i have been incredibly humbled by the inability of fantasy top, friendtech and consumer crypto apps to cross the chasm. crypto in its most ambitious form (of ushering in a new era of user owned software and infrastructure) has failed. we optimistically tried to blend the personas of investor (people allocating capital to production to receive more money than they put in) and consumer (people willing to pay more for a product than it costs to operate) and found ourselves serving the needs of neither. where the strong form of crypto failed, the weak form (of commoditized ledger/database tech for financial transactions) has succeeded beyond anyone's expectation. the consequence is that crypto has been reduced to a vassal of traditional finance, both more impactful than any normie anticipated, and deeply disappointing in structure to crypto OGs. reducing global transaction costs as commoditized ledger/database technology reduces drag on global GDP, but this is a marginal improvement over the status quo and one where the value accrues in large part to incumbent intermediaries in reducing overhead and improving margins. crypto was supposed to be the most egalitarian thing ever. it was insanely ambitious and, if it worked, could have really changed the fabric of society. it didn't. it's over. we haven't found the right primitives, and, more importantly, the right culture for delivering the most ambitious version of crypto. it's time to question everything again.
