I've been waiting for this video to come out for a long time. After Dan's massive Twitter thread where he joined dozens of NFT Discord servers and reported on the various projects, a lot of people...
I've been waiting for this video to come out for a long time. After Dan's massive Twitter thread where he joined dozens of NFT Discord servers and reported on the various projects, a lot of people (me included) hoped for a full video on the subject. This video is a very thorough analysis of the past, present, and future of the crypto space, from the philosophy behind the creation of Bitcoin to our current NFT/DAO/Web3 environment. This video is a really good breakdown of the true political goals of Web3: the financialization of everything. Dan quotes German sociotechnologist Jürgen Geuter:
There are parts of your digital life that currently you can’t really sell, but that’s what they want to change. Everything needs to be bought and sold, everything is just a vehicle for more speculation. The reason they want you to be able to resell your access token to some service (instead of buying or renting it like today) is to create even more markets for speculation and the smart contracts can be set up in a way that at every corner they profit.
It also is a political project: Teaching people that everything is property to be bought and sold is a right-wing idea that has very much fallen out of favour. Web3 is here to change that notion and after having all those pesky human rights challenged digitally challenging them in the analog will be that much easier: Why can’t you sell your kidney if you can sell all your data after all?
What a depressing and on the nose observation. God damnit.
Teaching people that everything is property to be bought and sold is a right-wing idea that has very much fallen out of favour. Web3 is here to change that notion...
What a depressing and on the nose observation. God damnit.
Honestly I'd be really interested in any crypto advancement if it answers why: why should I use this (what is its value or purpose), and why does it need crypto (why not do the same using a...
Honestly I'd be really interested in any crypto advancement if it answers why: why should I use this (what is its value or purpose), and why does it need crypto (why not do the same using a non-crypto implementation?)
Current NFT's answers seem to be: 1) I should buy one because I can sell it to some loser for even more money, and 2) "PGP signatures stored in a database" doesn't generate as much hype.
I think art NFTs are pretty neat, as a strange trinket given in return for donations to a specific artist to encourage donations. I'm not particularly attached to them as a thing in themselves. I...
I think art NFTs are pretty neat, as a strange trinket given in return for donations to a specific artist to encourage donations. I'm not particularly attached to them as a thing in themselves.
I think many people's approach to them, as a product in themselves that they're looking to be convinced on or that they're criticizing, is strange. It seems to me like asking "why should I buy Patreon rewards that get me into the credits of YouTube videos?" irrespective of any specific YouTuber. I support some YouTubers on Patreon, but I think that angle of looking at it is strange. I didn't pick the people who I supported based on them having that reward, but when I picked someone and considered how to support them, that reward gave me a concrete way to do so. I wouldn't ever suggest anyone browse through a list of Patreon pages offering rewards of names in video credits to figure out who to support. The idea of judging a reward-tier such as names-in-credits as universally being a scam and then avoiding any creator who happens to offer that as a reward tier is alien to me, but that's what you see people doing about NFTs.
I do think anyone talking NFTs as a sure get-rich-quick thing to buy from others and then flip for profit is doing a disservice. But I don't think shunning that narrative has to mean blacklisting any artists that sells NFTs, which I see a lot of people doing.
You're not necessarily wrong to question whether Macil watched the video, since their comment seems to have completely missed the point of its criticism towards NFTs. However there is also no need...
You're not necessarily wrong to question whether Macil watched the video, since their comment seems to have completely missed the point of its criticism towards NFTs. However there is also no need to ask that in such a snide way, IMO. Be nice. Remember the human.
Yes, I've watched half of it. I wrote notes as I went that I was considering working into a post somewhere. I was pretty disappointed in the quality of the video. I stopped bothering with the...
Yes, I've watched half of it. I wrote notes as I went that I was considering working into a post somewhere. I was pretty disappointed in the quality of the video. I stopped bothering with the video when it got into literally just talking about how cringey a lot of crypto culture is, which isn't something I disagree with, except for the way it's often used to self-righteously condemn everyone involved with crypto. If one is going to mock lolcows for cringe, don't act like it's a real part of some deep moral crusade against a technology.
I found the first half of the video to contain a passable technical description of cryptocurrency, but told in a way that obfuscates the actual strengths and goals of it, and only ever compares it to over-hyped future visions of it. You can make anything sound stupid in that way. There are probably some people who have only heard those over-hyped future visions, who were about to drop a lot of money on a poorly-thought-out investment, and this bit of the video is a needed splash of water in their faces, but to anyone more knowledgeable it elicits a lot of eye rolls.
I think the part about art thefts is presented misleadingly. He presents the idea that the pro-crypto position is that it's all the artist's fault for not joining the system and mint their own art as NFTs to defend it, but that's completely wrong (there can be multiple NFTs claiming to represent the same thing). I'm critical of the idea that there's real damage happening (are stolen-art NFTs actually commonly getting bought in real non-wash-trades, in purchases where the original artist potentially lost out?), that it's worse than stuff like t-shirt bot sites selling shirts with stolen art, and the implicit idea that supporting anyone that engages with NFTs is supporting that damage (any more than buying t-shirts or participating in online commerce is supporting those other art theft sites). He presents that DeviantArt detector thing as evidence there's a real problem when it's not obvious to me that it's not just overly panicking many people over an insignificant problem. I've seen people online decide to take down their art in response to seeing the results of that detector which absolutely seems like an overreaction that's encouraged by it.
I get you criticism but I would encourage you to watch the rest of the video. He moves past the discussion on NFT's and on to other ways in which blockchain technology is being used and abused. My...
I get you criticism but I would encourage you to watch the rest of the video. He moves past the discussion on NFT's and on to other ways in which blockchain technology is being used and abused. My best summation of the video is this. Don't let the technological intermediate steps of the blockchain distract us from the fact that at both ends (creators and users) there are still humans and power structures and hence real and demonstrable harm that can and is being done.
(Note: I haven't finished watching Dan's video so far) The culture and technology aren't coincidental; the culture arises out of the claims and culture set forth by the technology. Even though I...
(Note: I haven't finished watching Dan's video so far)
I stopped bothering with the video when it got into literally just talking about how cringey a lot of crypto culture is, which isn't something I disagree with, except for the way it's often used to self-righteously condemn everyone involved with crypto. If one is going to mock lolcows for cringe, don't act like it's a real part of some deep moral crusade against a technology.
The culture and technology aren't coincidental; the culture arises out of the claims and culture set forth by the technology.
I found the first half of the video to contain a passable technical description of cryptocurrency, but told in a way that obfuscates the actual strengths and goals of it, and only ever compares it to over-hyped future visions of it.
Even though I strongly dislike cryptocurrency, I do feel that a lot of mainstream coverage comes from a pretty poor technical background. But so far, I feel Dan is on the money (heh). And I thought this was pretty sympathetic, given what you've saying.
You can make anything sound stupid in that way. There are probably some people who have only heard those over-hyped future visions, who were about to drop a lot of money on a poorly-thought-out investment, and this bit of the video is a needed splash of water in their faces, but to anyone more knowledgeable it elicits a lot of eye rolls.
The issue is that pretty much all of the cryptocurrency "ecosystem" is sustained on that vision. Yes, one could hypothetically have crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed, but crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed is a small small portion of the whole banana. Even crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed relies on the backbone of crypto-that's-ripping-people-off.
Also, cryptocurrency is pretty poor at the things that is used for when you remove the hype, which I suppose is a reason why the hype is so common. Decentralisation via the immutability of the blockchain means little accountability or refunds, unless you basically put the bank back in the equation. Transaction times are poor and the efforts to alleviate them have been very slow off the ground (and due to the nature of the blockchain, will always pale in comparison to centralised currency). The promised liberation from banking just ends up - as Dan said - replacing old money with new money. And the fluctuations in price mean that it is often functionally unusable as a real currency.
I think the part about art thefts is presented misleadingly. He presents the idea that the pro-crypto position is that it's all the artist's fault for not joining the system and mint their own art as NFTs to defend it, but that's completely wrong (there can be multiple NFTs claiming to represent the same thing). I'm critical of the idea that there's real damage happening...
Firstly, there is a huge amount of criticism of RedBubble et al. doing little to remove stolen content off their site; just because one bad thing exists doesn't mean we should let more happen.
You could say "well technically the buyer wouldn't have bought the original work" - a point that accidentally serves to highlight how a lot of NFTs aren't promoted based on quality or perceived merit, but just since they've NFTs - but I imagine that if you were the artist, you may feel differently. It's very easy for someone uninvolved in the situation to say "nbd", especially if they have an incentive to do so, but where do you draw the line? Let's say the thief becomes successful off of your work, while you are struggling to pay your bills - would you be fine with that? Yes, that's hardly a common scenario, but you are basically dismissing the risk by saying "I haven't heard of it". And even if it is pretty much nothing, the emotional effect of some crypto nerds stealing your art does matter on its own; emotion and feelings are a natural and integral part of human behaviour, especially creative behaviour.
(Edit: now that I've watched the appropriate part of the video, I find it hard to believe that 80,000 NFTs - and those are just the ones DeviantArt found - do not represent a significant impact)
Are you sure you're not taking the video the wrong way? Your reasons for not bothering with the video don't come true and there's plenty of other topics discussed after, it's not a bait-and-switch...
Are you sure you're not taking the video the wrong way? Your reasons for not bothering with the video don't come true and there's plenty of other topics discussed after, it's not a bait-and-switch halfway through a 2 hour video like you expected.
What exactly isn't good enough about the preamble about what cryptocurrencies are? Even then, this is a video specifically about NFTs so cryptocurrency isn't really the main focus and every detail of how that specific technology works isn't that relevant to the entire back half of the video, especially the still-potential good outcomes of it.
In terms of the (relatively small) bit about art thefts, what was actually presented was statements from pro-crypto people who said exactly that in multiple ways. Like it or not, that's the pro-crypto community. Considering the overarching argument about how the few are misleading the many, this isn't some small, mistaken detail that acts as a smoking gun against the video (because the proper thing to do is ignore that it happened?) but an example of the kind of attitudes that went into the idea of NFTs from the outset. I don't see how you can be critical of any damage actually happening when there are artists claiming there are damages—what do you know that would override their experiences?
The DeviantArt detector wasn't presented as evidence of a problem in the video either, he specifically said that the detector itself was good, it was the results that were "depressing"—that's where pro-crypto people started saying it was the artists' fault for not getting into it early enough. Creating multiple NFTs of the same general art concepts was also specifically discussed and highlighted as a problem since it's also not clear what the actual thing the NFT belongs to is (the link? the jpeg file? the URL itself?), which led to a lot of the scamming and perceived damage by artists and buyers alike.
The observation of the crypto community resembling a high control group is an important one I think, and one I wish I had heard sooner. I've had enough online interactions with evangelist crypto...
The observation of the crypto community resembling a high control group is an important one I think, and one I wish I had heard sooner. I've had enough online interactions with evangelist crypto fans to notice a frustrating tendency to handwave away or deflect from common criticisms, and when they fail to shift me from the line of questioning, become angry. Even knowing that crypto fans are likely to be financially invested in the public image of crypto, they caught me off guard. But if this punishing of negativity is a prevalent social custom in crypto circles, suddenly it makes more sense how reflexive it is.
I had this thought as well. There's something very post-post-modern about it. It's the economic version of Qanon. I had not heard the term "toxic positivity" before, but it's clearly a widespread...
I had this thought as well. There's something very post-post-modern about it. It's the economic version of Qanon. I had not heard the term "toxic positivity" before, but it's clearly a widespread symptom of our age, even in more "mainstream" enterprises.
Neat video, thanks for sharing. The content is really good but I really like the style and delivery as well, it's very well produced. I was wondering where I recognized him from and then he made...
Neat video, thanks for sharing. The content is really good but I really like the style and delivery as well, it's very well produced. I was wondering where I recognized him from and then he made the snide comment about the warlock main I checked his previous videos and I remembered I also really enjoyed his WoW video.
I really enjoy Dan, both his style and the depth he goes into about a topic. If you haven't watched it, I also particularly enjoy his In Search of a Flat Earth video.
I really enjoy Dan, both his style and the depth he goes into about a topic. If you haven't watched it, I also particularly enjoy his In Search of a Flat Earth video.
This is not good advice for everyone. Getting a Roth IRA is gambling that your tax burden now is lower than it will be when you retire; getting a traditional IRA is the opposite. Their...
If you live in the US, and you want to know one good place to put your money (arguably the best place), then get low cost index funds with a Roth IRA (NOT a traditional IRA).
This is not good advice for everyone. Getting a Roth IRA is gambling that your tax burden now is lower than it will be when you retire; getting a traditional IRA is the opposite. Their contribution limits are also split, so it's generally a good idea to do a Roth IRA first as a younger person, then as your income increases, keep maxing out your Roth and start putting some more per year into a traditional IRA (and always take advantage of your company's 401k match first, if they have it!)
“Gambling” is a bit of a strong word. It may not be optimal to choose Roth or traditional for any given person but either way you’ll be fine for the most part. And either choice is betting on...
“Gambling” is a bit of a strong word. It may not be optimal to choose Roth or traditional for any given person but either way you’ll be fine for the most part. And either choice is betting on things that are relatively impossible to know at any point in time.
Beyond anticipated tax rates there are reasons to specifically choose Roth IRAs, however. One is if you ever anticipate being in a high income bracket - Roth IRAs become the best non 401k retirement account because of the backdoor. If have any amount of money in a traditional IRA the backdoor becomes much more complicated and likely not worth it because of IRS rules on how taxes work on the conversion.
Secondly, Roth IRAs are more flexible in general. Since you can take out contributions without penalty it can also serve as an emergency emergency fund. Obviously not optimal but better than starving or payday loans if it comes to it. But not if
Third, your workplace 401k allows for the mega backdoor. Then you can put up to 40k a year into your Roth IRA, which is unmatched by any other tax advantaged account that isn’t your 401k.
I've been waiting for this video to come out for a long time. After Dan's massive Twitter thread where he joined dozens of NFT Discord servers and reported on the various projects, a lot of people (me included) hoped for a full video on the subject. This video is a very thorough analysis of the past, present, and future of the crypto space, from the philosophy behind the creation of Bitcoin to our current NFT/DAO/Web3 environment. This video is a really good breakdown of the true political goals of Web3: the financialization of everything. Dan quotes German sociotechnologist Jürgen Geuter:
What a depressing and on the nose observation. God damnit.
Honestly I'd be really interested in any crypto advancement if it answers why: why should I use this (what is its value or purpose), and why does it need crypto (why not do the same using a non-crypto implementation?)
Current NFT's answers seem to be: 1) I should buy one because I can sell it to some loser for even more money, and 2) "PGP signatures stored in a database" doesn't generate as much hype.
I think art NFTs are pretty neat, as a strange trinket given in return for donations to a specific artist to encourage donations. I'm not particularly attached to them as a thing in themselves.
I think many people's approach to them, as a product in themselves that they're looking to be convinced on or that they're criticizing, is strange. It seems to me like asking "why should I buy Patreon rewards that get me into the credits of YouTube videos?" irrespective of any specific YouTuber. I support some YouTubers on Patreon, but I think that angle of looking at it is strange. I didn't pick the people who I supported based on them having that reward, but when I picked someone and considered how to support them, that reward gave me a concrete way to do so. I wouldn't ever suggest anyone browse through a list of Patreon pages offering rewards of names in video credits to figure out who to support. The idea of judging a reward-tier such as names-in-credits as universally being a scam and then avoiding any creator who happens to offer that as a reward tier is alien to me, but that's what you see people doing about NFTs.
I do think anyone talking NFTs as a sure get-rich-quick thing to buy from others and then flip for profit is doing a disservice. But I don't think shunning that narrative has to mean blacklisting any artists that sells NFTs, which I see a lot of people doing.
You're not necessarily wrong to question whether Macil watched the video, since their comment seems to have completely missed the point of its criticism towards NFTs. However there is also no need to ask that in such a snide way, IMO. Be nice. Remember the human.
Message received. Will do.
Yes, I've watched half of it. I wrote notes as I went that I was considering working into a post somewhere. I was pretty disappointed in the quality of the video. I stopped bothering with the video when it got into literally just talking about how cringey a lot of crypto culture is, which isn't something I disagree with, except for the way it's often used to self-righteously condemn everyone involved with crypto. If one is going to mock lolcows for cringe, don't act like it's a real part of some deep moral crusade against a technology.
I found the first half of the video to contain a passable technical description of cryptocurrency, but told in a way that obfuscates the actual strengths and goals of it, and only ever compares it to over-hyped future visions of it. You can make anything sound stupid in that way. There are probably some people who have only heard those over-hyped future visions, who were about to drop a lot of money on a poorly-thought-out investment, and this bit of the video is a needed splash of water in their faces, but to anyone more knowledgeable it elicits a lot of eye rolls.
I think the part about art thefts is presented misleadingly. He presents the idea that the pro-crypto position is that it's all the artist's fault for not joining the system and mint their own art as NFTs to defend it, but that's completely wrong (there can be multiple NFTs claiming to represent the same thing). I'm critical of the idea that there's real damage happening (are stolen-art NFTs actually commonly getting bought in real non-wash-trades, in purchases where the original artist potentially lost out?), that it's worse than stuff like t-shirt bot sites selling shirts with stolen art, and the implicit idea that supporting anyone that engages with NFTs is supporting that damage (any more than buying t-shirts or participating in online commerce is supporting those other art theft sites). He presents that DeviantArt detector thing as evidence there's a real problem when it's not obvious to me that it's not just overly panicking many people over an insignificant problem. I've seen people online decide to take down their art in response to seeing the results of that detector which absolutely seems like an overreaction that's encouraged by it.
I get you criticism but I would encourage you to watch the rest of the video. He moves past the discussion on NFT's and on to other ways in which blockchain technology is being used and abused. My best summation of the video is this. Don't let the technological intermediate steps of the blockchain distract us from the fact that at both ends (creators and users) there are still humans and power structures and hence real and demonstrable harm that can and is being done.
(Note: I haven't finished watching Dan's video so far)
The culture and technology aren't coincidental; the culture arises out of the claims and culture set forth by the technology.
Even though I strongly dislike cryptocurrency, I do feel that a lot of mainstream coverage comes from a pretty poor technical background. But so far, I feel Dan is on the money (heh). And I thought this was pretty sympathetic, given what you've saying.
The issue is that pretty much all of the cryptocurrency "ecosystem" is sustained on that vision. Yes, one could hypothetically have crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed, but crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed is a small small portion of the whole banana. Even crypto-with-all-of-the-hype-removed relies on the backbone of crypto-that's-ripping-people-off.
Also, cryptocurrency is pretty poor at the things that is used for when you remove the hype, which I suppose is a reason why the hype is so common. Decentralisation via the immutability of the blockchain means little accountability or refunds, unless you basically put the bank back in the equation. Transaction times are poor and the efforts to alleviate them have been very slow off the ground (and due to the nature of the blockchain, will always pale in comparison to centralised currency). The promised liberation from banking just ends up - as Dan said - replacing old money with new money. And the fluctuations in price mean that it is often functionally unusable as a real currency.
Firstly, there is a huge amount of criticism of RedBubble et al. doing little to remove stolen content off their site; just because one bad thing exists doesn't mean we should let more happen.
You could say "well technically the buyer wouldn't have bought the original work" - a point that accidentally serves to highlight how a lot of NFTs aren't promoted based on quality or perceived merit, but just since they've NFTs - but I imagine that if you were the artist, you may feel differently. It's very easy for someone uninvolved in the situation to say "nbd", especially if they have an incentive to do so, but where do you draw the line? Let's say the thief becomes successful off of your work, while you are struggling to pay your bills - would you be fine with that? Yes, that's hardly a common scenario, but you are basically dismissing the risk by saying "I haven't heard of it". And even if it is pretty much nothing, the emotional effect of some crypto nerds stealing your art does matter on its own; emotion and feelings are a natural and integral part of human behaviour, especially creative behaviour.
(Edit: now that I've watched the appropriate part of the video, I find it hard to believe that 80,000 NFTs - and those are just the ones DeviantArt found - do not represent a significant impact)
Are you sure you're not taking the video the wrong way? Your reasons for not bothering with the video don't come true and there's plenty of other topics discussed after, it's not a bait-and-switch halfway through a 2 hour video like you expected.
What exactly isn't good enough about the preamble about what cryptocurrencies are? Even then, this is a video specifically about NFTs so cryptocurrency isn't really the main focus and every detail of how that specific technology works isn't that relevant to the entire back half of the video, especially the still-potential good outcomes of it.
In terms of the (relatively small) bit about art thefts, what was actually presented was statements from pro-crypto people who said exactly that in multiple ways. Like it or not, that's the pro-crypto community. Considering the overarching argument about how the few are misleading the many, this isn't some small, mistaken detail that acts as a smoking gun against the video (because the proper thing to do is ignore that it happened?) but an example of the kind of attitudes that went into the idea of NFTs from the outset. I don't see how you can be critical of any damage actually happening when there are artists claiming there are damages—what do you know that would override their experiences?
The DeviantArt detector wasn't presented as evidence of a problem in the video either, he specifically said that the detector itself was good, it was the results that were "depressing"—that's where pro-crypto people started saying it was the artists' fault for not getting into it early enough. Creating multiple NFTs of the same general art concepts was also specifically discussed and highlighted as a problem since it's also not clear what the actual thing the NFT belongs to is (the link? the jpeg file? the URL itself?), which led to a lot of the scamming and perceived damage by artists and buyers alike.
The observation of the crypto community resembling a high control group is an important one I think, and one I wish I had heard sooner. I've had enough online interactions with evangelist crypto fans to notice a frustrating tendency to handwave away or deflect from common criticisms, and when they fail to shift me from the line of questioning, become angry. Even knowing that crypto fans are likely to be financially invested in the public image of crypto, they caught me off guard. But if this punishing of negativity is a prevalent social custom in crypto circles, suddenly it makes more sense how reflexive it is.
I had this thought as well. There's something very post-post-modern about it. It's the economic version of Qanon. I had not heard the term "toxic positivity" before, but it's clearly a widespread symptom of our age, even in more "mainstream" enterprises.
Neat video, thanks for sharing. The content is really good but I really like the style and delivery as well, it's very well produced. I was wondering where I recognized him from and then he made the snide comment about the warlock main I checked his previous videos and I remembered I also really enjoyed his WoW video.
I really enjoy Dan, both his style and the depth he goes into about a topic. If you haven't watched it, I also particularly enjoy his In Search of a Flat Earth video.
This is not good advice for everyone. Getting a Roth IRA is gambling that your tax burden now is lower than it will be when you retire; getting a traditional IRA is the opposite. Their contribution limits are also split, so it's generally a good idea to do a Roth IRA first as a younger person, then as your income increases, keep maxing out your Roth and start putting some more per year into a traditional IRA (and always take advantage of your company's 401k match first, if they have it!)
“Gambling” is a bit of a strong word. It may not be optimal to choose Roth or traditional for any given person but either way you’ll be fine for the most part. And either choice is betting on things that are relatively impossible to know at any point in time.
Beyond anticipated tax rates there are reasons to specifically choose Roth IRAs, however. One is if you ever anticipate being in a high income bracket - Roth IRAs become the best non 401k retirement account because of the backdoor. If have any amount of money in a traditional IRA the backdoor becomes much more complicated and likely not worth it because of IRS rules on how taxes work on the conversion.
Secondly, Roth IRAs are more flexible in general. Since you can take out contributions without penalty it can also serve as an emergency emergency fund. Obviously not optimal but better than starving or payday loans if it comes to it. But not if
Third, your workplace 401k allows for the mega backdoor. Then you can put up to 40k a year into your Roth IRA, which is unmatched by any other tax advantaged account that isn’t your 401k.