Bitcoin is religion; web3 is greed – TechCrunch

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It’s my last day of work of the year, so we’re going to have some fun. Obviously, we are talking crypto this morning.

Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter and current CEO of Block, the company formerly known as Square, recently stirred the crypto pot, spells out his preferences in the larger blockchain landscape by performing scans on decentralized internet projects that do not fall under the Bitcoin umbrella.

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To avoid being accused of misinterpreting Jack, here are his key statements, starting with the conversation genesis tweet:

What happened as a party foul with some well known web3 stans:

And hours after Jack’s tweet, Elon Musk joined in the fun:

There are several different things being said here, and a few of the tweets might need some explanation if you don’t live on Twitter. The Stock Exchange supports you:

Who “owns” web3: Jack says regular users don’t own web3 projects. Instead, the CEO claims venture capitalists and, in turn, their investors are. More so, Jack doesn’t expect this dynamic to change; instead, he predicts that centralized capital pools supporting a plethora of crypto projects will maintain considerable control through corporate incentives. Web3 review: After being criticized for “choking off” Web3 work, Jack dismissed the complaint and said “reviews” can help people choose to work on more fulfilling projects. Who will own web3: Elon Musk took the pleasure of asking where web3 is, as he’s struggling to find it. Jack then sub-tweeted a16z, the venture capitalist, as a connection point for Web3 project funding, and therefore control.

What matters about the above is that Jack, a well-known supporter of the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is not a big Web3 project.

It is worth noting that these two figures have emerged to oppose the flood of greed that has occurred in the decentralized economy over the past few years, with every traditional pile of money wanting to get putative Web3 returns.

Who owns what?

The heart of Jack’s complaint is that the major Web3 companies are owned by venture capitalists and will therefore have to live with risky incentives.

“Business incentives,” of course, is a polite way of saying running a business in such a way that venture capitalists and their funders make a lot of money.

The complaint is quite true. Venture capitalists have invested more than $ 6 billion in crypto projects in the third quarter of 2021 alone. This should give you an idea of ​​how big the crypto world is currently being bought by traditional private market investors. Put simply, pension funds own a large part of the crypto-economy.

Jack’s discussions about VCs and Web3 don’t end there. Jack said not only that web3 projects have a weakness in their core thanks to the economic markets that their ancestors entered into with external capital, but also that they are centralized.

Besides calling someone a “nocoiner” who will, alternatively, “stay poor” or “ngmi”, to say that a crypto project is centralized is perhaps the crudest comment possible.

Is Jack Wrong? No he is not.

It is true that the venture capitalists are flooding the Web3 area with money and assistance because they think it will make them money. This leads to a lot of centralization. For example, I find it extremely funny that a16z is an investor in both Coinbase and OpenSea. And that Coinbase intends to get into the NFT game. You know, the thing OpenSea is governing right now.

Even more, projects like Solana have sold a bunch of their tokens for a song to venture capitalists, effectively handing out a raise that’s forever frozen in already bloated accounts. Centralization? Ownership and returns, in this case.

Centralization is antithetical to the original, somewhat punk, ethic of Bitcoin. The advocates of Web3, as far as I know, are perfectly content to use external funds to fuel their new token-based projects to accelerate the future they see coming. Fiat as a crutch, I guess.

But Bitcoin didn’t need to raise three rounds of venture capital in a year to grow. He just nailed an idea that still resonates. Something to think about.

Now we come to a very big yes, but.

Bitcoin is religion; web3 is greed

While it’s nice to agree with someone on a crypto point of view, I disagree with Jack on everything.

For example, I don’t agree that Bitcoin is not centralized. It’s to a degree that I don’t think a lot of people really grumble. A new study found this week that “about 0.01% of Bitcoin holders control 27% of the 19 million Bitcoin that is currently in circulation,” according to Baystreet.

This is why when I consider the two warring religious camps in the crypto world – the Bitcoin maximalists who think the original crypto project is a decentralized Jesus and the web3 team is “gm” – it is clear that they are quite different.

Bitcoin Maxis are religious in their belief that OG crypto has nailed it, and successive projects are layered. And web3 is greed, a way to fund everything online in a way that allows traditional investors to own toll plazas and tax collectors across the decentralized landscape.

So while I’m more than happy to greet Jack shaking the web3 pot, I don’t agree with his general philosophy. Still, Jack has managed to point out that a group of naked budding emperors are, in fact, au naturel. And it’s a great way to start the day.

Merry Christmas.

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