Thread by @MarkBeylin

Okay it looks like I’m going to be spending a while at the airport tonight.

1 like = 1 hot take about crypto

Will try to keep the spice levels appropriately high

1. Most crypto conferences/hackathons are just excuses for the same groups of people to travel the world and party together. While they’re still net value-add for most stakeholders (including our ecosystem as a whole), the lavish spending is a huge risk factor to our success.

2. Crypto attracts people with utopian visions of the future (ie a post scarcity mindsets) when blockchains are actually the best tools to enforce scarcity that we’ve ever seen. Most people are so high on perceived self-fulfillment that they ignore this obvious fact.

3. Our ecosystem espouses decentralization and collaboration, and yet we are incredibly tribalistic, cliquey, and unwelcoming to newcomers. Instances of lasting, cross team collaboration are rare.

“Everybody wants to rule the world”

4. Open markets are almost always worse for operators than closed markets, meaning that the people who operate them in the real world have no incentive to use blockchains for interoperability.

5. Most of the time when people mention NFT use-cases, they should really be using ERC20 tokens. But, hype is hype, so let’s turn everything into an NFT!

6. For blockchain economies to work, they need to create value outside of themselves and distribute that value within. This will eventually require a reliance on legal systems for enforcement.

7. Crypto has introduced me to some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life, as well as the smartest. It’s still not clear to me why this is the case.

8. Seriously what the hell happened to @mandeleil? This guy did an ICO pump-and-run before they were cool and seems to get 0 credit for it.

@mandeleil 9. Crypto has a drug problem

@mandeleil 10. Most people in crypto don't have the stones to actually fight regulatory/legal enforcement. People won't move away from their comfy homes to avoid totalitarian regimes. Those smart contracts are going to become *really* stoppable when the implications become serious.

@mandeleil 11. For some reason, it's become accepted practice in crypto for people to espouse certain values, and act in a directly opposite manner. No one ever verifies their behaviour, everyone just trusts. Funny how that works.

@mandeleil 12. Most crypto thought leaders love the podiums they stand upon, and have no interest in decentralizing themselves out of popularity.

@mandeleil 13. Immutability matters to very very few, because true immutability doesn't exist in the real world. The unfinished nature of all of this means our systems need to be dynamic, not static. Specifying who can change immutable code doesn't solve this problem.

@mandeleil 14. Most of the people who talk about "the unbanked" have never actually spoken to this cohort. If they had, they'd know how little they trust a "new financial system".

@mandeleil 15. The pigtail-pulling relationship between the BTC and ETH communities warms my heart, and is very mutually beneficial. Competition keeps us honest, and also provides auditing en gratis. Feigning drama keeps both sides relevant.

@mandeleil 16. For this reason, @udiWertheimer is one of Ethereum's most important community members. Udi secretly knows this and loves it.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 17. The distribution curve of BTC (halving every ~3 years) shows that Satoshi either over-estimated how quickly the virus would spread across the globe, or he was a bad economist. The imbalance of gains between the early few and late many will likely be Bitcoin's undoing.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 18. Man, am I glad we never did an ICO in 2017/18...

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 19. People not understanding how crypto works is actually a moat that many within the crypto space defend (despite claiming otherwise), in order to enrich themselves.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 20. Most of the people who care about the ethos of crypto (censorship resistance, decentralization, etc) have already passed through our revolving doors. We'll need to wait for broader institutional collapse if we want to attract new members to our endeavour with this narrative.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 21. Most people in crypto secretly have a joker complex and want to watch the world burn.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 22. People in crypto spend too much time on ideas, and not enough time shipping code.

(The primary evidence is this thread)

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 23. Most crypto startup founders have never read Paul Graham's essays, and it shows.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 24. Most crypto VCs have never read the Bitcoin white paper, and it also shows.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 25. Actions like Parity openly declaring war on Ethereum are actually very healthy. At least they're trending towards honesty!

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 26. People recommending that Afri continue his work while being funded by Gitcoin grants are either delusional, or have never seen how little those grants pay out.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 27. Open grants models like CLR matching completely ignore the core problem of funding commons by focussing entirely on capital allocation, and ignoring how the capital is gathered in the first place.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 28. The best way for consumers to secure their private keys remains for them to rely on 3rd parties who specialize in doing so.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 29. Trust is actually a good thing, and it's generally unhealthy for people to live without ever trusting people (or systems) around them.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 30. The lion's share of smart contract use-cases will live on non-mainnet chains (i.e. community/POA chains), and won't need a global settlement layer except in rare circumstances.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 31. We've greatly over-estimated how useful/necessary smart contract composability will be

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 32. The metrics to measure the success of crypto applications will ultimately be the same ones which are used to measure the success of non-crypto projects: the amount of money they're able to earn in revenue.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 33. I think we're going to increasingly see more MakerDAO-style obfuscation of code, and in general the close-sourcing of smart contracts, owing to the inability for open-source projects to maintain competitive advantages.

@mandeleil @udiWertheimer 34. Most people want crypto to achieve mainstream adoption for entirely selfish reasons.

Okay I took a break to drink some wine and also because I ran out of hot takes.

Now the takes get even hotter:

35. The fact that I’ve written a thread on “crypto” and no one has called me out for only talking about blockchains is a problem

36. The general closemindedness of this space is kind of astounding. Have you ever heard of SSB? What about Holochain?

Do you actually understand what blockchains are valuable for, or do you just pump the chain whose tokens dominate your portfolio?

37. Have you ever tried to explain your dapp to someone outside of our space and seen their face?

That look is hot take #37

38. This space is so fragmented my iPhone can’t even decide whether to autocorrect dapp to DApp, dApp, or Dapp.

It literally alternates between these options.

39. Every dev thinks they’re a marketing expert, and every marketing expert thinks they understand how blockchains really work. Neither statement is true.

40. The hardest lesson I’ve learned over the last 3 years has been focussing on what I know.

In a world in which you’re free to do anything you want (no one will stop you!) only self policing can save our space.

Do you have the courage to self police? To hold yourself back?

41. This hot take is dedicated to all of the crypto projects which launched and inevitably failed to achieve meaningful levels of traction.

42. This one, to the people who have failed and stuck around in our ecosystem. The few who have remained steadfast in their beliefs, who have let their values show by keeping on even when there’s no incentive. Those are the heroes of crypto.

43. More importantly, to the plethora of “builders” who cashed out and stopped doing anything.

Burn out is a bitch— believe me I know. But eventually your values should bring you back to the drawing board.

I think we should become intentional about calling these people out.

44. To the pacifists among us (I count myself among you) we should ensure we follow Roosevelt’s guide:

“Peace over war, but war over injustice”

45. It feels unfair, unjust, that such obscene levels of gainz could be granted to those who so obviously don’t deserve them.

Does hodling for long enough really imply people have earned it?

46. And what about the VCs, who buy the presales and sell at their earliest convenience.

Is this okay? Why do we find it satisfactory to talk about them vaguely, never naming names?

47. My best guess is fear: that people in our ecosystem fear real honesty, as it would make clear those things we’d rather keep obscured.

Does that truly benefit our endeavour long-term?

48. Of course I know as well as any seasoned member of our space, how important speculators are.

But should we bend to their will if it means sacrificing the values that brought us here in the first place?

49. This very thread, of hot takes and unspoken but well understood truths, seems to be my most prominent moment of influence. Likes flying abound.

Is it not worth asking why such hot takes are suppressed?

50. We talk a big game, as if we truly believe that verifying facts ourselves will scale.

Have you ever really tried?

51. My most honest thought: we could burn everything to the ground and start anew, and only *maybe* would be right with the timing.

All other endeavours will fight the continuous existential dread of predicting the future, and having the public tell you they don’t care.

52. Speaking of existential dread...

While we’re so busy trying to keep brave faces among ourselves, pretending we can mimic the Silicon Valley startups of yore, does an outlet exist?

Don’t you crave an honest conversation?

53. This space, treading new ground on the edges of what’s possible, leaves its contenders broken and bruised.

Do we even care *why* so many people have given up on our mission?

54. Have you ever talked to someone who took their crypto gains and left?

They’re miserable. Looking for a way to make an impact, unsure of where to turn. Afraid they’ll never feel the same degree of fire, that was once felt when they thought they were changing the world.

55. Isn’t it sad? How our ecosystem consumes passion, and spits out dread?

But can’t we change that? These are social problems— aren’t they in our hands?

56. Most of the problems that crypto aims to solve are social problems, not technological problems.

Most *new systems* are just new perspectives.

57. Does it scare you that code can’t change people’s behaviour? That no amount of incentives-as-coercion can last?

Is it possible that blockchains are just the red pill that delivers much less palatable truths?

58. This hot take comes from @ililic:

“Blockchains are just a backdoor to getting everyone in the world a public-private key pair"

What if we’ve been missing the point the whole time?

The next series of hot-takes might be too hot for most but eh why not...

59. Has anyone else felt their path to blockchain was divinely guided? That they ended up here as if by chance, even though that explanation seemed too simple?

60. The experiences I’ve had thanks to crypto have given me the highest highs, and lowest lows, I could have ever imagined.

Somehow, I’ve felt the entirety of the ouroboros. Have you felt it yet?

61. When people ask me why crypto matters, my primary answer remains “the people I’ve met”. The community is the most important part.

Is it a surprise that people matter more than tech?

In earnest, I think I’ve run out of hot takes I can tweet publicly without losing my job.

However, I’m a man of my word, so the remaining hot takes will be hot with LOVE— to use my moment of crypto-influencer-status to highlight the people I’ve met who have mattered the most.

62. This week @tayvano_ published an oped that renewed my belief that there are people in our space who care about values, who care about why we started.

A glimmer of hope matters a lot when everything feels grim.

63. I recently spent some time with @cryptowanderer irl and... well it’s hard to explain... you really just need to talk to Andy yourself.

The English language doesn’t have words for the profound heights I’ve managed to feel in his presence.

64. To people like @a4fri who inspire me with their bravery, who stand up for what they believe in, and refuse to buckle under the pressure— no matter the stakes. Relentless against the forces of hate, of ego, or anger.

Okay I’m going to stop with the love— things are going to get too personal and Twitter just isn’t the medium for that.

Flight’s about to take off but I’m a man of my word, so I’ll resume these hot takes tomorrow morning.

Okay, it's a new day and this thread has accumulated more likes. I'm not sure I'll be able to add 70+ more hot takes, but goddamn I will try.

65. The number of relationships I've heard of ending because someone started working in crypto is too damn high.

66. The number of intra-crypto relationships is so high that sometimes I worry that from the outside, crypto looks like a real life cult.

Is a cult still a cult if it's decentralized?

67. Some of you guys treat crypto as if it's a religious ideology, and it's genuinely quite worrisome. Worshipping money, or any technology (especially one that's so nascent) is probably not very healthy.

Look inward— I'm certain you'll find more answers there.

68. People seem to be so keen to find use-cases for blockchains that they're literally recreating the same types of financial instruments that led to the crash of '08, that ultimately led to Bitcoin's birth.

I guess everything does eventually come full circle?

69. Most people building Defi products have such a poor understanding of debt and risk (and the way that info asymmetry increases when adding additional layers to it) that I am genuinely worried for our ecosystem.

70. Taking tokens staked in a smart contract and lending them out using some Defi protocol is one of the worst ideas I've heard recently.

Ever wondered what would happen if PoolTogether users couldn't withdraw funds because of insufficient liquidity?

Sounds like a loss to me!

71. Depi is a dumb meme.

72. Crypto attracted lots of new devs in '17/18 because of one primary idea: they could make money doing it.

There's nothing wrong with that, but we should be honest about it. That ability to make money is the reason why so many people built iOS apps over the last 15 years.

73. I simultaneously believe that Solidity sucks, and that it will remain the most used language to write smart contracts for the EVM into eternity.

74. Coindesk is simultaneously the best and worst publication in crypto. Some of the highest, and lowest quality reporting I've ever witnessed.

75. I feel bummed and somewhat lied to that Ethereum has taken so long to ship any form of staking/sharding/etc. Of course R&D takes time, but expectations have been so badly mismanaged, that it's kind of an insult to make claims about deadlines at this point.

76. Simultaneously, I believe more strongly than ever that we'll see a beacon chain in prod before the end of 2020.

77. The old Remix is better than the new Remix.

78. I trust Remix for smart contract deployments more than I do Truffle.

79. I still can't fully wrap my head around how ETH2 works, and I've spent a non-trivial amount of time trying.

80. Value-based incentives are actually a bad way to get people to change their behaviour.

81. People are irrational.

82. Remote work slows teams down, and I would guess an identical non-remote team could move at least 1.5x faster than a given remote team. Yes I know freedom is great, but results matter.

83. People over-index on Conway's Law, and in general most crypto software would be built faster and better under centralized leadership.