But to discredit the entire movement as a grift is to give authority to these scammers and not real builders and technologists spending their time and effort trying to innovate and improve society.
We made it past the dotcom boom and it turns out the internet wasn't a scam. Don't write off decentralized commerce or generative technologies either. See the bigger picture. You can be skeptical and curious at the same time.
As soon as VCs get involved, the startup becomes a grift for VCs, private equity and wall street to make a return by gutting the startup into a shell of itself.
dotcom boom - .com IPO or bust, move onto the next grift.
VC backed startups - Decacorn valuation or bust, move onto the next grift.
crypto - to the moon / lambo and blockchain, or bust (dump tokens on retail), move onto the next grift.
AI - automate, accelerate and keep proclaiming "AGI coming soon" or bust, move onto the next grift.
In modern times, the interest rates rising made it easier to find the grifting startups.
But your comment entirely misses my point. There's nothing grifty about decentralized commerce, or crypto. When not involved in the space, you are mostly only exposed to the grifters. Only, the grift is surface-level... These people rush to market and make speculative promo videos aimed at investors, before even engineering a product.
They actively lie to their users and see them as unsophisticated investors, fools yet to be parted with their money. I've worked with people like this, and it's disgusting.
Yet so many amazing ideas and ecosystem have sprung forth, and people are still working tirelessly to achieve their vision, despite people like you lumping them in with grifters, whom they also despise. You're selling short all of these people in a moment of ignorance and perceived superiority.
I can say the same for the latest boom of generative technologies which many are calling AI. I've been doing ML since 2015 and again have witnessed this entire boom shape up from within. There is soooooo much to be excited about.
Look past the grifters. Focus on the technologies. Discard the ones built on false promises. We can have a discussion about what kind of action should be taken against grifters and people who take advantage of the clueless; please be discerning and do not lump myself nor anyone else working day and night to build cool and new things, and in some cases things whose importance is yet to be understood.
A lot of people thought the internet was a fad during the dotcom boom as well, and we see how that's turned out. Plenty companies went out of business or were dethroned due to making bets against the technology, or failing to learn and adapt around them. Try not to make the same mistake!
