Bundestag discusses the chances and hype of metaverse

This Wednesday the German Bundestag spent 2 hours on their "Ausschuss für Digitales" discussing web3 and metaverse - Me and many other members of the NFT Club Berlin community were eager to see into which direction the talk would go... in the end it was just painful to hear so much blockchain skepticism, instead of a rational discourse. (find a link to the discussion below this text).

Only Prof. Dr. Philipp Rauschnabel & Bitkom's Sebastian Klöß were changing the narrative into a positive direction and stressed the opportunities: "Germany should not sleep on this next paradigm shift."

The other expert's mainly negative remarks:

🗣️"Web3 will only benefit the big companies." (Dr. Malte Engeler, judge at Verwaltungsgericht Schleswig-Holstein)

🗣️"Blockchain does not scale [...] Bitcoin has not fulfilled expectations, a big hype, no benefits of decentralization." (Dr. Boris Hollas, AfD member)

🗣️"I would recommend NOT funding any more projects with blockchain. You are betting on a dead horse there [...] Blockchain projects are like heating with burning tires [...] We should stop using anything web3 or blockchain related. Instead of using Twitter switch to Mastodon." (Lilith Wittmann, self-proclaimed Krawallinfluencerin)

🗣️"Web3 made grand promises and has provided worse alternatives to the existing ones. Decentralization of power is not improved [...] Prone to hacks, scams, fraud and theft." (Molly White)

🗣️"The metaverse doesn't exist yet and Facebook has to prove that it will ever create it [...] Now that Sam Bankman-Fried is in prison, we see the crypto world collapsing" (Ludwig Siegele, journalist)

🗣️Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Renieris criticised cyberlibertarian values, claimed web3 raises serious ethical and human rights challenges, web3 puts the burden on privacy on the individual.

When the talk moved to sustainability no one even mentioned Proof-of-Stake mechanism, only emphasizing on the same old, same old high energy consumption bla-bla.

This whole talk felt pretty similar to Bundestag discussions about eSports from 5-7 years ago, when gaming was only reduced to "shooter games" and disturbing our youth...

I'm not a blockchain expert, but working since mid 2020 in the web3 industry, it really felt like the community has slept on the issue of political lobbying. This explains how literally nobody FROM web3 was invited as an expert, in contrast to 4 or 5 self-professed “blockchain critics”.

I'm really hoping that Tabea Rößner and other members of Parliament* are reading this post & next time invite experts, who are actually building/working within the web3 space like futurist & writer Cathy Hackl, Volkswagen Group's Tim Walther, LUKSO's Fabian Vogelsteller, Diego Borgo ᵍᵐ, or André Kanya from an investor's point of view.

Read about & re-watch the Bundestag discussion about Metaverse here: https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2022/kw50-pa-digitales-925124