The thing about crypto being immutable is that it's a digital problem, not a real one in the sense of Philip K. Dick's idea of reality. Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop thinking about it. 

Cold mediums like records, paintings, and sculptures don't need that upkeep. They persist whether or not someone maintains them. A vinyl record warps, a painting fades, a sculpture crumbles, but they don't disappear the moment a network goes down or a consensus protocol fails. Crypto, by contrast, is built on digital fallibility—what's called "immutability" depends on an infrastructure that demands constant energy, maintenance, and belief.

It's a forever subscription model. The moment you stop paying into the system—whether in attention, in computing resources, or in raw belief—it starts slipping away, like a lapsed domain name or an abandoned MMO.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The whole crypto ethos was built on the idea that it’s an escape from traditional finance, a revolution that supersedes the old system. But the reality is that it was a product of that system—specifically, a product of zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP).

Crypto thrived in a world where capital was desperately seeking returns. With rates at zero, institutional money had to move further out on the risk curve—tech stocks, venture capital moonshots, and eventually, digital assets with no intrinsic value beyond the belief that they’d appreciate. Crypto wasn’t a hedge against the system; it was the system, just in a more volatile, deregulated form.

intersubjective mechanism design @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

Antiques dealer, machine psychologist. http://www.musicinphasespace.com

I like these unflinching, thoughtful, well-written takes. We need more of this kind of critical thinking in crypto. 

Brings to mind something else I just read in my feed: 

"crypto is a meat grinder of broken dreams" ~ @kenny