This article has already raised the question of whether cryptocurrency is fundamentally flawed , but it's worth revisiting.
The argument from cryptocurrency advocates is that this technology is the only way to protect digital property rights. As Andreessen Horowitz's note on the "essentials" of the metaverse states, "true digital property rights were not possible before the advent of cryptography, blockchain technology and related innovations such as NFT." Consider the latest craze of metaverse ownership: the NFT is a certificate of authenticity that serves as a "document" for a "home". This principle can be applied to anything used in the virtual world, from your avatar's clothes to his virtual machine.
But Minecraft, one of the metaverse giants, merely bans NFTs, directly accusing them of being financial instruments "incompatible with their players' long-term happiness and success." Does this make the game great or ahead of the curve?
I asked Liron Shapir, investor, entrepreneur, founder of the relationship coaching app Relationship Hero and outspoken crypto-skeptic and Twitter killer, to evaluate the relative merits of the Web3 metaverse booster's claims.
“It's a form of abstract reasoning that makes sense on an abstract level, but it resolves when you study the package and understand it better. Technology has a death grip on our data. "It's nice to think about what you would do if you didn't trust [these companies], but in practice it doesn't matter ... Their examples are not convincing."
A good example of Shapira's argument is his January debate with Balaji Srinivasan, former partner of Andreessen Horowitz (and former CTO of Coinbase), who said that blockchain is a technology that changes the world. Shapira asked Srinivasan why use blockchain for record keeping or fundraising when, for example, DocuSign and Kickstarter do exactly that? Complex payment channels already exist for digital financial transactions; Why add another "Wallet" based encryption? (Srinivasan's counter-argument: The nature of blockchains makes them particularly useful for facilitating the flow of money and increasing the number of transactions.)
But you don't have to be a total crypto evangelist like Srinivasan to understand that technology can be useful. When I spoke to Matthew Ball at the release of his book Metaverse, without neglecting the pros or cons of Web3 / Metaverse integration, he said he saw the potential of this technology to make users less dependent on large companies. But it sympathizes with gamers and other consumers who only see it as a way to make money (which is what the Minecraft developers did when they announced the NFT ban).
Due to the market crash and increased risk of theft by regulators, the popularity of cryptocurrencies is no longer limited to high-profile players. With this in mind, it's easy to imagine large companies taking up a lot of space (especially given the history of cryptocurrency meta misery).
The best argument that cryptocurrencies play an important role in the metaverse is its everyday ubiquity, but virtual real estate is more speculative than powerful apps like Google Maps or Facebook. This could be a new use, but as the relationship between the two technologies grows, they seem to integrate and overlap well.
mixedThe Treasury Department today sanctioned Tornado Cash, one of the largest cryptocurrency mixers in the world, for its role in helping North Korean hackers (and others) track down stolen funds.
What is a "cryptomixer"? Ars Technica's explanation describes them as "creating a gap between user deposits and withdrawals" by pooling large amounts of user funds and then allowing users to withdraw the initial amount they deposited, but not the repository itself. There are legitimate reasons someone wants to protect their privacy, but at a higher level it creates an obvious money laundering opportunity.
And a big money tornado: POLITICO's Eric Geller tells Pro Subscribers Today that the Treasury Department is suing North Korean hackers for stealing $ 455 million from Ethereum in a March robbery. (And over $ 7 billion in total.) This isn't the first time Tornado Cash launches such a service from Blender.io in May.
A senior Treasury official told Eric that the effort was intended to "send a strong signal" to cryptocurrency companies that may be too permissive in gathering information.
afternoon teaIt's time for a long overdue update for the Future History section of the DFD. This time from the literary world.
As part of Wikipedia's weekend rabbit hole "Is it good to be a Luddite?" in the New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1984. I found an essay by Thomas Pynchon entitled. In it, the giants of postmodern literature struggle with the role of antitechnologists in shaping our technological and scientific culture towards those who feel hidden or oppressed by "progress" - consider Frankenstein's monster and try to play god.
The article makes extraordinarily promising predictions about the "computer age," noting that "there seems to be a growing consensus that knowledge is indeed power, that there is a fairly simple transformation between money and data, and somehow, if possible. , in terms of logistics. Miracles have been worked, including a possible rapprochement between the so-called Luddites and the techno-optimists. for that)
Pynchon also mentions the possibility of such a modern Prometheus moment at the end of the essay. The research and development curves for artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics are converging.
It looks a lot like Blade Runner (a film that was two years old when the essay was released). But those curves - in the ongoing debate about how people will react to AI, the ethics of genetic engineering, or the meaning of "work" in an automated world - have increased since Pynchon was written, if not already, in explosively convergent way. As he thought. Little has been heard of the prolific author in recent years, but probably not much to hopefully explore the themes of another Dark Ages novel.
5 upcoming linksStay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreking ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ([protected email]); Konstantin Kakays ([protected email]); and Heidi Vogt ([protected email]). Follow us on Twitter @DigitalFuture.
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