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I'm not going to summarize the article for you, but I'll tell you a story that actually relates more to the cruelty of crypto than the article does. A friend of mine was sort of a big deal for a moment in the adult NFT space. It never made sense to me, but she's a smart person and was able to grok the complexity of it all. She delved deeply into the nature of money, of the blockchain, and of the numerous platforms that were trying to pull it together into a coherent yet decentralized system. Not only did she publish her own content, she also gave talks at conferences, hosted online communities, supported fellow adult creators, and so on. My friend had grown up poor, had been an addict as a teenager, didn't go to college, was a single mom of two kids, lived in a small city in a depressed part of the US, and had really never been successful or felt confident in herself. People in that situation tend to get stuck in a 'poverty mentality': they feel they'll never make it out from the heavy system that seems constantly rigged against them. As an adult content creator, my friend was regularly banned or 'unbanked' because of what she produced (which was pretty mild, comparatively). Like many poor people, saving money was incredibly difficult, and it never felt like it was her fault. It was always a grind and a hustle. She'd make some money, then have some situation that would cause a personal financial crash: her car would break down, a utility bill would be unexpectedly high, a check would bounce, etc. For her, the promises of crypto, and decentralization in general, were very alluring, and gave her a sense of optimism and control. Imagine feeling so financially powerless for your entire life (she was in her 30s at this point), and then discovering a whole different model of how money could work -- and in a way that she (in theory) could be in control of her own finances. And without the influence of The System's banks, regulators, landlords, etc., without the constant extraction of fees and cuts that the middlemen take. Of course, the NFT market crashed, along with the hyped-up dreams, and her finances... again. She still stumbles along with an infinite well of creativity and gumption, but I think you could understand why the word 'cruel' might apply. |