The only real question is whether the VCs consciously used crypto and its evangelical culture as devices to structure a legal pyramid scheme (like multi-level marketing, with cryptoassets attached to the pyramid instead of spandex leggings) or just sort of reinvented pyramid schemes out of crypto’s functional principles in the same way that they naively “invent” juicers or mass transit.
I lean toward the first scenario since – as with most business models based in Libertarian philosophy – it was always a scam predicated on preying on “greater fools”. If you already have a lot of money to buy into the relatively early tiers of an existing organic pyramid scheme and additional money to promote it to a mass audience of rubes, the dictates of late-stage capitalism preclude spending paying additional R&D costs to re-invent something that’s already out there and available for your use.
They’re just getting started. Wait until you see how this cryptocurrency market for suckers plays out after they foist “Web3” on society.
It’s not too far off from how the right wing weaponised memes, as I described here.
