> At least crypto is a slightly-less-obnoxious industry than ads and tracking

And way more environmentally destructive than countless other things.

Maybe we quantity the privacy and emotional manipulation/destruction of the ad industry?

If we want to talk energy, maybe we look at what mindless streaming services consume?

Cherry-picking much?

And much less useful.

Is open finance less useful than ads?

I don't think so.

Open finance sounds cool until you realize it means crypto, which is not very useful

hmmm, i can loan stablecoins via crypto & receive interest with zero intermediary. or i can sell digital assets (e.g. art or IP) directly as an artist anywhere in the world, uncensorably & without revealing my identity (e.g. if in China). pretty useful.

I have no idea what any of that means.

Open finance already exists. My neighbors and I trade tomatoes for lemons occasionally. Bartering is open finance. Shackling yourself to some meme token does not seem very open to me, compared to exchange of goods which has certainly stood the test of time and the rise and fall of countless societies. Can't really say the same for crypto.

Brave is a really good example of where the two can even meet. It would not have been possible without crypto, and I'd suggest it's much more useful than the entire traditional ad industry.

> slightly-less-obnoxious industry than ads

I almost never see people obnoxiously talking about how ads are great. In fact, it's the opposite - constant ad bashing.

Whereas with crypto, while you have the skeptics and the haters, there are way more obnoxious fanatics.

I meant that ads are obnoxious to everybody.

Whereas with crypto, you can just ignore the subject entirely if you so wish. You won't be shouted at, when you open your digital newspaper to read stuff, that YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GET MORE DOGECOIN!!!

Ironically, that’s mainly because all ad exchanges ban crypto ads. Google has actually reversed course on this [1] and soon you’ll start seeing crypto ads too. Sadly, I already see tons of crypto related ads on Instagram already. Also, I’m not sure which digital newspaper you refer to, but I see articles about crypto pretty much on a daily basis on most websites.

[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/google-new-policy-cryptocurrency-ad...

You can't have crypto ads without, y'know, ads. QED.

People like to say ads are useless, and then talk about how they listen to others’ recommendations and blogs and videos, conveniently ignoring that they’re also ads.

I'm happy with crypto investors being bled out of their money... Not so happy with adds and tracking me for useless things as this affects also those companies who buys adds...