On Crypto (Arnaud)

Arnaud argues that crypto has lost the substance and promise that drew early believers, and that the standard advice to become "product focused" has not fixed this. He says crypto's ideological commitments to transparency, democracy and trustlessness conflict with startup-style growth, and that the field would do better by taking on some of the coordinated, less public action that earlier technology projects relied on. He cites the early personal computer industry, VisiCalc's manual retail work by Dan Fylstra and VisiCorp, and Dee Hock's individual calls to banks while building NBI.