Whenever I tell someone in the non-crypto world about what I do for a living I am always met with skepticism. This is because the terms “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain” evoke a very different set of thoughts for those not in this industry - usually they think it’s all a scam. And who can blame them? The mainstream media only really reports on the scams, pump & dumps and other such silliness in crypto instead of reporting on the actual technical developments.

pseudotheos @pseudotheos

If we stop prioritizing core values (decentralization, security, ownership) and continue prioritizing short-term rotation plays, hype waves, and cash grabs, the point of all of this is lost. We have a small window of opportunity to steer the ship. Let's not squander it.

April 9th 2022

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The thing is that when I actually go into detail with people about what I do for a living (and about crypto more generally), I still have to preface it by saying “yes, there are a lot of scams” because let’s face it - there are a lot of scams! I don’t think the scams are going away anytime soon either - it’s just too easy and too rewarding for the those creating them. This is obviously very damaging to crypto’s image and leads to a lot of negative first and second order consequences - the worst being people losing money and the negative press that comes with that.

The people playing the short-term rotation/hype/cash grab games are a very different set to those playing the ‘building world-changing technology’ games. The former literally only cares about maximising profits in as short a period as possible whereas the latter wants to build truly decentralized technologies that better people’s lives (no matter how long it takes). Given this, these 2 groups are diametrically opposed and it’s no wonder that they clash all of the time and it’s also no wonder that different ecosystems attract different kinds of people.

On that note, there are often a lot of people in crypto who may think that they are building something that will make the world a better place but in reality they are just perpetuating something negative. An example of this would be when someone is trying to build a decentralized product on top of a centralized blockchain - they may have the best intentions but no matter how hard they try their work will not actually be decentralized. On top of this, if their product gets lots of traction, it just ends up driving adoption of a centralized blockchain which is obviously not what we want to see in this ecosystem.

As pseudotheos says in their tweet above - we do honestly have a small window of opportunity to steer this ship in the right direction of decentralization. I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to get there - especially since the Ethereum ecosystem is not giving up on its values - but we have an uphill battle against other ecosystems who don’t care about this pesky decentralization thing as they just want to extract as much value as possible.

Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano

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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.