An Honest Conversation On The Problem With NFTs & Cryptocurrency, with @FoldingIdeas
In this episode, Chelsea speaks with Dan Olson from @FoldingIdeas to discuss his recent explainer video on the danger of crypto and NFTs.
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Nothing demonstrates this future dystopia better than the entire comment threads on this video, which are essentially bots talking to one another to pretend to be users. Utterly surreal seeing an entirely random conversation about buying Crypto and suddenly – one could even say, suspiciously – making a ton of money from seemingly thin air. It’s like a version of the “I make X amount of money doing surveys at home for Amazon!” style bots from a while ago.
They are in the comments sections of every fucking TFD video 😩
@@supernova622 I’ve not seen a video from TFD before, so I can imagine them being rather common. It’s just rather surreal. Can’t these bots throw in a few pepe references or call someone out for “wanting to be poor” to at least sound like real cryptobros? Then again, most cryptobros start sounding almost identical to bots over time so….
@@Turtlesism
Yep its so annoying, like who the hell are they trying to fool? Videogame Npcs?
@@bestdocincanada6620 Have you seen any crypto mudcrabs lately?!
@@Turtlesism
What is tht suppose to be?
Dan: *immediately regrets reflexively saying “welcome” back at Chelsea, on her channel*
Gosh, I read this before I’d gotten to that part of the video and I felt his regret in my chest immediately.
waiter: enjoy your meal
dan olson: thanks, you too
dan olson: *regret*
Surely he just means, “Welcome to the call.”
He was doing a call and response thing
I’m terrible with impulse and money, it’s psychological and something I’m working on with my therapist. But I’m happy to say I’ve never bought NFTs, these videos help so much.
So happy for you, stay strong!
hold fast king/queen, you got this!
You definitely dodged a bullet there.
Hold on to your money, diamond hands!! You got this
that’s exactly what these people who run NFTs and crypto want, people who have impulse control problems, the kind who’ve turned video games into gambling
I’ve been a fan of Dan for 10 years – the ten most formative years of my life. I’m so happy he’s getting some real attention. It’s absolutely hilarious trying to see him brief
I love going back and see how much more traction his nft vid has gotten since I watched it 👍
He seems like more of a boxers kind of guy but I would be ok with seeing him in his briefs. Is that like a subscription or do I buy it from somewhere? How do I do this?
He’s come a long way from the cardboard puppet days. He’s always had great content, but the NFT video and his flat earth takedown that came out a while back are some of the best things on YouTube
I first read this as “I’ve been afraid of dan for 10 years”
Dan’s view counts are the line going up that we really need.
To hear Dan describing people who are pro-crypto actually (begrudgingly) agreeing with him, that’s actually incredible.
Nobody wants to admit they are Jack and wasted their money in magic beans.
@@alejandrovallejo6763 Jack actually lucked out, though. Unlike 99.99999999% of cryptobros.
@@arthurpiccio7906 he did kinda have to kill a giant to get a return on his investment, but yeah he was ‘lucky’
Yeah, the articles and videos that try to refute Line Goes Up generally concede that Dan is correct on all of his points, but he should just be more positive!
@@Caddrel thats hilarious
38:50 “People become resistant to predation when they feel safe.” Had to shed a single tear for we are going hard in the opposite direction.
Don’t feel safe in the current system— I feel I have a chance to have ground to run on in the digital system
@@laurenevans8483 The odds are even MORE against you investing in massive centralized blockchains of nothing.
Not a coincidence that the politician in this generation most invested in making everybody feel scared and angry all the time was a career real estate hustler.
@@laurenevans8483 You have an objectively better chance playing blackjack.
@@claymorejohnston that’s just false. Lots of people made money on crypto. Nobody makes money on blackjack after a few games. Stock markets you can win. Even in a bubble. Gambling you cannot win.
What I truly appreciate about Olson’s video was the specificity of his breakdown of the technical side of things. Most people in my circle of family and friends didn’t really understand NFTs, and having such a comprehensive resource breaking them down was a big help.
I was soooo confused about what those were. Now I have a very good summary I can use to have a real-world discussion:
Crypto currency is just the stock market but provides ZERO goods or services. Buying anything with crypto is like trying to buy something using stock shares. Shares which fluctuate hour to hour so good luck knowing what anything costs at any given time. Can you imagine what a nightmare it would be to be paid wages in stock shares? That’s the future these crypto drones are trying to sell you on.
NFT’s are just MLM scams with even less benefit since you have nothing physical to show for your loss. As he put it, “At least with MLM scams, you have a garage filled with skin lotion.” lol
@suicune2001 but with apps like Strike and using the bitcoin lightning network there’s no need to worry about bitcoin price. Pay in fiat and receive fiat. Using bitcoin as a payment rails network. Thats one way this could be done. Dan has good points but at the same time the innovation is moving forward. We just need to get rid of some the mess that comes with it
@@markmonfort29 Someone posted it takes 10 minutes to perform one bitcoin transaction and can apparently come with HUGE transaction fees. Imagine going to taco bell and buying $10 worth of food and being charged $500 in the transaction fee because some celebrity hype thing happened on the way. And then sitting there for 10 minutes while you wait for the payment to go through. Not to mention the horrible electricity cost. People also mentioned crypto is the reason it’s so hard to get computer hardware nowadays. And you’d still have sales tax on top of it.
I don’t see how using monopoly money solves anything. It just seems like a worse system all around. I also don’t like that only criminals used it for a long time so it’s already mired in less than desirable people who are willing to exploit the system and you.
@@markmonfort29 That’s kind of the problem though, is that the mess that comes with it is very profitable for the people who already have the money and power. They have a financial incentive to maintain that instability because it favours people who have enough money to eat the loss on a volatile investment, and *that’s the grift.*
Converting money from one currency to another is nothing special. But cryptocurrency doesn’t go “to the moon” unless its value is permitted to fluctuate wildly in short periods of time. And convincing people to convert their money from a stable currency to an unstable one creates a system where wealth and power pool in the hands of a shrinking number of winners while shutting everyone else out.
It’s basic class antagonism, and software solutions can’t correct for that.
Did he teach you how to read code and how to mint your own NFTs?
Dan tongue tied spitting out “we have history books” is the most relatable moment.
Riiiiiiight? I have gold standard friends and I’ve literally just taken to throwing at them copies of the history/economics book “Economix” – yes, it is a comic book. Answer to second potential follow-up question: No, my friends don’t change their minds when confronted by facts & evidence – they’re too brainwashed. But I don’t feel bad supporting the author of the book by buying more copies!
@@meganroserebecca can you please explain how the gold standard caused serfdom, but inflationary fiat currencies dont create serfs in overseas manufacturing, for example? it feels an aweful lot like permanent servant classes still exist, despite the fiat global economy, so im just entirely lost on how its a purely economic issue, and not, like, an issue about how labor is divided in a population outside of how it is directly compensated.
explain how serfdom is not only possible, but in fact necessary, in a ‘gold standard’ world, and how its not only unlikely, but somehow structurally impossible, in a fiat world?
use historic examples.
@@EncinoRecords you’re not my homeroom teacher, and Uncle Sticky’s Discount Ham Wagon isn’t your pupil, but gosh darn it here’s a brief hot take:
There is nothing stopping a fiat-based society from doing an imperialism or a capitalism to another society.
Under substance-tied currency systems, the amount of currency available to print expands *slower* than fiat societies (sometimes to the point of deflation, like uh, in the case of cryptocurrencies) leading to economic depressions and less economic development and mass starvations because people aren’t getting paid for their work because the people who have substance-tied currency systems don’t want more money to be printed for fear of losing monetary power over the people who have less currency.
One of the cool benefits of fiat currencies is that most of them are inflationary, meaning that a person in the future theoretically will have to expend less labor in order to obtain the same amount and quality of goods compared to a person in the past. Under fiat currencies, as long as organized labor bargains cost-of-living-wage-increases to offset the price increase of consumer goods, worker power grows while the inheritances of rich individuals decreases in value. Compare, for example, Alabama to the Netherlands: not only do most workers in Alabama get paid a measly $7.25 (or under $8.00) an hour, workers in Alabama where unions do not exist in meaningful numbers also have the injury of having to pay for their own health care. In the Netherlands, that same worker would make the equivalent of $22/hr flipping burgers and would have no health care bill to consider at all.
Currency by itself is meaningless; currency can only be considered in context of economic systems and whether or not one believes that wealthy individuals or groups should exist.
One cool advantage of fiat currency that substance-based currencies do not have, is the fluidity. A person can easily move from point A to point B and obtain a loan under a fiat system to obtain tools and housing, whereas substance-based currency loans are much harder to obtain and historically more exploitative.[1]
For a historical example of currency debates, see the chapter on the stupidity of the “Free Silver” movement
—
[1] Until capitalists realized they could loan shark in the form of charge cards.
@@tinoesroho so i nother words, the ‘we have history books’ argument was a non sequiter
serfdom didnt end with fiat, and fiat wouldnt have prevented it
the video on his channel is well done, and well argued. his interview here is filled with a lot of poor arguments that might work well in addition to his main channel video, but dont, in and of themselves, make good arguments in a vacuum
@@tinoesroho also, ive never heard someone refer to inflation destroying the purchasing power of currency as a positive before.
silly me, im here working way less hard per dollar than my grandfather did, i should be happy about that right? given your comment that its somehow a net benefit?
youre def saying things no one else ever told me, ill tell you that much
Wow, I remember watching Dan’s video and thinking “damn this is a really comprehensive breakdown of everything terrible about NFTs, this is the kind of thing I wish would go viral.” Glad to hear it actually did and good interview.
Same! I watched it early on because I’m a regular viewer of his and this really pleases me.
@@lilithhedwig5408 honestly, I’ve re-watched that video a couple of times because first of all, it’s incredibly informative but also….it’s absolutely mesmerizing 😀
hes very intelligent but has a clear bias as well that nobody brings up
@@hypno5690 Not saying you are wrong, but in what way is he biased?
@@grahamrich9956 His political views are clearly very much on the left and he seems to be pretty anti-capitalist. It’s clear as a day @30:42 where the interviewer basically calls crypto right wing/an-cap and he agrees. Watch his other videos and you’ll see that almost all of them are intertwined with his political pov. Hardly some neutral journalism.
Some of his claims are straight up conspiracy level bullshit like “crypto is experiment in financial reorganization that serves the needs of very scary people who have enough power already.”— that literally sounds like something a Trump voter would say after the last ‘rigged’ elections. (…and would be ridiculed for by someone like this dude)
I’ll give him that he’s very good at presenting his skewed views as facts that are indisputable.
I love listening to Dan talk. He can tear something down, while still remaining deeply compassionate to those caught up in it. His Flat Earth video is another great example. It is interesting hearing him here in a more free-form medium.
His transition from talking about Flat Earth to QAnon was sublime.
He has intense “your brilliant favourite college professor” energy
I guess you weren’t listening very closely
I ALWAYS thought of Crypto as an MLM scheme from the beginning and people told me I just don’t get it. I feel quite vindicated hearing someone more savvy than me in financial matters saying the same thing.
Glad it’s not just us.
@@thefinancialdiet Nope. You’re not alone. It has all the flags.
things that are actually GOOD has a different feel from these get rich quick schemes
IMO, when Bitcoin started, it was more than a MLM scheme. However the banks, unable to attack it directly, managed to capture developement by funding the “Core Developers”. The Core developers now actively prevent BTC from scaling to meet expected transaction demand.
So with high fees and unreliable transactions: there is no longer a compelling reason to use it over the traditional banking system. All BTC has left is “number goes up”; which is very Ponzi-adjacent, if not actually technically a Ponzi in implementation.
@@jamesphillips2285 So it started with good intentions but the market decided its fate?
This dudes video was awesome. It turned me from NFT hater to apocalyptic NFT destroying god with lasers coming out of my eyes
Lol love this
I didn’t like crypto because it was wasteful and frivolous use of resources and computer hardware for betting on nothing
I didn’t like NFTs because they all seemed like a massive money laundering scheme
And then I watched that 2+ hour video and good lord, we need to completely eradicate both crypto and NFT’s wherever we can, because the whole topic is a dollar sign shaped bear trap covered in pepper spray and lemon juice.
lol cringe
@@asyncasyncbruh did you just reply to an at least year old comment?
@@beneroni8345 yes.
… ugh, and? 😀
“It’s the 5% fighting the 1%.” I thought that was the most illuminating quote of the NFT video, and by that point, you had proven it. It seems like that’s the basic thesis if you can nail down just one.
yep, crypto will succeed when and only when it is actually the 95% who can benefit from it, and that won’t happen when it’s an investment vehicle at all, even a little bit. The only thing I’ve seen that seems vaguely promising in this direction is the grassroots economics folks – you cannot buy community inclusion currencies; It’s entirely based on issuing debt personally. if you build trade up from the basic components they’re probably will be a use for cryptography in order to provide an alternative to fiat currency but that will probably look like tools for creating a cryptocurrency as easily as you create a discord server, with some sort of modern monetary theory type thing backing it or something, or maybe you need to peg it to labor and it’s labor tokens, ultimately protecting labor from abusive debts is the problem of our time and has been for several hundred years at least. not clear that cryptocurrency will be able to help with that but my hope is that eventually a cryptocurrency will come along that completely destroys any sense that it could be an investment vehicle. we’ll see…
@@laurenpinschannels I honestly don’t understand this reasoning. “crypto will succeed when and only when it is actually the 95% who can benefit from it, and that won’t happen when it’s an investment vehicle at all, even a little bit.”
I think it’s because people (you) conflate value with the US dollar. Even though the US dollar loses its value over time. Like, why do you think the 95% can’t benefit from crypto? I will read your comment again but asking if you can expound here.
@@user-zu1ix3yq2w Of course dollars lose value over time; steady and predictable inflation is essential to the proper function of a true value-denominating currency. The intentionally sought-after hyperdeflation of the scamcoin world is just one reason crypto is not, and can *never* be, a real functional, usable currency. The reason it can’t succeed when it’s an ‘investment vehicle’ is that 95% of people aren’t looking for ‘investment vehicles’ whatsoever. 95% of people are not unhealthily fixated on the endless accumulation of more money; they do not think of themselves as ‘losing out’ just because inflation exists, or ‘missing out’ just because their assets aren’t all leveraged. 95% of people just want a reliable denominator of economic value that they can use to temporarily store their wealth until they need to turn it into shoes, bread, concert tickets, et cetera. ‘Investment vehicles’ cannot and should not function as everyday value tokens; currencies themselves are not ‘stores of value’, they are the units by which stores of value are assessed and compared.
Crypto bros intentionally misunderstand and distort basic economics into incredibly stupid parodies just to try and keep their bigger-fool scams going, and it’s very depressing how well it has worked to keep the bigger fools coming in. If crypto was really valuable, why has the goal always remained to pump it up and then cash out into real money? The simple fact that prices of all these scamcoins are always quoted in USD just proves that getting ‘real money’ out at the end has always been the goal of these crypto ventures. It has never been about building a better kind of money system that benefits everyone; that’s just the conmen’s sales pitch, and it always has been.
@@user-zu1ix3yq2w Crypto currency doesn’t solve the problems brought by fiat and instead bringing more problems with it. For example the fact that it flactuate so fast, yes fiat lose it value with time but crypto values can lose by the next day
@@user-zu1ix3yq2w If you mine crypto you need a lot of processing power that the 5% use to become more like the 1%. Crypto is broken. A company can buy way more processing power than you and I. Its for the elites. They already ruined crypto. Anyone thinking it will change anything is just buying into a dream that is not real. And crypto culture is filled to the brim in scams. Not the same as the dollar backed by work. Crypto backed by how it solves problems like I said before is a interesting idea that has already been corrupted.
The insane thing is how good the scammers are. I’m pretty technologically savvy, and so friends often come up and ask me about what things are good buys and what aren’t. Researching some of these “projects’ for them turns into like, 20-30 minute ordeals, and that’s with me KNOWING what to look for. God help those that don’t. PROTIP for anyone that’s still considering crypto as an investment vehicle? No legitimate project ever got off the ground by you not being able to sell the token or coin. If the founder won’t let you sell? It’s a scam. 120000000% its a scam. that’s it.
Thing is… it’s volatile. The gap between getting scammed by a predator and choosing something that just happens to fail because the guy selling is also a victim is so thin as to be irrelevant to an investor.
It’s a deliberately induced cultic malaise because that’s how you get rich in crypto
@Brian Mitchell lol like any legitimate and honest way to make money needs to be heavily researched
bad, back to your get rich quick scheme hole
@Brian Mitchell can’t expect a dudebro to know how to read, my bad
i’ll try caveman grunting next time
*makes economic theory grunts and hand gestures before leaving in my foot powered car*
now will you please get back to your get rich scheme hole?
@Brian Mitchell Facts
@@k.morningstar7983 I fully understood you just saying.
10 years from now after the bubble has burst, I hope analysts dont wash over the fact that folks like this SAW IT COMING and portrayed how and why it was inevitable with compelling, detailed content.
You know which card they will play.
@@klarkolofsson How Millenials Destroyed Finance By Buying NFTs And Avocado On Toast Instead Of Houses
It won’t be 10 years, it’ll be either this year or the next 2 max. But analysts absolutely will – they do it on purpose to help Big Money maintain economic control (through narrative control).
They did it with the ’08 crash. It’s inevitable that they’ll try.
@@darrelsteinberg4127 2 years from now you’ll still be at your 9-5 but hundreds of thousands of people will have retired off crypto
5.3M views in 3 weeks… Dan’s made a lot of the best videos on Youtube in his career, but I’m glad it was THIS one that blew up like crazy. Huge respect.
“Even if you believe in crypto, there’s an observable bubble.” -Dan Olson Great line from this interview.
This right here. I’m a CPA with my education in accounting (obviously) and economics. It’s absolutely in a major phase of mania and fraud despite it being an early stage viable currency.
I’m reminded of the early days here in the US when there wasn’t a unified currency but multiple different currencies with some originating from the colonial nations, one created by Congress (the continental dollar) and the various corporate currencies created by the individual business ventures in the colonies.
Sus sus sus amogus
(If you get the dumb meme reference you get it, if you don’t, don’t worry about it)
So what about the housing market? stocks? USD money printing?
Much of the stock & real estate market is over valued right now as well. I would invest into is commecerical real estate since covid has added so much inventory to the market on that side it is actually cheaper than ever unlike housing.
Then I would invest in precious metals (avoiding gold) and private stocks since they are less affected by market fluctuation.
Investing into public stocks is fine but don’t do it just based on graphs and growth. Only buy if you believe in the evaluation of the underlying company and it’s ablity to perform over 5 to 10 years.
If everything crashes, the only value things will hold is the value outside the dollar amount so understand what you are buying rather than it’s current worth on the market.
I actually hold crypto, but if it crashes I just plan to use it within the ecosystems rather than just cashing out for money. So my crypto has some value to me even if assigned $0 worth on marketplaces.
@@nickk4010 What about them? All of them are susceptible to bubbles, but none are in such a large bubble as crypto right now.
this is so niche, and minor in comparison to all the other thoughtful points he’s made in Line Goes Up as well as in this interview, but the very brief explanation that Dan gave of the adoptable community really illustrates why I respect his content so much. as someone who’s been in adopt and furry communities for years, I know how insular and objectively silly (though very sincere!) it can be, and to hear someone from outside the community describe it so correctly and with zero mocking is really surprising. he did the same thing with smutty fanfiction: interface with very mockable subcultures in sincerity and good faith, and with respect that’s usually not afforded to us. it’s rare for someone who discusses serious, heavy-hitting topics to also take pains to acknowledge the humanity of 16 year old sparkledog peddlers on deviantart, but it’s very appreciated and in my opinion speaks to his research and empathy skills.
Hahey, fellow sparkledog peddler 😀
That’s usually the sign of someone who makes proper research instead of just going by hearsay or biased articles.
Aww, your show of appreciation here is just as endearing as how you feel about Dan’s treatment of your interests. Spread the positivity. 🙂
adoptables are a parasite to many communities and im glad the younger generation is realizing it. not everything needs to be monetized, as an artist myself it is not a good way to be supported
@@tsu08761e whaat is the adoptable community and why do you feel this way about it? I googled it, and it seems to be authors commissioning artists to draw characters for their books and stories, because they can’t draw well enough themselves. What’s wrong with that? Artists should get paid for their work. In money, not crypto, of course. I don’t see a problem with commissioning artists to make art for people. Like if you want a song for your video, you commission a musician to write and record one for you. Dan (Folding Ideas) did this for his Line Goes Up video, he commissioned some drummers to make a drums-only song for the video, and the song features throughout in each of the “chapter” screens. He paid them in money, not in crypto, obviously.
Chelsea’s little “no” when Dan mentioned Elijah Wood, I legit felt that.
Brie Larson, Reese Witherspoon. I can mute them.
But Dolly Parton? Somebody had to have lied to her. She’s too good and pure to do this on her own.
Look at the various celebrity mouthpieces, look at what agencies represent them, and then look at the wallets tied to those groups. You’ll start to see connections; most of these dancing monkeys wouldn’t know a Bitcoin from a rare pepe, their agents are just using them as bullhorns to pump the value of their own investments.
@@SinHurr God no not Dolly
Dolly Parton owns the largest and most popular resort in her state and pays her employees less than a living wage, I have no idea why everyone thinks she’s this “good rich person”, she’s the same as all the othets
@@ltbq to my understanding they also pay for 100% tuition fees for any employee who wants to study after secondary school. I don’t know if it makes up for low wages, but it definitely is above and beyond many employers
I can’t describe the sensation I felt when Dan said “have you heard of adoptables”. As someone in the furry fandom, I have been (albeit, mostly jokingly) making this comparison for SO long, and have never seen it brought up in the NFT discussion outside of that. People will bring up NFTs and I’m just like?? They’re furry adoptables but 10,000x worse. Nft bros will even talk about their animal characters like I hear people talk about furry adoptables, like, ooh, “I love the design, the color, and it has a leather jacket, I think that looks cool! I knew I just had to buy it immediately, it’s my new form of identity, I’m gonna put it on my hoodie,” etc. Except of course you can get some quality premade furry design/artwork for like. $50 and not $50k, lmao. Not to mention the artist gets all that money! Anyways. I appreciated him bringing that up if not just for the way my head turned 180⁰ like an owl when he said the word ‘adoptables’. Not to mention the whiplash of him using all these pentasyllabic words throughout regarding the financial and cultural state of society just to then utter the phrase “blue jaguar character”. I swear I started levitating in an orbit like that potato someone taped to their ceiling fan
What? Lol. The furry NFT’s you made up is something I would call a scam in 4K. Some generative NFT’s are scams and don’t come from originality. I’ll give you that. But NFT’s are assets that can’t be exchanged. People who identify with NFT usually cater to what it stands for and the utility behind it (PFP supporters/advocates). The people behind the NFT make money. That is 1,000% correct. But it also depends on the project and the branding. If your goal is to rug pull and scam people, then do so. And if a project resembles that, than it is what it is – a scam. But not every NFT is like this. Research is highly important. Without the context of anything, there is always misunderstandings and assumptions. Art work value works exactly like paintings. If there is value that means someone is willing to pay for it. That is how value works. FOMO and speculation play little parts to it, but that’s how value works. You create a piece that has tons of diversity, character, and structure = you put your price on it. If the market responds good to it, that’s what one pays.
Lol this description. The owl head-turn, the “whiplash”, and the floating potato, you have a gift for humorous imagery
HAHAHAHA amazing
Dan frequently weaponises his use of very specific wording. And it’s always fun when he comes up with something taken from obscure or niche subcultures.
A potato flew around my room…