Though only now are we seeing just how far he’s ducked down the Web3 rabbit hole. When Yang was asked in an April CNBC interview whether all this talk of crypto was just a promotional tool, Yang said “if you can take people who have never heard of cryptocurrencies and actually put them in a position to benefit, than that would be good for people but also help broaden people’s conception of what this technology can do.”
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All this talk of Web3 does seem to distract from Yang’s support for UBI or ranked choice voting, which whether you agree or disagree with the tenets of either position are still intended to offer more people more freedom to participate in democracy. However, forcing crypto into anything—from political advocacy to volunteering—instead incentivizes demand for digital goods that have little worth other than being sold to the next, “greater fool.” Instead of emphasizing doing good for society’s sake, it instead takes a much more cynically capitalistic view of humanity, that people will only do what needs to be done if there’s a gross profit to be made.