Awesome critique of crypto / web3

Awesome critique of crypto / web3 etc. Contributions welcome.

General

• Stephen Diehl series - https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog.html
  • The Case Against Crypto - December 31, 2021
  • Blockchainism - December 11, 2021
  • Web3 is Bullshit - December 4, 2021
  • The Internet's Casino Boats - December 1, 2021
  • The Token Disconnect - November 27, 2021
  • The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger - November 24, 2021
  • Ice-Nine for Markets - November 23, 2021
  • The Tinkerbell Griftopia - November 19, 2021
  • Decentralized Woo Hoo - November 16, 2021
  • The Intellectual Incoherence of Cryptoassets - November 7, 2021
  • On Unintentional Scams - July 23, 2021
  • How to Destroy Bitcoin - July 13, 2021
  • The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency - July 7, 2021
  • Revolution Now! With Peter Joseph | Bitcoin and Financialization - May 21, 2021
  • The Oncoming Ransomware Storm - May 11, 2021
  • Et tu, Signal? - April 7, 2021
  • The Political Case for a Blanket Cryptocurrency Ban - March 30, 2021
  • Bitcoin: The Postmodern Ponzi - February 27, 2021
  • The Crypto Chernobyl - February 10, 2021
  • Gamestop, Bitcoin and the Commoditization of Populist Rage - February 3, 2021
• Today on Sick Sad World: How The Cryptobros Have Fallen - 2022-01-04 by Jamie Zawinski (legendary coder, co-founder of Mozilla etc)
• https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html - 2022-01-07 Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder of Signal etc
• Technobabble, Libertarian Derp and Bitcoin by Paul Krugman in NY Times - 2021-05-20
• Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility by Nassim Taleb - 27 Jun 2021 - highly critical paper by author Black Swan etc.
• https://watershed.co.uk/studio/news/2021/12/03/case-against-crypto
• The European Money and Finance Forum - The encrypted threat: Bitcoin’s social cost and regulatory responses - Jan 2022. A comprehensive study by SUERF - The European Money and Finance Forum that details the net negative effects of bitcoin to society.
• The Third Web - 2021-12-17 - long critical essay including detailed history by Tante
• https://rufuspollock.com/2016/07/02/reflections-on-the-blockchain/ - 2016-07-02 - by Rufus Pollock (mainly a critique of early DAOs and techno-solutionism)
• Web3 takes trust, too - 2021-01-10 by Matt Levine on Bloomberg.com
• The Web3 Fraud - 2021-12-16 by Nicholas Weaver on usenix.com
• Molly White series - https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/
  • Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are

Ponzi Aspect

• Financial Times: Why bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme - 2021-12-22. A Ponzi scheme is a zero-sum enterprise. But bitcoin is a negative-sum phenomenon that you can’t even pursue a claim against, argues Robert McCauley. Original
• https://seattletimes.com/opinion/bitcoin-is-basically-a-ponzi-scheme/
• https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html

Bitcoin and Energy Consumption

• https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
• https://newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-bitcoin-is-bad-for-the-environment

Scams / Frauds

• People Building ‘Blockchain City’ in Wyoming Scammed by Hackers - Vice - - 2022-01-12 - On Monday, CityDAO—the group that bought 40 acres of Wyoming in hopes of "building a city on the Ethereum blockchain”—announced that its Discord server was hacked and members' funds were successfully stolen as a result.
• Web3 is going just great - A timeline of scams related to cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and web3 projects since the beginning of 2021 by Molly White

Critical views of specific use cases

• Event ticketing: NFT tickets — a realistic look at a big trend – 2021-12-14

Twitter Users

Whilst these users may not solely discuss crypto or Web3, they do discuss it regularly, and have consistently provided objective, reasonable criticism.

• https://twitter.com/web3isgreat
• https://twitter.com/ncweaver/
• https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF

Tether (and Stablecoins)

What is blockchain / web3 etc

Best intros / overviews of blockchain, crypto, web3 etc.

• There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology - June 2, 2019 by Bruce Schneier

• The Myth of Decentralization and Lies about Web 2.0 - 2022-01-07 by Emily Gorcenski

Iron-manning the pro arguments

Here we collect the best theses for why this is important / interesting / will change the world.

Inbox

• https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/web3-a-map-in-search-of-territory/ - Jan 2022 - by Evgeny Morozov
• Vivaldi CEO: Why Vivaldi will never create ThinkCoin - 2022-01-13