The Crypto Backlash Is Booming
This is not interesting or worthy of an article, The Atlantic must be having a slow day. Everything popular always has its most ardent haters, just look at any big tech company like Google, Facebook or popstar like Justin Bieber, Drake, etc. This is not unique to crypto. Anything that attracts such enormous wealth is naturally going to attract the get-rich-quick schemers, scammers, charlatans, moonbois, etc. Any bold new concepts and grandiose claims like web3 and NFTs will be met with skepticism just like anytime a popular tech platform redesigns its UI or algorithm.<p>Virtually all of the extreme vitriol is pure nonsense and entirely misplaced. People bashing NFTs because jpegs of apes are selling for millions are completely missing the point. It&#x27;s equivalent to bashing the email protocol because of the existence of spammers, or hating tech in 2001 because of pets.com. A grammy-winning artist yesterday wrote a nice thread about how NFTs have changed his life by enabling him to better monetize his work [1]<p>Not to excuse scammers&#x2F;spammers and charlatans because obviously that stuff is irritating. I personally despite the crappy NFT art collections selling for millions, NFT profile pictures, Ponzi-like play-to-earn crypto games as much as any hater. But I&#x27;m also aware that nobody is forcing me to buy a digital ape or play Axie Infinity, and that stuff is only a tiny fraction of what NFTs and crypto enable.<p>It&#x27;s important to realize that we&#x27;re still in very very early stages, not even the first inning of the web3 decentralized future, so at this point much of the talk is just prophecy. But there&#x27;s no doubt in my mind that crypto, smart contracts, and decentralized technology (eg. IPFS) enable a ton of applications that were not possible before. Rather than fixating on bored apes, I&#x27;d rather focus on the real innovation (eg. with defi, zero knowledge proofs, DAOs, NFTs with real application, IPFS) and join in on building the future.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RAC&#x2F;status&#x2F;1490431018792226817" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RAC&#x2F;status&#x2F;1490431018792226817</a>