The holiday weekend is coming up, so short and well, ok, maybe not so sweet. No surprise there.

 

Crypto meltdown, Celsius crash deepen rift between Web3 fans and skeptics, PitchBook recently noted.  “Proponents of Web3 hope that this new iteration of the internet, characterized by decentralized platforms based on blockchain technology, will eventually overturn the “evil” of big tech and traditional banks, allowing all users—not just founders, investors and employees—to benefit financially from their participation.”

 

With all due respect, when Web 1.0 first showed up, the promise was that information was to be free to everyone. Maybe not literally, but it would be readily available, at your fingertips. And it was – but at a price, considering the rise of the free Google search and later, Facebook, and let’s not forget Microsoft, Apple and Amazon, too– producers of the devices/platforms that made our lives so much easier, while we were tracked at every turn and keystroke.

 

In case you missed it, Apple Just Wrecked 15+ Startups In Less Than 1 Hour What would you do if Apple added a feature that made your startup obsolete?

 

We are by no means a Luddite – just OG and only all too aware at this point that he who owns the pipes/access points controls the conversation – and so much more. And note that Facebook/Meta is not building a dedicated metaverse but rather, intends to focus on apps/entry points and while you may believe that you’re one of those people who stopped using Facebook and its many products long ago so no bigs, this just in: Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites It’s to do with a little app called Meta Pixel. And what harm can a few little pixels do, and dollars to donuts, and with all due respect, we’re fairly certain that hospitals don’t hire top-line developers at Alphabet/Meta/Microsoft rates.

 

In other words, you’re a Facebook user – or rather, are used by Facebook – whether you’re a subscriber or not.

 

“In the meantime, one thing is clear, the first signs of a VC pullback from this sector are here,” Pitchbook observed, pointing out that “The people that have been working on crypto since 2010 have seen these price cycles four or five times before. They’ve got thick skin,” said Yash Patel, a general partner with Telstra Ventures, a backer of FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange last valued at $32 billion.

“Web3 believers are ready to play the long game even if it takes five to 10 years to persuade the world of the true value of their beloved technology. They are convinced that price volatility and rampant speculation will subside once blockchain tokens’ utility is widely apparent.”

 

Even Web 1.0 was not readily adopted until a good five to 10 years later. Graphics hit in ’94, but it was years before America, much less the world, was online.

 

Web 3.0 is still built on the internet’s underlying infrastructure and “building It is essentially a fancy way of wrapping up the existing internet infrastructure with a layer of crypto. One of the core tenets of Web3 is that it will be built upon the foundations of blockchain technology, bringing decentralization and transparency. Decentralization – because the data is not stored on a single server owned by a single entity. Transparency – because when data is stored across multiple servers, it is almost impossible to tamper with or fiddle with its existence using opaque policies,” said Screenrant.

 

But then we have been witnessing the many crypto hacks…

 

Time will tell, note that AI is now sentient (Google engineer warns the firm’s AI is sentient: Suspended employee claims computer programme acts ‘like a 7 or 8-year-old’ and reveals it told him shutting it off ‘would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot’) and that We can’t tell apart deepfakes from real people but we ‘trust’ them more. Even with decentralization, given that the majority of internet users aren’t exactly sophisticated, digital natives or not, and that most people give no thought to security, we wonder how long it will take the tech cabal, through deception and apps not unlike Meta Pixel, to infiltrate even this seemingly somewhat more ‘secure’ domain and speaking metaphorically, if once again, that chrome will truly be where the heart (of it) is.

 

Onward and forward