The cryptocurrency space looks like a giant regressive tax that transfers money from the poor and technically kind of illiterate to sophisticated investors and early adopters and technologists. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Stephen Deal.

Stephen is a software engineer and Cryptoskeptic based in London, and he's been writing a fantastic

series of blog posts on cryptocurrencies, web three, and

related topics from a skeptical perspective, naturally, but also informed by his work on the

technology side of things and the recognition that these technologies do not stand up to the

narratives that are built around them and really just don't work in a fundamental way.

Stephen and I had a great conversation going through a number of those topics, including

the divide that exists among technologists when it comes to crypto assets, you know, those

who are supportive versus those who are critical like Stephen, the fundamental problems that

exist with blockchain, the technology that

underlies a lot of this sector, the issues with this narrative of decentralization that comes

up time and time again, that just leads to a false technological utopianism, this belief that

you know, just by using technologies to decentralize or democratize power, which isn't really what happens,

that technologies alone can solve the many social problems that we're dealing with.

The scammy nature of cryptocurrencies, you know, why there's some kind of mix of like a Ponzi

scheme and a pyramid scheme.

And of course, Web 3, this new term that has, you know, really been emerging and

growing lately, and how this is just kind of a rebranding of a sector that is increasingly

being associated with scams and frauds. And so need some kind of a different narrative

around it for investors and for the people who are making money off of these schemes to keep growing

their bank accounts at the expense of much of the public. And in particular, the people who,

you know, get suckered into these schemes. I'd highly recommend going to check out some of

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