Last weekend, it felt like everyone I knew was sending me the same link. “The Problem With NFTs,” a long video essay by the Canadian media critic Dan Olson, ricocheted around all corners of the tech world since it was uploaded on Friday. (It now has 2.6 million views and climbing.) Over 138 meticulously researched minutes, Olson traces the history of the 2008 financial crisis, the creation of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the rise of NFTs and DAOs, and reaches the conclusion that what we have taken to calling “Web3” is effectively beyond saving: the technology is too broken, and its creators too indifferent to its failures, for it to ever to live up to the promise of its most starry-eyed backers.
Few of Olson’s criticisms are entirely new,…
