The author has been completely obsessed with crypto for years now and called its imminent death many times. Yet here we are, with Bitcoin hitting an all-time high of $88,000.
The cause and effect are backwards here. Web3 didn't create a generation of disaffected, nihilistic young men who want to tear down a system and society that has given them endless scorn - that generation was just the people who were attracted to web3.
Real question: Are there more young doomer men in those under 30 (compared to older generations), or is the Internet just giving them a platform to amplify their message?
I think it's a real change. The number of young men going for long periods without dating or sex, or even without any human contact at all, is way higher than it was a few decades ago.
Maybe for the first-wave of OG crypto geeks. I think there's a second wave of crypto-bros who came to run a grift, and then a third wave of suckers that were just there out of financial FOMO. Crypto supplanting established institutions wasn't so much an ideological goal for them, but a necessary condition of their tokens becoming valuable enough to escape, in crypto-bro parlance, wage slavery.
If this is the case, I think it's easy to see why the core movement of folks trying to create alternative societal infrastructure, usually with an anarcho-crypto-utopian vision akin to Daniel Suarez's world in Daemon were quickly drowned out by the massive second wave of grifters. Maybe now that the grift is played out we can get back to the cool stuff decentralization enables aside from Ponzi schemes.
This writer has many great blog posts that tear down the Bitcoin insanity, step by step. I didn't think out how male-dominated is the DeFi "industry" (LOL), before I read this article. I cannot think of a single DeFi promoter that is a woman? Does anyone know one?
https://x.com/smdiehl/status/1523402857562533889
https://x.com/smdiehl/status/1640300710351740928
https://x.com/smdiehl/status/1650702465635962880
https://x.com/smdiehl/status/1723201576876015686