Nothing on this page should be construed as financial advice. Period.

First and foremost, I'm not going to be talking about prices, price-action, current/future values - or even specific tokens/networks.

YouTube has tons of superstars you can get great financial advice from! /s

I guess not everyone knows that /s is short for /sarcasm indicating the previous statement is, in-fact, sarcasm.

Why Crypto?

For me, this is simple: the existing system of layered middlemen lobbied, litigated, and lured politicians into providing an environment that favors big business and the ultra-rich.

I see crypto as a means for:

• Fewer middlemen taking their cut of my transactions with other people and businesses

The middleman becomes the network/code, but the rules that govern it still apply uniformly.

• More control over my own data, who can access it, and how they can use it
• Better feedback models in the form of governance solutions (DAO)
• Less-reliance on companies to provide my online identity
• More peer-to-peer transactions (which I believe is good for the overall economy)
• In theory, financial transparency that could reduce some corruption

What is WEB3 and WEB5?

The battle for the soul of decentralization begins.

I have a little frustration here - I see a lot of people who I respect in tech just absolutely shit on Web3 technology - but are vocal about how much better Web5 is.

No doubt this is because of the huge amount of bad actors and greedy folks in the space, and the horrible mess that is NFTs.

But the core issues that crypto is intended to solve are the same between Web3 and Web5 - it feels more marketing than anything else.

Why not just support the technology by making it better, instead of trying to rebrand it?

The best explanation of these things I could find lives here: https://developer.tbd.website/open-source

But no matter what this decentralized version of our world is called, I'm all for it.

Side note: Did we ever get the original Web 3.0?

NFTs are a scam!

Yes, absolutely, the current iteration of NFTs are garbage. Don't buy them.

However, long term, the concept of NFTs has real utility for our society - I think.

The goal with NFTs would be to provide ownership records (much like the physical and digital ownership records that exist today) that do not require a central authority to use.

In my mind, they are the natural evolution of where paper and digital records have been heading - we just need a way to mitigate the risk of a central authority having ownership. NFTs might be able to solve that.

Reducing dependence on middlemen

This is a list of middlemen we could cut out using cryptocurrency/NFT technology in some form (non-exhaustive):

• Credit card fees for accepting payments
• Ticketmaster and other ticketing services
• Almost all greedy financial services
• Platforms that skim profits from creators
• Paying $25 for a copy of your birth certificate
• Social Security Numbers for identity

Maybe this is a better read? hbr.org/2017/03/the-promise-of-blockchain-is-a-world-without-middlemen