[cribbles]

The overwhelming consensus in this thread and in the replies to that tweet is dissent on the basis of the many completely obvious holes in the author's reasoning, which I won't get into here.

What I'd like to appreciate is the uniqueness of the blockchain space in its seemingly bottomless capacity to generate these bold propositions for which blockchain is _blatantly_ ill-equipped to solve whatever problem is at hand.

This is seen virtually nowhere else in tech with such regularity: engineers are obsessed with picking the "right tool for the job," entrepreneurs are obsessed with finding "product-market fit," etc.

This would make complete sense if the sector as a whole were, to put it crudely, one big Ponzi. The type that could influence otherwise intelligent, well-meaning, technically-inclined people to make glaringly absurd claims like in the linked thread as a pretext for luring in investors.

The typical response to that explanation is to split hairs over whether NFTs, or Bitcoin, or whatever token this guy is selling (I didn't check) fits the classical definition of a Ponzi.

I say "typical" because we re-engage in this discussion anew every day here on HN -- apparently in direct proportion to the total cryptocurrency market cap, with the occasional two-or-three year relief period when retail money dries up.

[PragmaticPulp]

In this case, the author is just selling a $6000 course called “Crypto College” which is a week-long Discord event.

Hyping the possibility of NFTs solving everything is how he sells NFTs to join his expensive course.

He doesn’t really believe NFTs will make people instantly hired by companies. He just wants to sell more tickets to his NFT course.

[kordlessagain]

Welcome to crypto!

[bryanrasmussen]

>What I'd like to appreciate is the uniqueness of the blockchain space in its seemingly bottomless capacity to generate these bold propositions for which blockchain is _blatantly_ ill-equipped to solve whatever problem is at hand.

>This would make complete sense if the sector as a whole were, to put it crudely, one big Ponzi.

snake oil, that is a phrase that is commonly understood as metaphorical and nobody is going to argue that "it is not matching the classical definition of snake oil so it can't be that".

[maxerickson]

It's like a database, but imagine making it slow, expensive and wasteful, for no reason.

[pyrale]

> The type that could influence otherwise [...] well-meaning, [...] people

If any thing, this sector tends to prove the emptiness of the "well-meaning" term. It reminds me of Arendt's claim about the banality of Eichmann's evil .

In the current case, well-meaning simply doesn't exist. It's an excuse people use after the fact, but in reality, the people described this way are usually either thoughtless about the morality of their actions or corrupted by their own interests. They can't be well meaning, because their means don't factor in ethics.

The point Arendt makes is that you don't need to deliberately do evil to be evil. Not thinking is enough. As for the crypto crowd, I hope that the people that didn't think through the consequences of their actions will come to realize it before they do something really fucked up.

[bsenftner]

There is no general financial literacy education in the United States. This education void has been filled in by weak teaching of financial gambling logic. Lacking any true understanding of how money, finances, interest/loans and non-theoretical real world economics operate, educated and technical individuals use pure logic to create incompatible to the real world financial systems, where the real world systems follow the logic of old world social constructs and not pragmatic logic.