were created precisely to avoid self-custody, which used to be the norm before them. Also why the average person loves to keep all their data only "in the cloud".
  • Apps don't need all to be OpenSource, decentralized, or audited; they can be private for a private purpose. Just don't use someone else's private app.
  • The "web3", is a nonsense buzzword. A "decentralized" web is just called "the web", no need for any blockchains or anything, hyperlinks are more versatile anyway; the Fediverse or e-mail are "decentralized apps" working just fine, sometimes called "self-hosting"; token economy is simply called "economy"; storing data off-premises, is either "the cloud" or "someone else's computer"; nobody wants "unstoppable" apps, just apps that fulfill their promises, then stop wasting resources.

I get how attractive all the buzzwords and ideals are, particularly for someone interested in programming, but as someone else said, get a sense of how, and why, the current systems work as they do, then you'll be able to better separate what has some potential, from what's just buzzwords to blind you to what's going on in the back.

Unless, of course, you're up to don a sparkly suit and try to con others... but beware, there are people with decades more experience out there doing the rounds.