The Promise of Crypto?

Bestselling author and acclaimed technology commentator Andrew Keen takes a close look at the promises – and the perils – of web3, blockchain and crypto currencies.

“What is seductive about crypto?”, Keen asks at the outset of his presentation. His answer: The promise of creating a decentralized architecture for the Internet gives many people hope that web3 and blockchain will free us “from the dominant Web 2.0 companies which have become these very chilling surveillance style capitalist companies”.

While this suggests “a profound revolution”, there are good reasons to be skeptical, Keen warns.

First off, we should not believe “that technology can fix human problems, that technology can solve problems which have existed throughout the history of our species”, Keen argues. “The idea that crypto or web3 can do away with power is actually quite absurd and very dangerous.”

The author also makes the case that investors would not be so eager to finance the new technology if the rewards were truly distributed and shared equally.

“Huge amounts of money are being poured into rearranging the architecture, the plumbing of the Internet. Who owns these new protocols, who’s going to make money?”, Keen asks. “Who are going to be the winners and the losers?”