Web3 is a Libertarian Dystopia

A comedic critical video essay on the web3 ideology and culture done by anti-MLM and cultural critic münecat.

From the video description on YouTube.

In today’s video I’m looking into all the hype surrounding web3, blockchain technology, NFTs, and trying to work out WHY this is all happening. The Folding Ideas video ‘Line Goes Up’ came out as I was researching this, and I found that even though we had come to the same conclusion on many aspects of this, I actually came to a different conclusion as to why I think this is all happening - and it’s much more dystopian than most people think. This technology is dangerous and could ruin people’s lives in more ways than just losing out on their investments when the bubble deflates or pops. I have found that many people on the left don’t like this technology but they’re not quite sure why - so my video focuses more on how Bitcoin in particular has strong ties to far-right extremism which was birthed out of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and how the extremely libertarian & conservative Ethereum founder, Peter Thiel, wants to harvest data for the purposes of governing society with rigid code, and he’s getting Jordan Peterson to help.

0:00 Intro
6:41 NFTs
12:17 Gary Vee's NFTs
18:16 Celebrity NFTs
19:22 Play-to-earn NFTs
23:02 NFT marketing works exactly like MLMs
26:08 Influencers and Poocoins, Securities Fraud
36:53 Cryptoland
41:22 Web3 vs Web3
43:43 Banking the Unbanked
47:12 Is it secure?
52:10 Sending money internationally?
54:39 bUt tHe FeD pRiNtS mOnEy
1:02:05 The Superbowl Crypto ads & the "Early days" argument
1:06:37 BItcoin: The Gold Standard & Right-Wing Extremism
1:18:27 Ethereum: Peter Thiel wants your data to build a Libertarian utopia
1:33:29 Is this a bubble?

Sections

NFTs

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Olson, Dan. 2022. Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g.
Beeple collage smashes digital art record with $69.3m sale
- https://www.ft.com/content/2f28eac6-547a-43f2-b7d3-593da9f46a3d
Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT/DeFi scheme
- https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/

Gary Vee's NFTs

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Olson, Dan. 2022. The Problem With NFTs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g.
Tonelli, Emily. 2022. ‘Internet Guru Tim O’Reilly: Crypto and NFTs Are “Pretty Serious Speculative Bubble”’. Decrypt. 10 February 2022. https://decrypt.co/92676/internet-guru-tim-oreilly-crypto-nfts-serious-speculative-bubble.
Bodó, Balázs, Alexandra Giannopoulou, João Quintais, and Péter Mezei. 2022. ‘The Rise of NFTs: These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For’. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4000423.
Çağlayan Aksoy, Pınar, and Zehra Özkan Üner. 2021. ‘NFTs and Copyright: Challenges and Opportunities’. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 16 (10): 1115–26. https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpab104.

Celebrity NFTs

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Diehl, Stephen. 2021. ‘The Tinkerbell Griftopia’. 19 November 2021. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/tinkerbell.html.
Frye, Brian L. 2021. ‘After Copyright: Pwning NFTs in a Clout Economy’. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3971240.
Guadamuz, Andres. 2021. ‘The Treachery of Images: Non-Fungible Tokens and Copyright’. SSRN Electronic Journal 16 (12): 1367–85. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3905452.
Kim, Soyeon. 2020. ‘Fractional Ownership, Democratization, and Bubble Formation - The Impact of Blockchain Enabled Asset Tokenization’. 26th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2020, 0–5. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2020/adv_info_systems_research/adv_info_systems_research/19/.

Play-to-earn NFTs

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Graeber, David. 2019. ‘Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do about It’.
Butler, Paul. n.d. ‘“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs’. Accessed 2 March 2022. https://paulbutler.org/2021/play-to-earn-and-bullshit-jobs/.
Dowling, Michael. 2022. ‘Is Non-Fungible Token Pricing Driven by Cryptocurrencies?’ Finance Research Letters 44: 102097.
Zitron, Ed. 2022. ‘The Infinite Exploitation Of Cryptocurrency’. Substack. Where’s Your Ed At (blog). 30 March 2022. https://ez.substack.com/p/the-infinite-exploitation-of-cryptocurrency?s=r.

NFT marketing works exactly like MLMs

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Mims, Christopher. n.d. ‘NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and Web3 Are Multilevel Marketing Schemes for a New Generation’. Accessed 14 March 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/nfts-cryptocurrencies-and-web3-are-multilevel-marketing-schemes-for-a-new-generation-11645246824.

Influencers and Poocoins, Securities Fraud

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Azgad-Tromer, Shlomit. 2018. ‘Crypto Securities: On the Risks of Investments in Blockchain-Based Assets and the Dilemmas of Securities Regulation’. Am. UL Rev. 68: 69.
Boreiko, Dmitri, Guido Ferrarini, and Paolo Giudici. 2019. ‘Blockchain Startups and Prospectus Regulation’. European Business Organization Law Review 20 (4): 665–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40804-019-00168-6.
Cumming, Douglas J., Sofia Johan, and Anshum Pant. 2019. ‘Regulation of the Crypto-Economy: Managing Risks, Challenges, and Regulatory Uncertainty’. Journal of Risk and Financial Management 12 (3): 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm12030126.
Debler, Julianna. 2018. ‘Foreign Initial Coin Offering Issuers Beware: The Securities and Exchange Commission Is Watching’. Cornell Int’l LJ 51: 245.
Ferrari, Valeria. 2020. ‘The Regulation of Crypto-Assets in the EU – Investment and Payment Tokens under the Radar’. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 27 (3): 325–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X20911538.
Securities, US, Exchange Commission, and others. 2017. ‘SEC Issues Investigative Report Concluding DAO Tokens, a Digital Asset, Were Securities’. US Securities and Exchange Commission 25: 2017–2131.

Cryptoland

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Kelly, Jemima. 2022. ‘Cryptoland: A Glimpse into the Future We All Deserve’. Financial Times, 7 January 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/c79ea41b-41c0-4900-90ee-6e6347449610.
Eich, Stefan. 2019. ‘Old Utopias, New Tax Havens: The Politics of Bitcoin in Historical Perspective’. Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges, 85–98.
Allon, Fiona. 2018. ‘Money after Blockchain: Gold, Decentralised Politics and the New Libertarianism’. Australian Feminist Studies 33 (96): 223–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2018.1517245.
Beltramini, Enrico. 2021. ‘Against Technocratic Authoritarianism. A Short Intellectual History of the Cypherpunk Movement’. Internet Histories 5 (2): 101–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1731249.
Brody, Ann, and Stéphane Couture. 2021. ‘Ideologies and Imaginaries in Blockchain Communities: The Case of Ethereum’. Canadian Journal of Communication 46 (3). https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2021v46n3a3701.
Golumbia, David. 2013. ‘Cyberlibertarianism: The Extremist Foundations of “Digital Freedom.”’ Clemson University Department of English.
Inwood, Olivia, and Michele Zappavigna. 2021. ‘Ideology, Attitudinal Positioning, and the Blockchain: A Social Semiotic Approach to Understanding the Values Construed in the Whitepapers of Blockchain Start-Ups’. Social Semiotics, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2021.1877995.

Web3 vs Web3

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Marx, Paris. n.d. ‘Why Web3, the Blockchain and Crypto Internet, Is Doomed to Fail’. Accessed 29 March 2022. https://www.businessinsider.com/web3-blockchain-crypto-internet-doomed-fail-doesnt-live-up-hype-2022-3?r=US&IR=T.

Banking the Unbanked

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Debate: Crypto Can Bank the Unbanked
- https://intelligencesquared.com/events/debate-crypto-can-bank-the-unbanked/
Gürses, Seda, Arun Kundnani, and Joris Van Hoboken. 2016. ‘Crypto and Empire: The Contradictions of Counter-Surveillance Advocacy’. Media, Culture and Society 38 (4): 576–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716643006.
Jutel, Olivier. 2022. ‘Blockchain Humanitarianism and Crypto-Colonialism’. Cell Press Open Access, Patterns, 3 (1): 8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100422.
Ottenhof, Luke. 2021. ‘Crypto-Colonialists Use the Most Vulnerable People in the World as Guinea Pigs’. VICE Media.
Crandall, Jillian. 2019. ‘Cryptoeconomic Geographies and Contestation in Puerto Rico’. Thesis. PhD Thesis. http://jilliancrandall.net/cryptoeconomic-geographies-and-contestation-in-pr/.
Greeley, Brendan. 2019. ‘Facebook’s Libra Will Not Help the Unbanked’. Financial Times 18.
Kapsis, Ilias. 2021. ‘Should We Trade Market Stability for More Financial Inclusion? The Case of Crypto-Assets Regulation in EU’. FinTech, Artificial Intelligence and the Law: Regulation and Crime Prevention, 85–104. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003020998-9.
Sen, Atreyee, Johan Lindquist, and Marie Kolling. 2020. Who’s Cashing in? Contemporary Perspectives on New Monies and Global Cashlessness. Vol. 19. Berghahn Books.

Is it secure?

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Plant, Luke. 2022. ‘The Technological Case against Bitcoin and Blockchain’. Luke Plant’s Home Page. 5 March 2022. https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/the-technological-case-against-bitcoin-and-blockchain/.
Rosenthal, David. n.d. ‘Stanford Lecture on Cryptocurrency’. Accessed 2 March 2022. https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html.
Schneier, Bruce. 2019. ‘There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology’. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/.
Diehl, Stephen. 2021. ‘The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency’. 7 July 2021. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/non-innovation.html.
Weaver, Nicholas. 2018a. ‘Risks of Cryptocurrencies’. Communications of the ACM 61 (6): 20–24.
———. 2018b. Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It With Fire. Berkeley School of Information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCHab0dNnj4.
———. 2021. ‘The Web3 Fraud’. USENIX. 16 December 2021. https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud.

Sending money internationally?

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Cembalest, Michael. 2022. ‘The Maltese Falcoin: On Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains’. https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-wm-aem/global/pb/en/insights/eye-on-the-market/the-maltese-falcoin.pdf.
Scheck, Justin, and Shane Shifflett. 2018. ‘How Dirty Money Disappears into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency’. Wall Street Journal 28.
Buttigieg, Christopher P., Christos Efthymiopoulos, Abigail Attard, and Samantha Cuyle. 2019. ‘Anti-Money Laundering Regulation of Crypto Assets in Europe’s Smallest Member State’. Law and Financial Markets Review 13 (4): 211–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2019.1663996.
Fanusie, Yaya, and Tom Robinson. 2018. ‘Bitcoin Laundering: An Analysis of Illicit Flows into Digital Currency Services’. Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance Memorandum, January.
Fletcher, Emily, Charles Larkin, and Shaen Corbet. 2021. ‘Countering Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: A Case for Bitcoin Regulation’. Research in International Business and Finance 56 (January): 101387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2021.101387.
Orcutt, Mike. 2020. ‘This Is How North Korea Uses Cutting-Edge Crypto Money Laundering to Steal Millions’. MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/916688/north-korean-hackers-cryptocurrency-money-laundering/.

bUt tHe FeD pRiNtS mOnEy

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Corradi, Fiammetta, and Philipp Höfner. 2018. ‘The Disenchantment of Bitcoin: Unveiling the Myth of a Digital Currency’. International Review of Sociology 28 (1): 193–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2018.1430067.
Stolfi, Jorge. n.d. ‘Bitcoin Is a Ponzi’. Accessed 19 March 2022. https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html.
‘Why Bitcoin Is Worse than a Madoff-Style Ponzi Scheme’. n.d. Accessed 20 March 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/83a14261-598d-4601-87fc-5dde528b33d0.
Binder, Carola. 2021. ‘Technopopulism and Central Banks’. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3823456.
Braun, Benjamin, and Daniela Gabor. 2019. ‘Central Banking, Shadow Banking, and Infrastructural Power’. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/nf9ms.
Malloy, Matthew, and David Lowe. 2021. ‘Global Stablecoins: Monetary Policy Implementation Considerations from the U.S. Perspective’. Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021 (020): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.17016/feds.2021.020.
Roche, Cullen O. 2011. ‘Understanding the Modern Monetary System’. http://ssrn.com/paper=1905625.
Eich, Stefan. 2018. ‘The Currency of Politics’. The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes.
Gorton, Gary B., and Jeffery Zhang. 2021. ‘Taming Wildcat Stablecoins’. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3888752.
Hockett, Robert C. 2019. ‘Money’s Past Is Fintech’s Future: Wildcat Crypto, the Digital Dollar, and Citizen Central Banking’.
‘Private Money vs Totally-Public Money, plus Some History | Financial Times’. n.d. Accessed 20 March 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/40592d6d-5a32-3606-a54f-cdc411e90c20.
Steele, Graham. 2021. ‘The Miner of Last Resort: Digital Currency, Shadow Money and the Role of the Central Bank’. Technology and Government, Emerald Studies in Media and Communications, Forthcoming.

The Superbowl Crypto ads & the "Early days" argument

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

White, Molly. 2022. ‘It’s Not Still the Early Days’. Molly White. 14 January 2022. https://blog.mollywhite.net/its-not-still-the-early-days/.

BItcoin: The Gold Standard & Right-Wing Extremism

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Hanley, Brian P. 2018. ‘The False Premises and Promises of Bitcoin’. ArXiv:1312.2048 [Cs, q-Fin], July. http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2048.
Wolf, Martin. 2019. ‘The Libertarian Fantasies of Cryptocurrencies’. Financial Times, February. https://www.ft.com/content/eeeacd7c-2e0e-11e9-ba00-0251022932c8.
Allon, Fiona. 2018. ‘Money after Blockchain: Gold, Decentralised Politics and the New Libertarianism’. Australian Feminist Studies 33 (96): 223–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2018.1517245.
Bemanke, Ben, and Harold James. 1991. ‘The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An International Comparison’. In Financial Markets and Financial Crises, 33–68. University of Chicago Press. https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-and-financial-crises/gold-standard-deflation-and-financial-crisis-great-depression-international-comparison.
Bernanke, Ben S. 2004. Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton University Press.
Plender, John. 2022. ‘Crypto vs Gold: The Search for an Investment Bolt Hole’. Financial Times, 1 April 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/d497772f-7422-4372-b72d-f74f96884466.
Brody, Ann, and Stéphane Couture. 2021. ‘Ideologies and Imaginaries in Blockchain Communities: The Case of Ethereum’. Canadian Journal of Communication 46 (3). https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2021v46n3a3701.
Gerard, David. n.d. ‘Neo-Nazis Bet Big on Bitcoin (And Lost)’. Accessed 3 March 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/19/neo-nazis-banked-on-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-farright-christchurch/.
Golumbia, David. 2013a. ‘Cyberlibertarianism: The Extremist Foundations of “Digital Freedom.”’ Clemson University Department of English.
———. 2013b. ‘Cyberlibertarians’ Digital Deletion of the Left: Technological Innovation Does Not Inherently Promote the Left’s Goals’. Retrieved 2 (10): 2014.
———. 2015. ‘Bitcoin as Politics: Distributed Right-Wing Extremism’. MoneyLab Reader: An Intervention in Digital Economy, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
———. 2016. The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism. University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2018. ‘Zealots of the Blockchain: The True Believers of the Bitcoin Cult’. The Baffler, no. 38: 102–11.
Hayden, Micahel, and Megan Squire. n.d. ‘How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Movement’. Souther Poverty Law Center. Accessed 3 March 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/12/09/how-cryptocurrency-revolutionized-white-supremacist-movement.
Husain, Syed Omer, Alex Franklin, and Dirk Roep. 2020. ‘The Political Imaginaries of Blockchain Projects: Discerning the Expressions of an Emerging Ecosystem’. Sustainability Science 15 (2): 379–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00786-x.

Ethereum: Peter Thiel wants your data to build a Libertarian utopia

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Groos, Jan. 2021. ‘Crypto Politics: Notes on Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Governance in Blockchain Based Technologies’. In Data Loam, 1:148–70. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110697841-009.
The Economist. 2022. ‘The Charm of Cryptocurrencies for White Supremacists’, 5 February 2022. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/02/05/the-charm-of-cryptocurrencies-for-white-supremacists.

Is this a bubble?

Concepts Referenced:

Sources

Nolan, Hamilton. n.d. ‘The Ticking Bomb of Crypto Fascism - In These Times’. Accessed 21 March 2022. https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-ticking-bomb-of-crypto-fascism.
Tante. 2021. ‘The Third Web’. Nodes in a Social Network (blog). 17 December 2021. https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/.
Varoufakis, Yanis. 2022. ‘Yanis Varoufakis on Crypto, the Left, and Techno-Feudalism’. DiEM25 (blog). 27 January 2022. https://diem25.org/yanis-varoufakis-crypto-the-left-and-techno-feudalism/ .