Crypto

How do you explain the web to people who have never used it? You make it as simple and as accessible as possible.

For example, it was 30 years after the invention of film that someone first tried telling stories with it — before that, film was mainly used as a demonstration of the technology itself, and had little meaning to the average person. It was only after a technology-medium fit appeared that it became compelling and its promise was realized.

By yielding a generational wealth creation opportunity that was a strange hybrid of a lottery jackpot and self-made fortune, crypto created an ideological hold on its early entrepreneurs and workers. It had all the euphoria of a gold rush and all the self esteem of high tech meritocracy.

Crypto is a subculture. A self-contained universe, and a relatively small one.

There is a palpable component of financial nihilism here – the idea that cost of living is strangling most Americans; that upward mobility opportunity is out of reach for increasingly more people; that median home prices divided by median income is at a completely untenable level. All of that is true, so you need to really swing for the fences. Why... See more

Yes, corporations are too powerful, and yes, technical architecture is part of the reason why. However, the problems that emerged during the era of crypto scams and scandal in the early 2020s are similarly derived from the blockchain’s technical architecture—just like corporations. Asking the blockchain to fix the internet is like fixing your dog’s... See more