Topic: Sabine Hossenfelder - Web3: World-changing tech or just a scam? (Read 183 times)

Not all influencers or streamers that discuss cryptocurrencies are accurate in their explanations; the majority of what they say is inaccurate; some are only interested in views; and still others who include a link in their channel description are once more phishing. So, use what is necessary with caution.

Let's simply say that while most of us benefit from the internet, scammers have also been able to take advantage of it. The OP provided a video, so it's possible that he is a scammer or that he is not, despite the fact that bitcoin popularity is also growing through the internet.

There is a difference between Web3 and Web 3.0 afaik. The one being discussed is mostly related to crypto, which means those who offer interconnected devices and apps. I don't think ICO and stuff like NFT need to succeed before you can call Web3 arrived, since people can definitely use their wallet to connect to apps like DEX and so on. That being said, I don't think what they promise has been achieved due to various reasons, such as a lack of interest or terrible security on smart contracts.

Web 3 is not all about tokens and cryptos. It's all about immersive internet experience. And at this point, I am sure that you will accept the fact that web 3 is dead. Facebook has lost interest on web3 and stopped their project. Not much movement is heard from any other tech giants on web3. It was just a hype which died faster than ICOs and NFT.

From my perspective, I would support Sabine because I strongly feel a lack of vision in web3. With millions and millions of dead token, exit scams and a lack of practicality has murdered that entire hype. But that's what free market is all about.

What do you expect? You are on a crypto forum, but even if not, cryptos are still not mature enough so expect that there are still more innovations like this that can come out. Volatility is not a hurdle but you can use it to gain an advantage. I wouldn't say that scams are a hurdle either because they are normal everywhere.

There might be other real hurdles out there but they shouldn't stop us from doing what we love. It's okay to move slow but at least we can see that we are improving. It's also okay to move slow but the quality of the projects that are being produced are high in quality. We don't need a junk one who is only rushing for the sake of earning quick profits.

In a way she's right because with a lot of developers popping up to establish dominance in the web3 space, the saturation is just too high and they end selling the same product with just a different name, that's my take on her saying that the developers losing perspective, the devs care more about being a pioneer that wouldn't probably last long rather than concentrate on one product that will outlast many competitors. Web3 is still young so we should just wait and see.

The currently existing cryptocurrencies are not Web3 or the real transition from the second to the third generation of the Internet. They are the makers of centralized investments, in which control is transferred from the companies like Visa and MasterCard for payment services that claim to be decentralized, while they control everything, as the owners of smart contracts and mint function can make any change. In the blockchain, adding more currencies or making some of them invalid is a transfer from central banks’ control over cash to third parties, but it is far from the development of the Internet and the concept of Web3. The economic background is what makes the opinions of these experts inaccurate because they are still measuring cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin, in Traditional economic terms.

Don't you think the Web3 hype has died down? I personally think so!

World has quickly moved to the next big thing in the internet - AI. Meta scrapped the development of their web3 platform after realizing that people are not coming back to use it over and over again. It's just like NFT. Any tech that doesn't provide value to human life, are bound to die. That's exactly what happened to Web3. No one had lost perspective but Web3 doesn't provide a long term value to us. Game over!

I don't really like relying on regulation to improve the rate of adoption. Not to mention people can already run their own payment system with open source software without giving any personal data. I believe the key issue is the technical side if we're talking from the seller's perspective. Other than that, I do believe Bitcoin already reached its goal as a trustless payment currency that doesn't rely on central authorities to issue and confirm new transactions.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of future are people looking for when they mean "world-changing tech" or "mass adoption". Is it being able to pay for your coffee with BTC in 1 second, use your BTC on your toll-gate without relying on fiat conversion, be able to live with your BTC on a remote island, or something else? It doesn't help that sometimes they just lump different projects together without explaining the developer's ideas when they start the projects.

With Web3 projects, they mostly use smart contracts and mint function. They can mint any amount of tokens they want for circulating supply and total supply. There is nothing as premine with web3 tokens because those projects have mintable tokens, not mineable tokens.

On coinmarketcap, some projects and their tokens have red flags like the Tamadoge token.
Similar red flag on Coingecko.

The Internet in its early days was rapidly changing - the speed was increasing, subscription costs were decreasing, web was rapidly evolving, and then mobile Internet emerged. Bitcoin and Ethereum, so-called blockchain technology and all of the crypto sphere is now showing similar rate of progress. Bitcoin today is not too different from Bitcoin at launch -and same goes for Ethereum and its ecosystem. If the Internet was as slow and clunky as it was at the time of its inception, it would have never became mass adopted.

It's exciting to see more and more conversations about crypto in the mainstream. We're at a crucial point in its evolution, and while there are hurdles like scams and volatility, these are common in any burgeoning industry. Remember, even the internet faced skepticism in its early days. As awareness grows, so will responsible practices and regulations. It might seem slow now, but each discussion, each project, is a step towards a future of widespread crypto adoption. Baby steps lead to giant leaps.

It's not that I blame someone for having superficial knowledge about something, but considering that the person is speaking publicly and that the number of views of his video will be significant, those who watch it can get a completely wrong impression about why Bitcoin exists and why there are alternatives to it.

Of course, the most debate is about price and profit, we are all responsible for that in some way, but at least we can warn from time to time that Bitcoin has a completely different function, which some actually use.



No matter how much you make it easier for people to use Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, it still does not have the effect of changing the way people pay for goods and services. Volatility is the biggest problem for many, but even with payment processors, people have a hard time deciding to spend their cryptocurrencies, because tomorrow or in a month they may be worth much more.

Unfortunately, the freedom of the internet and the possibility for everyone to create their own cryptocurrency or token has its downsides, and scammers take advantage of this. When there is a call for more regulation in that sector, people usually protest because they consider it a restriction of their freedoms, but at the same time when some scammer pulls off a fraud of several billion dollars, they point the finger at the same regulators and demand that they do something.

I don't see how it will be possible to keep the same freedoms and at the same time prevent all bad people from doing bad things - all the warnings coming from all sides simply do not meet the understanding of all those naive millions who just want their chance to succeed.

Can you blame the outsiders for mixing Bitcoin and altcoins and thinking that they are only for speculative trading when this speculative trading is the largest use case for both Bitcoin and altcoins and even inside this community most of the discussions are about the price.


Scams and failures are normal when it comes to new inventions, what is not normal is complete lack of actual use cases years after the tech got introduced. There are not web3 apps that are used because they are good, it's always just a new iteration of crypto tulip bulbs, like Cryptokitties and NFTs.

ETH was introduced 7 years ago, at this point there should have been hundreds of millions of people buying goods and services through smart contracts, putting legal contracts on blockchain, doing decentralized computing and so on - instead it's just a platform for investment scams.

At first I was skeptical when I went to watch the video because the first thing I noticed was a reff. link to a well-known VPN in the description, but I admit that there are some interesting things in the video. We often come across terms like Web3 and Web 3.0, but until now I didn't know that it was something different, that is, that the goal is quite similar, but the ways to achieve those goals are different.

When it comes to Bitcoin, the speaker intentionally (or out of ignorance) puts Bitcoin in the same basket with altcoins, that is, she thinks that all cryptocurrencies are only for trading and making profit, completely ignoring the reason why Satoshi invented Bitcoin.

As for the rest, she talks about everything, from NTFs, dapps, DAO, which she compared to communism, and a lot of other things that seem like a bunch of nonsense connected in one sequence, but I think it's too superficially explained for anyone who doesn't have at least some prior knowledge in order to make an objective conclusion.

I think it is quite logical that the web develops and goes in a new direction where it tries to achieve some new goals in order to satisfy what people are looking for in the 21st century. In all of this, there will be complete failures, countless scams and failed ideas, but also things that will undoubtedly change our lives.

Web3: World-changing tech or just a scam?

Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist who runs a popular science channel where she not only talks about her field of physics, but also about science and technology in general. She tries to make unbiased summaries with opinions from different sources. I think this video is a good look at crypto from the point of view of an intelligent outsider.

Her own personal opinion is that web3 is "a case of a software enthusiast who lost perspective. An average user wants an app just to work...". But my personal opinion is that crypto devs didn't lose perspective, it's just their users are not he people who will actually use the token, but the investors. Everything is done to just lure investors and dump the premine, that how the devs make profit, they don't need any users at all.