Being part of this strange new frontier we call "The Cryptosphere," I am constantly presented with a seemingly endless stream of new projects... most of which seem to have in common that they are going to be "the game changer" in some aspect of blockchain/crypto.

Mybe I'm just old-fashioned, in the sense that I invariably find myself asking the question (both inside my head, as well as to the purveyors of this new idea) of whether "there's actually anything THERE."

Of course, this type of inquiry is usually met with assertions that either I "don't understand how crypto works" or I "don't understand web 3.0." It's always me that's the problem, not the project.

What I do understand is how to look for situations that resemble the proverbial "emperor's new clothes," in which there is actually nothing there, except huge screeds of what I would call "Crypto Bro Word Salad."

One of the greatest large scale investors of all time — Peter Lynch, who ran Fidelity Investments' "Magellan" mutual fund for 13 years and substantially outperformed the broader stock markets — once ubserved that he stayed far far away from anything he didn't fully understand, and/or that the company founders couldn't easily explain to him, or any lay person in the street.

I'd say that's pretty sage advice.

"Crypto Bro Word Salad" is a close cousin of the sort of "Science Speak" that tends to follow purveyors of remedies in the alternative health industry.

They insist that they have the best healing product known to humankind but they can't really explain what it is, nor exactly how it works... and if it ends up not working for you, it's "because you weren't open to the healing."

There's zero accountability, and zero integrity.

I fear the crypto industry has a lot of that going on, particularly in the Defi space... where everyone always seems very reluctant not only to explain how things work in simple terms, but also come across as deeply evasive and avoidant when you try to pin down what the "plan" actually is.

And this is where the "Crypto Bro Word Salad" tends to percolate to the top... in the form of a bunch of technical sounding gobbledigook about protocols, swaps, cross-chain wallet compatibilities and goodness knows what else.

Nothing is ever simple! Moreover, few things are actually understandable!

Of course the wrinkle in the equation is often that the reason for the complexity is that simplicity would reveal the fact that the project at hand is either pure "vaporware," or sometimes a solution in search of a problem that hasn't actually happened yet!

Sometimes, it turns out that I am actually looking at a very complex and convoluted "money for nothing" scheme that — when questioned — elicits aforementioned "You clearly just don't understand Web 3.0!" response.

Of course, it's often true that emergent industries are fueled by a certain amount of smoke-and-mirror projects... and the cryptosphere is no exception. But the industry is no longer quite as "young" as it sometimes likes to think... and it seems to me that we really ought to hold people more accountable for their thinly disguised "scam-like" propositions!

Thanks for coming to visit, and do leave a comment if you feel so inclined! Engagement matters!

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