Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

They pretty much nailed it in the last paragraph... > Writing in the New York Times Adrian Chen noted as far back as 2013 that Bitcoin is built on a weird mix of speculative greed bolstered by a utopian cyberlibertarian ideology and likened it to a digital gold rush. Indeed, hyperbole continues to characterise all aspects of the crypto world. Crypto messaging does not appear to be directed at the rational or sensible. Adrian Chen's article... [link] Dan Olson's now epic "Line Goes Up" [this video] ... a masterful takedown of crypotcurrency and NFT's, it also demonstrates what a shit-show this has all become. Much MUCH worse than in Chen's 2013 article.

[this video] Description: Written and performed by Dan Olson Crowdfunding: [link] Twitter: [link] 00:00:00 Preface 00:01:12 0. In 2008 The Economy Collapsed 00:07:09 1. Bitcoin 00:18:18 2. Ethereum 00:24:34 3. The Machine 00:39:07 4. NFTs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto 00:57:54 5. The Unbearable Cringe Of Crypto 01:11:46 6. A Self-Organizing High Control Group 01:16:57 7. Crypto Reality 01:25:36 8. There Is No Privacy On The Chain 01:32:52 9. If This "Looks Like Scam" Then Every NFT Room I'm In Looks Like Scam LOL 01:38:29 10. Play To Earn Exists To Get You To Buy Crypto 01:46:39 11. We're All Gonna Make It And By "We" I Mean "Us" Not You 01:56:08 12. DAOs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto 02:13:21 13. I Know It's Rigged, But It's The Only Game In Town

Web3 has already changed the world. Not by much, but the statement doesn't make promises as to how much it has to in order to qualify for "changing the world". > it’s clear that Web3 is just a new spin on the same blockchain tech that we’ve been discussing for the last decade. Web3 is everything blockchain. Queue the astronaut holding a gun "always has been" meme. Its adopted a new label, but the core commerce frameworks (Bitcoin, ETH) and the applications of those frameworks (NFT, DeFi, .eth, etc) are inextricable, technically and philosophically. I mean, really, Web3 sucks, but this article is clearly written by a 60 year old who has been slowly following its developments through Bloomberg articles. The clearest signal that someone hasn't put much critical thinking at all into why Web3 is bad, is prioritizing a complaint about the environmental impact, because that is a problem, but one the community will fix. Its an argument about implementation, not philosophy. > But unless you’re trying to create a cryptocurrency, buy drugs or blackmail a company using ransomware there aren’t really any sensible use cases for a blockchain As bearish as I am on most Web3 technologies; the one that I feel does have use-cases are the core currencies. Look, if you believe the only use-cases for crypto are illegal, and obviously you aren't buying anything illegal with it (I'd bet this guy even drives the speed limit), then you just by-definition outed yourself as being critically misinformed.

> However, as AI experts hypothesize about when, and if, AI will disrupt white-collar work, the technology thus far has made only a small splash in professional services. [...] Any returns the economy is seeing are largely confined to the tech industry, suggesting that AI disruption has been limited in the real economy. There's one quote from the Dan Olson's "Line Goes Up" video essay [0] that's been rattling around in my head for a while now. (Predictably from 2022, if that was not obvious) > [...] it outlines just how disconnected from reality the people actually building cryptocurrencies really are. They don’t understand anything about the ecosystems they’re trying to disrupt, [...] and assume that because they understand one very complicated thing: programming with cryptography; that all other complicated things must be lesser in complexity and naturally lower in the hierarchy of reality. Nails easily driven by the hammer that they have created. Specifically him calling the attitude the "technofetishistic egotism of assuming that programmers are uniquely suited to solve society’s problems" has stuck with me. I don't think AI developers are good judges of what a lawyer does in this case, so I'd rather be skeptical. I'm not saying that LLM tools AREN'T useful to lawyers or are capable of doing lawyer-like things... I'm just willing to humbly assume that I do not know what makes a good lawyer. [0] [this video] (timestamped to quote)

> > I do think they're worried about what it'll do to their prestige > Why must this always be the argument? It was the same with cryptocurrencies and NFTs, there is a specific type of proponent who always accuses critics of secretly being pro the technology but publicly against it due to some ulterior motive. Most people aren’t selfish lying rat bastards who think like that. Meanwhile, the prestige to be gained/lost from supporting/doubting the big mainstream thing is immense, and the incentives are actually in completely the opposite direction... Anyway, on that topic The Line Goes Up video covers the arguments about prestige far more extensively and far more elaborately than I ever could: [this video] But it's very much not the doubters who are worrying about prestige in crypto and NFTs, and probably not with AI either.