Real world problems that web3 could solve--at least for me

## Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, including the haters

I didn’t realize just how much some people despise the very idea of the blockchain and web3. Luckily, twitter is a great tool for finding exactly the people who hate your ideas the most.

There are a bunch of arguments against web3, most of which--I think--are rooted in a circa 2010 understanding of the tech or are focused, solely, on a handful of extreme use cases. It’s just a pyramid scheme, or a money laundering tool, or a general scam! (The answer, I think, is: it is all those things, but not **just** those things.)

There is one complaint about web3 that is surprisingly persistent and which I’ve become a bit obsessed with: what problems does it solve?

You can do this test at home: tweet out anything positive about web3 and within minutes several people will reply with tweets asking you what problems does web 3 solve. It’s the second most common complaint I’ve seen (after the general scamminess one).

This is a weird question. New tech rarely solves some clear, well-understood problem. Sure, now, we can look back and think of the “problems” that were solved by, say, trains, cars, the telegraph, email, cell phones, etc. (We can, also, think of a ton of problems they created.) But when they were launched, all these new inventions were seen as, at best, tentative solutions to a narrow set of problems.

But, with web3, the question is even weirder because… it could solve some of the biggest, most persistent problems of our age. It could solve problems that most of us deal with constantly and don’t think of as solvable.

## Wait, what is web3?

If this phrase is confusing, do not feel bad. It’s a confusing idea that is being formed, chaotically, in real-time. If you’ve never heard of it, you are not alone. Most people haven’t.

There are a ton of resources to get you started, some good, some bad. I find the best starting place is the [A16Z canon](https://future.a16z.com/category/crypto-networks-economies/) (which, I was thrilled to learn while writing this piece, I have been added to). I do hope to write more basic intros, myself. I know others are working on this, too.

For the purposes of this essay, here are some key ideas:

### It’s not (necessarily) about money

The idea of the blockchain erupted into public consciousness through bitcoin. The blockchain has been hyped by many of its most devoted fans and a confused media (me, [included](https://adamd.mirror.xyz/ef3BZjrJGk7bb1ElhVdz5AMWxEAN7GIOQhsXMKTmOWY)) as being a new form of money that will replace the dollar and other government-backed currencies, for good or ill.

Personally, I have little interest in blockchain-backed currencies. I only keep a tiny bit of dough in Ethereum (the more sophisticated younger brother of Bitcoin). I own no bitcoin, no doge coin, no any other coin. I am making no life decisions based on the idea that the dollar is going away and I very much hope it doesn’t!

The blockchain comes out of cryptography, not finance or monetary policy. It is a tool that allows a bunch of people who don’t know or trust each other to feel confident about the provenance of some bit of digital code.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this essay and buy one of the "editions” listed below (please do!), you will then have permanent, unremovable, and easily demonstrated proof of your support of these ideas. I can’t take that away from you. Nobody can. Ten years from now, you can prove to me and anyone else that you placed value on this essay today. (Just think how cool it would be to be able to prove that you really, truly liked REM before they went all commercial! Or that you supported AJR when they were just some kids with a youtube channel.)

### It’s not (necessarily) all that different from what you already do

You spend money and time on all sorts of intangible things. You might contribute some money to a charity, post your thoughts on a discussion board or a photo of your cats on Facebook or comment on 

https://mirror.xyz/IYpLw1FYyctP_BTkPJLJ0TYNy7yvcvBFObFOPM1bsjY

From contemptuous to indifferent to curious to pretty damn excited: my journey to web3

## “Never buy Bitcoin”

### My public introduction to crypto: going on the Colbert Report and saying nobody should buy Bitcoin

The easiest thing is to mock me.

I went on The Colbert Report on April 17, 2013, and said--quite confidently and emphatically--that nobody should ever buy Bitcoin.  You can watch me say it [here](https://www.cc.com/video/rxy9ze/the-colbert-report-bitcoin-plunge-adam-davidson).

![Me on the Colbert Report, April 17, 2013](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/sU1aL-Ka-ownF1CVSARNV.jpg?height=1592&width=2798)

At the moment I went on, one Bitcoin was worth about $60. So, if instead of telling the world NOT to invest in Bitcoin I had bought $1,000 worth of the stuff, I’d have $1 million today.

To be fair to me, Bitcoin had been on a wild ride that week, gaining and losing massive amounts of value for people who owned it and it seemed reasonable to say: “If you do have money that you have no need to use ever again, and you want to see what happens with \[Bitcoin\] then that’s a reasonable investment.”

But to be fair to you, I should admit that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was a traditional finance reporter who saw the world through traditional lenses. The main thing I saw, when I looked at blockchain-backed currencies was what they don’t have: regulators, long history, government backing.

The following days convinced me I was right to say what I had. I received a stream of angry responses from anonymous people on twitter who didn’t seem to know how to spell. The only people I saw publicly celebrating Bitcoin did so in shouting form with an enthusiasm that bordered on that of a cult leader’s most enthusiastic supporters.

If I had any doubt about what I said on Colbert, it was that I wasn’t emphatic and contemptuous enough.

I stopped thinking about crypto completely. It’s striking to me that I spent the next five years writing about the economy for the New York Times Magazine and, then, the New Yorker--hundreds of pieces about all sorts of facets of our economic and financial system, and I never once thought it was worth my time to explore cryptocurrency, the blockchain, DeFi or any of these topics. I can’t remember thinking about them at all, but I feel fairly confident that if I did, it was to dismiss them as rantings from the criminal and ideological fringe. I could not have told you one single fact about the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum, say, or the rise of smart contracts.

I had no passion in my disinterest. I wasn’t actively thinking about crypto and then deciding not to write about it. I just didn’t give a crap.

## The Misery of Companies

### How Wall Street, financial regulators, and NPR showed me how disastrous entrenched bureaucracy can be

I look back on 2007 as a hinge year in modern history and, also, a defining year in my own life.

We now know that year was the peak of stupidity--even insanity--for Wall Street, the Fed, government regulators, and the entire world of serious people talking with certainty about the financial system.

It was possible through most of 2006 to ignore the trouble signs in the subprime mortgage market. But by early 2007, all the klaxons were screaming and flashing red and, still, most people ignored them (me very much included). That’s a bigger story for another day--though I’d invite you to listen to [The Giant Pool of Money](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/355/the-giant-pool-of-money), which Alex Blumberg and I produced in 2008. I do think it’s a good explanation of those crazy times.

My fixation, then, was not on the impending collapse of the global financial system. No. I was focused on something that felt much more immediate to me: how frustrated so many public radio reporters were.

I was International Business and Economics Correspondent for NPR, which is a very grand title for a job I had grown to hate. Well, hate might be strong. I got to travel the world, reporting on all sorts of interesting changes in the gl