The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

What goals does today's crypto-token-powered "web 3" vision share with the old Internet? It's not enough to say "well it's decentralized" and do a handwave.

Consider the NFT exploration Moxie Marlinspike did recently:

https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

This is essentially a system that lets you buy DRM'd metadata that points to servers owned by a corporation funded by billions of VC dollars, and transactions are recorded on a ledger that spends more power than the entire country of Finland. The only purpose of these activities is to speculate on prices of these make-believe digital assets.

None of these things have anything to with the old Internet: cargo cult DRM, billion-dollar VC funding, enormous energy waste, artificial scarcity where none is needed.

That website on dial-up was slow because of real physical constraints, not artificial constraints erected to make VCs richer at the expense of the planet's ecosystem.

E.g., Sam runs a Web site and wants to charge each user some small amount, say, $0.001 up to $0.10, including users in foreign countries, for each visit. Sam is eager to let his users pay with some major NFT.

Joe wants to use Sam's site and other sites with such a charging technique so buys in whatever fiat currency his country uses, say, $10.00 worth of some NFT. Then Joe uses Sam's site and pays with some NFT money. That NFT tokens can be divided into many parts is crucial here.

Once a day Sam converts all his NFT revenue to dollars (or whatever fiat currency is used in his country).

So, net, the money flow is from Joe's fiat money to $10.00 WORTH of some NFT to Sam's revenue in NFT to Sam's revenue in his fiat money.

Point 1: The NFT is held by Joe and Sam for only a short time and is used only as a convenient way to move many small amounts of money.

Point 2: Neither Joe nor Sam cares what each whole token of the NFT is worth.

Point 3: Investors who want to speculate on the long term value of a NFT tokens have risks from "unknown unknowns".

Point 4: If each of 1 billion people do what Joe does, hold nearly all that NFT, and on average hold only $10.00 worth, then we have an estimate of the maximum the investors can make.