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Crypto Ecosystem as fashion

Not that we need another warning about the crypto ecosystem but:

  • Keeping up with the newest developments can be exhausting
  • Fashion for rich nerds

Bonded curves: The price of a token is set to a constant function; you can buy/sell tokens

  • Example: To buy the 1st token, pay $1. The 100th token, pay $100
  • Can imagine other curves too: x^2, or 2^x
  • Cynically: Literal ponzi scheme where first arrivers gain all the benefits

Problem:

  • Coins which are ponzi schemes win in the space of the crypto market; token holders have an incentive to propagate those tokens instead of ones that reward later users

What could be the fundamental value of crypto?

  • Decentralization of power?
    • What Vitalik believes, about moving power out of the hands of a centralized government
  • Faster innovation
    • Less regulation, or imposing a cultural norm of "it's okay to make new things"
    • See: DeFi, Prediction Markets
    • But: Where are the DeFi stories about people taking the capital to create something others want?
    • Where are the better outcomes that Prediction Markets have enabled
      • Betting on election prediction markets = sports, not producing ground truth
    • Kickstarter-type funding? E.g. explicit coordination mechanism between individual actors
      • See: Constitution DAO
      • Public goods, retroactive goods funding
      • "Blockchain has the ability to summon up billions of dollars of capital, now we need to direct it to useful causes"
        • Curious: where are the EA coins?
        • Curious: donor lotteries
  • Redistribution of money?
    • This would be the case if
    • Maybe not that different from decentralization; money loosely equals power here