Year: 2022

A frequent criticism of #web3 is that “it’s a giant Ponzi scheme”. So I decided to learn the history of money: how it came to be, why, and when. By the time I finished this book, I realized that it’s a must-read for anybody with a position against or pro, #cryptocurrency. https://t.co/6uoAGypIhY

Without ever referring to cryptocurrencies or other #web3 concepts (they were not even on the author’s radar at the time of writing), this book is full of surprises that pertain to those technologies.

For example, human societies went through alternate phases where they either used credit systems and virtual money or cash based on gold and silver bullions and coins. And virtual money came first.

In another example, governments almost always legitimated a new currency (virtual or real) *after* it was being used by private citizens for at least one generation.

I’ve posted multiple pages in another thread with the relevant passages and wrote a full review on Amazon. But I highly recommend you read it by yourself if you are interested in #cryptocurrency, #NFT based economies, and #web3 in general.

@jeffsussna @sallamar Finished.

I walk away with the conviction that calling cryptocurrency or #web3 in general “a Ponzi scheme” is superficial and ignores what is money and how it came to be. I hope this (messy) thread helped highlight some of the most fascinating aspects of our past.

A possible interpretation: to put a rig in every house you need to make mining frictionless. >

Jack Dorsey’s Block is working to make #Bitcoin mining easier https://t.co/2TQxrbDIaK

Fiat money —mere pieces of paper, intrinsically worthless, that were treated as money only because the US insisted that they should be
https://t.co/vGw9F5Kcml

@jeffsussna @sallamar Chapter 12: back to virtual money (now “fiat currency”) when the US dollar was definitely unpegged from gold in 1971. https://t.co/wNw8nlXbTF

@yashasolutions There’s no doubt that what I’m describing will have to be AI assisted. It would be too onerous otherwise for a single designer. But I don’t see a fully synthetic personality (like in the movie “Her”) completely generated by ML. The final touch done by a human designer will be k.