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by mightyRodri 1377 days ago
Have you seen the "Line goes up" summary by Dan Olson? It puts the crypto sphere into context. From that many descisions and marketing practices start to make sense.
2 comments

Crypto being full of grifters does not mean that the actual developers in the space are using "technobabble" in order to sound smarter without actually introducing new concepts. Crypto is actually innovating in ways that are broadly applicable to computer science in general, e.g. with all the work being done on Zero-Knowledge Proofs. And those innovations require new words because they are new concepts. I think it should be somewhat obvious to anyone that has actually looked at the space that devs are not just re-naming existing ideas.
> Crypto is actually innovating in ways that are broadly applicable to computer science in general

Most of it is just companies putting blockchains everywhere because VCs give them money in that case. Nothing scientific about that.

Again, the two things are not mutually exclusive. Most people/orgs can be applying blockchain tech in ways that are not actually useful (or are actively harmful), but that doesn't mean there aren't people in that same space doing novel work that requires new terms in order to communicate with other experts/researchers/developers efficiently and effectively.
In that video he searches for the griftiest projects and treats them as defining the whole technology. Suggesting it as an answer here is like responding to a question about how eBay is engineered and showing off the scammiest eBay auction pages you can find by searching for the lowest-rated users.
I actually thought Line Goes Up was pretty well informed and well-presented. It's definitely one-sided, but I think there were only a couple of statements that I found questionable.

I work in the crypto industry, and definitely agree there's a ton of innovation in the space, but the innovations lie at an incredibly technical intersection of cryptography, game theory, and distributed networks. Get marketing, sales, and investment capital involved in the mix (which almost every project has), and you have a bundle of products being thrust in front of the public which they can't rigorously evaluate, and because everything is directly incentivized, tons of scammers, grifters, liars, and fraudsters.

When my non-technical friends ask me about crypto, I'm happy to tell them some of the things I think are really cool about it. But I don't recommend buying anything based on my perspective; it's basically gambling (even if you're well-informed)

Well yeah this is how he gets paid. It's not about being informative about a class of technology, its about generating clicks to get more patreon subscriptions and youtube ad payments.