What questions do you have about Crypto/web3 that you're too embarrassed to ask?

@amit_arora It has never been as relevant as now! Just a few major news happened within 5 months of 2024: Bitcoin ETFs, PayPal launching PYUSD, Stripe Integrating Crypto Payments, Visa and Mastercard partnering with projects, global users up to 540 million from 420m in 2023, and a whole lot more!

@chandula interesting 😎

@tymzap I think you should interest in not just crypto, but blockchain technology, robust security

@natella_nuralieva From what I know, this is a case of AI needing blockchain tech rather than vice versa. Companies require huge amounts of computing power/storage to enable AI, blockchain or to be more specific Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePin) solve this by using decentralized compute power/storage, some notable projects working on this are: ShdwDrive, Nosana, and RNDR. There are also instances where AI is used to optimize/analyze big data within blockchains. For your second question, payments in web3 have been so good, decentralized, and bank-less.

@natella_nuralieva @chandula Don't forget, on the non-utxo chains (and even on some utxo chains), almost instantaneous! The fungibility aspect of EVM-based chains like Ethereum makes their base assets effectively not subject to chargebacks, which I know many merchants have long had a terrible time with. Not to mention that in places like China where the value of the currency is not merely "manipulated" but more like "entirely plucked out of thin air" and is maintained that way by simply ensuring that no property is truly private, crypto assets is the realest thing that can be owned in any sense of the word "ownership", and this applies both in English and Chinese. Too often we take private property for granted but it cannot be taken for granted when dealing with customers overseas, but it does not mean that a market doesn't exist. the current system is cumbersome and overinfluenced by nonsensical political fingerpointing based on a flawed or simply made up understanding of the intentions of the consumer who had the misfortune of being born under authoritarian schemes, which is the one thing that no human being had any say in but is also the one thing in the US at least has been made almost okay to use as a basis of discrimination and scapegoating, regardles of party affiliation. This creates a lot of friction based on assumptions that are not only false but in fact, imposssible, something that Web3 payments do not necessarily need to deal with. Both of my grandmothers have dementia and even though they have status that enables them to come to America, their health makes it impossible, but when my parents (they are divorced and act independently, although as they are from the same city which when I was born was 16x smaller than the size today) I am the only person who is able to pay their vehicle registrations or pretty much bills of all sorts on their properties. The California DMV has even blocked any Chinese IPs from being able to renew their licenses, which makes it particularly difficult when your car is prked at the parking lot of LAX but now with expired tags and no valid license. China doesn't even have DMVs, or at least not as American DMVs operate, and also, lacks federalism so your ID is nationally and centrally set and should not be treated as a source of truth. In fact nobody in my family has a set of Chinese identifications that accurately reflect their addresses or birthdays, none. It simply doesn't matter. The nonsensical policy - China skipped the credit card stage of payments and went straight to their walled gardens of payment apps, meaning that credit card fraud is far more common in countries where Visa and Masterard and such have a significant presence - or had, at least. That simply doesn't exist in China, yet, thanks to cultural incompetency, my American bank, while advertising its 150 years of existence, cannot even implement an anti-fraud heuristic that takes into account of Chinese new year and the ethnicity of their customers - which is obvious by my surname, and so on the day after the 2 weeks of CNY, a date not tied to the Gregorian calendar in a fixed manner, I found that I couldn't use my debit card over the renewal of a 60 dollar service.The service wasn't even in China proper (although the difference is superficial, it is nevertheless separate enough so that it matters in a few key industries, financial services being one of them). It took me 6 hours to get it cleared up over the phone. This would be impossible if it's a web3 based system. Because China had already banned nearly all Google services (GoogleFi seems to work, oddly), I find myself having to take care of all of their emails, bills, banking concerns, taxes, etc, all friction that does not need to exist. This is reflected in slightly different but immediately recognizable ways in the telegram chats I'm in where Chinese Sysadmins congregate. America - or really many other western nations - are not short on those with actual expertise in how China operates, even today. That really goes for all major nations. In fact at one point I learned about the Bengazi incident because someone I played Fantasy Baseball with during the season in a small circle of area studies students mostly at U of Chicago but also some Ivies and schools like Berkeley and UNC suddenly stopped responding, only to reappear apologetically to say that he didn't have an opportunity to tell anyone what happened before all hell broke loose. My best friend in college, who is now a tenure tracked Middle Eastern Studies faculty member at a top institution, missed the Cubs winning the World Series despite hving tickets for what turned out to be meaningless deployment. He's the 4th generation of his family in this country, and the season tickets were passed to him by his father, who passed the year before, and was someone I knew as well and would've liked nothing more. My friend regularly gets recruitment phone calls and instead of "no" he replies in much more vulgar terms. And so you get the second or third tier or when it comes to China, a literal fanfiction writer of Yellow Peril racist fantasy erotica as your advisor. Every decision being made will almost inevitably be wrong, and so far, that has proven true. Web3 is the validation in a real way that state entites and their interests are not going to be able to effectively fetter commerce and cooperation even with the threat of violence as the basis of their perceived legitimacy. The web3 press sadly is in shambles and much of the reporting contains so many errors that I've given up on attempting to correct them. Devs are too busy to read poorly written pieces that say nothing new and misinterpret the tech anyway. Like any new tech, there will be bugs and scewups. Unlike most in the closed source sphere, especially when banking is concerned, there is ctual transparency. Give it time. Banks had a millennium+ worth of head start and they screw up daily. I bought my first bitcoins on May 4, 2011. We have a long time to refine things.

@chandula this makes a lot of sense! And thank you for referencing cases! I’ll read more on those🙌🏼

@lindarobinson2 If you're completely new to the space, stick to reputable exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance until you get good enough knowledge. Right now, the barrier to entry for purely web3 projects is slightly high. Each blockchain has its wallets but some wallets support multiple chains, like Phantom Wallet. I would say Solana is a good place to start since UX-wise it's pretty much the easiest/smoothest out there. As for educational resources, I honestly don't know, I learned by doing and just messing with what I could find. Once you have your wallet outside of an exchange, it's your world to play with. There's the Jupiter Swap if you want to swap between tokens, Vault X Protocol for transactions with an escrow, and Famous Fox Federation for a whole lot of tools like sending a message to another wallet, the list could go on and on. And ofc, don't click any random links, don't connect your wallet to random sites, and ALWAYS double verify your address when sending a transaction (even better if you do a test transaction first).