[XMPPwocky]

I think your pitch would be significantly stronger if the resources you linked didn't largely revolve around "What if Snoop Dogg had his own currency?"

I'm not ... completely unable to be persuaded that there are use cases for cryptocurrency. But "Ashton Kutcher should have Aston Kutchercoin, and develop some sort of referral-based pyramid-shaped scheme with it for his fans" is... what is that?

[EGreg]

That's...

1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events

2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people

3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters

4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments

5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get together and form their own meetups, see it happen around the world, if they get large then Ashton and his crew can come and do a rock concert there

It's great for political campaigns and many movements as well. We did it for Yang's 2020 campaign for example, with "Yang Gangs", that was very early days in 2020

[habinero]

Ok, I'll bite. I read this and my first reactions are:

1. How?

2. Reward them with what?

3. Fans are already promoters.

4. Why is this a good thing?

5. This is just describing fandom, which already exists?

[llamaimperative]

Oh sorry, this way the creator of the underlying infrastructure can collect rent from all aforementioned re-implementations of existing services.

[EGreg]

This is extremely vague and seems to be so on purpose in order to just have some nebulous "attack". Do you really think Web2 platforms aren't the epitome of rentseeking, by taking advantage of their role as middlemen?

[llamaimperative]

Obviously existing middlemen are rent seekers. The question is why anyone should eat the cost of switching to a new, less proven rent seeker.

To the hopeful new rent seeker, the pitch is obvious. To everyone else, the provided rationales tend to sound like a whole lot of bullshit.

[EGreg]

Why should people use automation at all?

This is like asking why people should switch from telephone switchboard operators, to automatic switchboards. Or why should anyone switch from livery cab services to Uber.

Technology may be "less proven" initially, but it's far more reliable in the end. It also removes a whole class of inefficiencies and conflicts that won't be possible with smart contracts, the same way that you could remove them if you switched from anything custom to anything standardized.

If you just stopped repeating the same tropes "web3 bad" for the sake of saying them, and engage with the substance, you'll see that this is a case of standardization, automation and programming what was previously ad-hoc and requires costly arbitration after the fact.

[EGreg]

1. Well, you want to have your coin usable to pay for something in your own community. The first thing you can offer are unsold seats and other things that literally cost you nothing. People who earned your coin can buy seats at your events, or sell them to other people (e.g. who live locally) to attend the event.

2. With your own coin, obviously. If the coin has value aboard a cruise ship, or events, etc. then everyone wins. There are many businesses that can benefit from selling unused inventory, and they may as well sell it for coins earned for things like bring other paying customers, contributing great testimonials, content, etc. Imagine being able to go on stage if you earned enough "loyalty points" or whatever.

3. Loyalty points have been around forever. And no, fans are not already promoters. I know in my own personal experience that even INVESTORS who invested in your company often sit back and hope that you'll make them a profit somehow, instead of bringing others in behind them. Let alone people who just come to a show. The easier you make it for them, e.g. having your own site with custom links that they can share and earn "affiliate revenue" in your own coin, the more traffic you'll get.

4. You get more traffic. More audience. More capital. More money. More loyalty. Independence from having your speech restricted or demonetized. Look at all the youtube personalities openly saying that they can't say this or that. Many comedians and performers are sensitive to being censored.

5) Also you can easily collect money from a global audience, and pay out to a global audience, without being a central bottleneck (FinTech) and without being required to post surety bonds as a "money-transmitter", instead letting people transact directly and you don't have the liability, and they don't have to trust you like they trust Binance or FTX or Celsius with custody of their funds etc. etc. You just provide the Web interface, they do the transaction, facilitated by IMMUTABLE smart contracts.

[mvdtnz]

But people can already pay for unsold seats... with money. The same way the sold seats were paid for.

[EGreg]

And how are they going to earn this money for actions that help the community?

It's much better when you can issue your own money supply

[mvdtnz]

Same way people have earned money for millennia I suppose. If it has value it will be paid for.

[rprwhite]

I had the exact same thoughts. But, also, why is it a good thing that risk is passed down to the users of the currency?

In the regular system risk is passed upward to regular bank you deal with, then upward to the government bank. The frustrating part here is that the regular bank makes all, or very nearly all, the profit, yet passes on the risk. This gives them enormous amounts of power, through wealth, which is far from ideal. But, much, much worse is the concept of removing the regular bank, and government bank, replacing them with a random person online. And passing the risk downward to the users of the currency.

[EGreg]

You don't replace the bank with a random person, but with a smart contract trusted by the community. The whole point is to eliminate trust in the middleman completely from many transactions, and prevent a growing class of conflicts from even starting. That is why you don't need to post surety bonds, for instance!

[TeaBrain]

Point 2 is the basis for a pyramid scheme.

[EGreg]

Pyramid schemes are illegal, but Multi-Level-Marketing schemes are legal.

And you don't need multiple levels. You can have one level. That's called affiliate marketing.

Loyalty points are a thing. You can earn them as an affiliate, for instance. It doesn't have to be a pyramid. But if you are going that route, almost all startups are "pyramid schemes" that end up with an IPO where the public continues to demand rents be extracted perpetually to boost stock price endlesssly, resulting in increased "enshittification". I'd rather people earn utility tokens they can spend once into the economy, than shares where they have the right to demand rent extraction and enshittification for everyone else.

[TeaBrain]

>Pyramid schemes are illegal, but Multi-Level-Marketing schemes are legal.

In this case, this wouldn't even fit the mold for a multilevel marketing scheme, or even affiliate marketing. There are real cash flows detached from a buy-in both of those schemes.

>people earn utility tokens they can spend once into the economy, than shares where they have the right to demand rent extraction

Again, there's cash flows underlying shares of a company. There's not in the case of a digital asset that people refer to as a coin or token.

[EGreg]

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say. There are "real cash flows" in every case, just what you consider as the unit of account is different.

As far as shares, no. It's completely different. Shares are equity securities, that entitle people to dividends or they want the shares to go up in price. Regardless, it sets up a never-ending demand for enshittification and rent extraction that you see across Big Tech. Utility tokens are fundamentally different and don't have those perverse incentives, and remove the shareholder class. It's like comparing shares in Disney Corp, to Disney Dollars.

[TeaBrain]

MLM schemes and affiliate marketing businesses will have, or be related to, underlying businesses of selling products which generate revenue, and they'll have some level of expenses related to producing these products. These are components of an operating cash flow. Businesses, whether private or public, are expected to either have healthy cash flows, or would be expected to grow their cash flows in the future in the case of a startup, to support the share price. Also, shares don't necessarily "entitle people to dividends" as shares often have no dividends. In the case of cryptocurrencies, there is no underlying physical product, nor underlying debt, nor a cash flow generating business.

[miunau]

Which one of those five have actually happened in reality, and to what extent?

"The American Conservative further stated that a contingent of Yang's digital followers were only backing him for "a fresh platform for surreal and cynical humor" and that Yang had to denounce part of and distance himself from the movement, which largely stemmed from digital supporters of the Trump 2016 campaign.[85]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Yang_2020_presidential_...