Is Crypto Bullshit?

The first part isn’t entirely unfair; scams and ponzi schemes are everywhere, and it seems clear that we are in the middle of an ever-inflating bubble. It’s also the case that an entire set of legitimate use cases are in reality regulatory arbitrage; crypto advocates are far too quick to ascribe all of the issues with the current monetary system to... See more

The crypto ecosystem (or web3, or blockchain-based, or whatever you want to call it) is offering a new set of promises of how wonderful it will all be. Most of these promises will not be fulfilled, at least not fully or in the way we expect. But in trying to fulfill them, we will learn new things about what people can do online, and what types of b... See more

Crypto, still largely valued on nothing more than the collective belief of its users, is the ultimate example to date of the power of a network, in every sense of the word. That that collective belief is a point of leverage for companies that can aggregate believers is the most natural outcome imaginable, even if it means that the lack of technical... See more

So the real argument for crypto, and more broadly decentralization, is not that centralized systems are broken. Or that the current business models of the internet are not working. Because, in fact, they are for most consumers and many tens of thousands of creators. It’s that they are so functional that only a radical redistribution of control and ... See more