by Jossey PLLC | Jun 20, 2021 | Crypto
CBDCs invite government abuse.
The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are intensifying calls for government crypto regulation. On May 19, Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-OH) wrote a scathing letter to Treasury. In it he urged a scrapping a Trump administration policy granting bank charters to some cryptocurrency firms.
Yet Brown and other crypto trolls want the Fed to charge ahead with its own “central bank digital currency” (CBDC). Chairman Brown in a March letter urged the Fed to “lead the way” on CBDCs while restricting privately run cryptocurrencies. Brown proclaimed that “the Fed must not stop at regulating a privately issued digital currency. It must go further and explore a publicly-issued digital dollar.”
Dubbed the “digital dollar,” a CBDC would extend government control over the creation of the money supply — which it already has through interest rate-setting and other policies — to control over which business and individuals U.S. currency is distributed to.
CBDCs won’t deliver on their promise
But despite rhetoric about imposing fairness and equity in the financial system and financial technology (FinTech) landscape, a government digital currency will not solve financial inclusion, illegal activity, or the dollar’s global status.
Most Americans already have access to banking. The FDIC states only 5.4% of Americans are unbanked, a percentage that has steadily dropped and is currently at a nadir, in part of because of private FinTech solutions like Dave and Chime. Further, CBDC accounts alone won’t help anyone. Per the FDIC, the top reasons people eschew banking services include insufficient funds, privacy concerns, and aversion to fees.
In fact, certain government policies have created more problems than solutions. For example, the 2010 Dodd-Frank/Durbin Amendment payment card price caps shifted nearly all debit-card processing costs from retailers to consumers, “and the poorest consumers paid the biggest price.” The Durbin Amendment made free checking accounts unfeasible for low-income consumers, resulting in over one million Americans leaving the banking system, according to a George Mason University study.
Just as CBDCs would not save the poor from bad government policies, they also would not curtail illicit activity such as money laundering and terrorist financing. Despite perception, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis found from 2017 to 2020 illicit transactions accounted for less than one percent of crypto activity. Cash is still king for illegal trades, and not even CBDC zealots like Sen. Brown would remove it from our monetary basket.
Domestically, CBDCs would invite more financial instability than widespread use of Bitcoin or its brethren ‘stablecoin’ currencies—so named for their value pegs mostly but not exclusively to the dollar. Whether in the Brown-envisioned maximalist CBDC version where citizens got “Fed accounts” through government-controlled digital wallets or the minimalist bank-intermediated version, where select banks and credit unions performed customer service and recordkeeping functions, instability looms.
CBDCs could destroy the banking system
As a recent Bank Policy Institute report explains, CBDCs would reduce or potentially eliminate fractional reserve lending, a practice whereby banks lend out the majority of their deposits. Rather, banks and credit unions would have to hold equal amounts of CBDC at the central bank as they hold for customers to ensure all CBDC requests would be honored. That would deny lenders the leverage of the current fractional reserve lending system and vastly increase banking and credit costs. Financial institutions would likely subsidize losses with higher fees, which would further harm the vulnerable.
During high economic stress, digital runs—panic conversions of other forms of money into CBDCs—would further destabilize the system. Even in prosperous times, CBDCs would provide a huge target for hackers and terrorists seeking fortune or havoc.
Worst of all, CBDCs would create all these problems to counter an imaginary threat. Private cryptocurrencies, particularly stablecoins, do not threaten the dollar’s global dominance. In fact, the overwhelming preference for the dollar peg shows its strength and leaves China and the European Union envious.
The Fed would gain unprecedented power over Americans’ financial lives. The government could access reams of personal financial data, including purchases of disfavored items or support for unpopular causes.
CBDCs will wreak havoc on financial privacy
The control would differ in degree, but not kind, from the Chinese CBDC model currently being piloted. Chinese officials make no secret about exploiting this trove for political ends. Chinese rulers will infuse it into the social-credit system and, according to officials, help “enforce party discipline.”
Whilst US officials declare the Chinese system unworkable here; they simultaneously eschew anonymity. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has called for “balance” and “appropriate protections.” Whatever that entails will not secure Americans’ privacy.
The past decade shows a bureaucracy—either politicized or incompetent—that regularly exposes sensitive data in their charge. In 2013, the IRS was caught targeting Americans supporting the Tea Party movement. Less publicized scandals reveal organizations repeatedly victimized with donor and sensitive-data leaks. Bureaucrats likely sneaked the New York Times President Trump’s tax returns. The recent Supreme Court case Americans for Prosperity vs. California revealed repeated data breaches that Justice Samuel Alito labeled “grossly negligent.”
In the current politicized era, the government will likely continue its dismal track record. That risk is not worth taking for an unneeded program that will curtail private innovation and embed the Fed with unprecedented power. Congress and the Fed should resist pressure to solve nonexistent crypto problems and instead allow entrepreneurs to innovate and empower our lives.
A version of this article appeared in National Review on June 3, 2021 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/central-bank-digital-currency-the-feds-coming-power-grab/
by Jossey PLLC | Apr 13, 2021 | Crypto
SEC Ether comments, recent though little noticed, were nonetheless worrisome. In a recent SEC vs. Ripple hearing, an SEC lawyer gave conspiracists “proof” the U.S. government secretly wants crypto replaced with an ‘official’ version. Dugan Bliss averred Ether’s status as a non-security was uncertain. He thus toppled what many thought former CorpFin director Bill Hinman had settled three years ago. Bliss said not:
Now, there was a speech by a high-ranking person who said that to him that’s what it looked like, but there has been no action letter, no enforcement action, none of the official ways in which the SEC takes a position on that matter that has occurred.
Whether lawyerly bluster or a viable threat the comments should finally spur Congress to unleash crypto startups from the Commission’s Howey test tether. The token economy needs the space.
SEC Ether Comments accompany other Commission changes
Alone, observers might brush aside Mr. Bliss’s comments as puffery. But they conjunct with regime change. Gone are Hinman and Chair Jay Clayton. Soon-to-be Chair Gary Gensler will now set priorities. Watchers hail Mr. Gensler as the first Commissioner cum crypto expert. But what that means for the regulatory paradigm is unclear. Mr. Gensler stated in 2018 he believed Ether was sold as an unregistered security. In his MIT ‘Blockchain and Money’ course he stated Hinman provided Ether “regulatory forbearance” but did not opine on its propriety.
The stakes are high. Ether is the second largest cryptocurrency claiming 12% market cap.
Ethereum is leading a crypto revolution
But unlike the larger-cap Bitcoin, Ether and the “virtual machine” it powers are not mainly a store of value. In fact, Ethereum has spawned nearly every crypto innovation post the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper. These include token sales (Initial Coin Offerings), Nonfungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi). The Ethereum network is so useful because of its programmable design. What innovations come next is beyond the realm of ordinary thinking, much less that of bureaucrats.
As George Gilder states in Life After Google:
Altogether Ethereum comprised a new global computer platform, a new software language for smart contracts and corporations, a new currency with a new measuring stick rooted in unchanging energy units, and a new business model of fund raising. . . . In the history of enterprise there has never been anything like the launch of Ethereum. The value of ether often rising far faster than the value of Bitcoin, albeit from a lower base, [Ethereum creator Vitalik] Buterin seems to be on track to excel Bitcoin and even Satoshi [Nakamoto] in impact and importance.
Ethereum is the brainchild of “child,” Mr. Buterin. The prodigy wrote the Ethereum whitepaper at 19. Before that he taught himself Mandarin at seven and immersed himself in Excel spreadsheets at four.
Before intellectuals permanently captured the federal government in the 1930s, Americans admired and encouraged that kind of genius. We did not contemplate killing it via decades-old laws and legal interpretations.
SEC Ether comments are a microcosm of the coming crypto divide
Mr. Bliss’s comments precisely expose the divide of the coming age. Buterin represents new thinking that supplants the established order’s staid credentialism. It is inescapable that nothing produced in the Web 3.0 revolution thus far emerged from academia, government, or large corporations. Nakamoto’s whitepaper is famously academically thin. In fact, years into its existence, scholars were publishing papers arguing Bitcoin couldn’t work.
Buterin spent just a year in college. He then landed a Theil Fellowship. As Gilder described, “The Thiel Fellowships and the 1517 Fund are protesting the layers on layers of government grants that impose a stifling conformity on our universities through the indoctrination there of a single system of the world.” Buterin and the revolution he and others lead cast asunder this single system of the world and replace it with a world of empowered individuals.
This places the SEC along with innumerable nation states and haughty international bodies in an awkward position. Either allow the human flourishing they all claim as missions to occur without them or stifle it through endless rules, protections, and interpretations that keep themselves in charge.
By Jossey PLLC via www.thecrowdfundinglawyers.com
by Jossey PLLC | Apr 9, 2021 | Crypto
“Citizen” Jay Clayton, former Securities and Exchange Commission chair, gave a recent interview on Bitcoin. He stated he was “speaking as a citizen.” This is fitting because his crypto-related speech whilst Commission-bound equally lacked insight.
To say Chair Clayton’s crypto track record was dreadful would be an insult to tracks and records. When entrepreneurs needed guidance, the Do-Nothing Chair oversaw only crypto sloth.
Crypto lowlights under now “Citizen” Jay Clayton’s tenure:
Chair Clayton failed to approve a Bitcoin exchange traded product
Companies have spent millions coaxing the SEC to approve Bitcoin ETPs. Yet the Commission remains paralyzed. Commissioner Hester Peirce’s sharply worded ETP dissents earned her the moniker “Crypto Mom.” Citizen Jay Clayton spurned “Crypto Dad” to become “Crypto Dud.” Recently, Peirce opined,
My view has been that we’re overdue on approving one of these things. I also think we’ve dug ourselves into a bit of a difficult hole by setting standards for approval that are difficult to figure out how to satisfy. So I really don’t know where we’re going to go. I think that a new chairman with a fresh perspective can be helpful in rethinking the approach to approving exchange-traded products.
That’s Commissioner side eye.
“Citizen” Jay Clayton was caught flatfooted during the 2017 ICO craze then killed the industry.
Classifying ICOs flummoxed the Commission through Clayton’s tenure. His halting, indecisive CYA approach became nauseating. Not exactly the model of leadership.
In 2017 the Commission finally discussed the DAO. But instead of bringing ICOs into compliance, the Commission waited until people spent billions. It then unleashed subpoena hell. To be sure, ICO scammers needed nailing. This should have fulfilled the Commission. Instead, it indiscriminately blasted everyone like Godzilla attacking Tokyo.
This now includes LBRY that boasts 10 million users and lacks any fraud. It also includes Ripple, which whatever the merits, the Commission allowed to exist for years before suing.
He cheered Valerie Szczepanik as Senior Advisor for Digital Assets and Innovation, who then took months to produce 2019’s worst government work product.
If ICOs caught the Commission flatfooted its ‘crypto czar’ appointment was worse. But Chair Clayton lavishly praised her choice:
Valerie’s thought leadership in this area is recognized both within the Commission and across financial regulators in the United States and abroad. . . . With her demonstrated skill, experience, and keen awareness of the importance of fostering innovation while ensuring investor protection, Val is the right person to coordinate our efforts in this dynamic area that has both promise and risk.
Apparently, nothing screamed “innovation” to Chair Clayton like a career bureaucrat since the Clinton Administration. Ms. Szczepanik then jaunted about the country at taxpayer expense repeating (surprise!) the SEC would follow the Howey test and everything was “facts and circumstances.”
Ten months in, Ms. Szczepanik finally produced a 13-page Framework for “Investment Contract” Analysis of Digital Assets. (Innovation at the speed of government!). And what a disaster. The Framework sought to clarify crypto policy. It failed. Commissioner Peirce compared it to a “Jackson Pollock painting,” she then twisted the knife:
While Howey has four factors to consider, the framework lists 38 separate considerations, many of which include several sub-points. A seasoned securities lawyer might be able to infer which of these considerations will likely be controlling and might therefore be able to provide the appropriate weight to each. Whether the framework gives anything new to the seasoned securities lawyer used to operating in the facts and circumstances world of Howey is an open question. I worry that non-lawyers and lawyers not steeped in securities law and its attendant lore will not know what to make of the guidance. Pages worth of factors, many of which seemingly apply to all decentralized networks, might contribute to the feeling that navigating the securities laws in this area is perilous business.
Chair Clayton failed to clarify when decentralized networks could escape securities regulation.
Decentralization is a key blockchain concept. It makes pigeonholing tokens into securities world suspect. If users run a platform who do the laws protect? In 2018, Corp Fin chief Bill Hinman stated this. When Congress pressed, Clayton agreed. But he went no further except excepting Ethereum. Suing Ethereum’s creators or nonprofit would have been foolhardy, and the Commission wisely refrained. There are issues with decentralization as a workable securities-law model, as this paper outlines. But heads of major agencies are supposed to confront hard problems.
Once again only Commissioner Peirce seems willing to face an issue the whole commission should address. As she recently stated:
[I]f you truly achieve decentralization, then I question whether it makes sense to apply the securities laws. Because the securities disclosure laws are designed for a situation where I’m running a company, I want you to buy shares of my company, and I have all the information. You need that information in order to figure out whether you want to buy. It’s the information asymmetry problem. If you really have a decentralized project, then there is no one who has a monopoly on information. At that point, who would even be providing the information? So that’s something we have to think about.
Mediocrity paid for “Citizen” Jay Clayton.
Speaking as the functionary he was born to be, “Citizen” Jay Clayton stressed in the interview that regulation is everything. And that regulation should come in all different flavors, direct, indirect, domestic, foreign. And of course, as a hedge fund “advisor” he’s available to influence that regulation to benefit his client.
He is not alone. Mary Jo White now bursts with crypto opinions. The 2013-2016 chair claims the SEC has it all wrong, at least when it comes to her client Ripple. She also stated there is a ‘crying need for [crypto] clarity.’ Of course, crypto existed when she ran things. But broken clocks and what not.
“Citizens” Jay Clayton and Mary Jo White now shop their crypto opinions to the highest bidder. But they are views the crypto world could do without.
By Jossey PLLC via www.thecrowdfundinglawyers.com
by Jossey PLLC | Mar 3, 2021 | Crypto, SEC
US crypto policy remained clouded after Gary Gensler’s Senate testimony yesterday. President Biden nominated him to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Surprisingly, crypto policy appeared sparingly in the three-hour hearing, which also included the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee. The hearing centered on issues arguably outside financial-regulator purview like climate policy and the gender and racial composition of boards. (Another large portion featured senators and nominees repeatedly thanking each other for pre-hearing meetings.).
Mr. Gensler did discuss US crypto policy. But he shrouded his remarks in the familiar non-answer answers that define these hearings and prevent observers from gaining insight.
US crypto policy will focus on investor protection
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gensler did repeatedly state investor protection would be his central focus. This aligns with SEC culture. Investor protection always comes first, even though it is one prong of the commission’s tripartite mission. The SEC exists to protect investors, maintain fair orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation.
Indeed, Congress became so frustrated with the Commission’s investor-protection focus, it intervened. In 1996 Congress amended Section 2(b) of the 1933 Act to require the Commission to “consider, in addition to the protection of investors, whether the action will promote efficiency, competition and capital formation.” This move had little effect.
Mr. Gensler favors government surveillance
Beyond his testimony, observers may glean insight into Mr. Gensler’s crypto-policy stances elsewhere. As a former chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and a professor at MIT teaching blockchain classes, such material exists. At the CFTC, Mr. Gensler created a “holistic trade surveillance program” as opposed to prosecuting wrongdoing after the fact. A recent op-ed noted Mr. Gensler has “frequently emphasized the need for modern [government] surveillance of markets.”
Micro-surveillance of crypto where change happens quickly will likely stifle innovation and harm the burgeoning tokenized economy. (Mr. Gensler’s 2018 graduate-level blockchain course doesn’t even mention DeFi, a now central part of crypto infrastructure.).
However the technology changes, Mr. Gensler believes regulators should cram it into existing cubbyholes and strictly surveil it. As matter of human nature, this is understandable. Like his predecessor, Mr. Gensler has little appetite for taking blame should some scandal arise during his tenure. Better to play it safe.
US crypto policy suffers from clear guidance
But that attitude has a flip side. US crypto policy has to date been a dismal, dreadful thing. Regulators express it though speeches (often at high-dollar conferences, off-the-cuff remarks, and confusing ‘guidance.’ Things got so bad, the Commission deemed career SEC bureaucrat Valerie Szczepanik its Crypto Czar.
But in typical government fashion, that meant to clarify only obfuscated. After industry clamor for clarification Ms. Szczepanik produced a universally panned 13-page word salad. Indeed, it even drew a rebuke from Commissioner Hester Peirce, who compared it to a “Jackson Pollock painting.” And Mr. Gensler seems unlikely to change the Commission’s take-it-slow-and-don’t-get-blamed culture.
US Crypto Policy needs bold action, it won’t come from the SEC
Mr. Gensler is obviously knowledgeable about crypto. And seems aware of its vast potential. Moreover, viewing his online lectures he is a likable fellow. But his penchant for government surveillance and regulatory minutia means real crypto guidance must arrive from the political branches (itself an unlikely scenario given the new administration’s Treasury pick).
Mr. Gensler wants to be the ‘cop on the beat.’ And that’s fine. But what US crypto policy defined rules. And less Enforcement Division constantly looking over its shoulder and handwringing about investor protection.
By Jossey PLLC via www.thecrowdfundinglawyers.com
by Jossey PLLC | Nov 10, 2020 | Crypto
Tokenized apps are the Web 3.0 elixir to the poison brew supplied by our social-media oligarchs. But imbibing enough people to slay the giants won’t be easy. They have silos of cash, mass adoption, and political clout. And they enjoy their perch as America’s Overton-Window setters and cultural enforcers.
For those yearning for a world without these censorious distillers, options exist but they require energy and patience.
Recently I switched to two tokenized crypto-based apps: Brave browser and Minds social media. While I’ve generally had a good experience, both platforms, especially Minds, needs work before slaying the giants.
The Brave browser is good, it needs to get better
Brave is the brainchild of JavaScript creator Brendan Eich. In 2014, cultural enforcers “cancelled” him as Mozilla CEO for donating to a successful ballot initiative years earlier. Brave is Eich’s revenge (although he likely wouldn’t describe it that way). The browser seeks to wrest web control from Mountain View snoopers and hand it to the user.
In 2016 Eich described his Web 3.0 vision: “Try to imagine a world where you own your dossier, it’s your online life, it should be your data, if you own it then you can give terms of service to the big network superpowers, the walled gardens, the giant companies that own too much of your data right now . . . that would be a good day.”
Brave’s contribution to this new world is a browser that trades user attention for advertiser-supplied tokens in a straightforward exchange free of bots, bits, spiders, and snitches. Users can then tip earned BATs (Basic Attention Tokens) to their favorite content creators. As Brave explains: “When you join Brave Rewards, your browser will automatically start tallying (only on your device’s local storage) the attention you spend on sites you visit. Once a month, Brave Rewards will send the corresponding amount of BAT, divided up based on your attention, from your local browser-based wallet to the sites you’ve visited.”
Tokenized BAT is hard to find
I never saw an advert in my first two Brave-filled months and thus did not receive any BAT. Only after further inquiry I realized my Windows 10 operating system blocked pop ups, stopping the adverts. The problem is now resolved but it took effort and research.
I also found the default resolution size on my laptop to be too small and had to keep manually adjusting. I switched the Appearances setting Page Zoom to 150%, which solved the issue.
Finally, the “Top Sites” setting on the landing page doesn’t work properly and lacks functionality. Brave designed this feature to resemble Google Chrome, but ‘Pinned’ sites don’t stay pinned, the user cannot move the icons around, nor can he add additional sites.
Overall Brave meets expectations for from Mozilla or Google jumpers. Small glitches still exist and programmers could better explain why people wouldn’t see ads. But users who want a satisfying browsing experience whilst protecting their privacy, standing against cancel culture, and earning tokens on the side should switch to Brave.
Minds: a tokenized app that needs work
My Minds experience has been more frustrating. The “leading alternative social network” is brimming with great ideas yet lacking in execution. Minds bills itself as the way to “take back control of your social media.” It focuses on free speech and censorship resistance. Like Brave (and unlike Facebook, Google/YouTube, and Twitter), Minds cares about user privacy. Founder Bill Ottman recently stated he aims to provide a “spy free alternative to mainstream social media platforms.”
Also like Brave, use earns tokens. Users receive some fraction of Minds tokens for interactions they generate. Users can then reward content providers, boost their own content, or (eventually) cash them out. As the site states, Minds allows you to “Earn tokens for your daily contributions and use them to upgrade your channel, boost your content for more reach and support other creators.” Minds earned media by crowdfunding their venture and breaking records in the process.
Minds was built by programmers for programmers
Unfortunately, the user experience lacks pizzaz and glitches abound. Minds programmers built it for laptops first. Mobile users get a lesser experience. The interface and ease of finding different pages is harder on mobile. Some features like promoting pages on a side column are absent. But even the desktop user experience has a pulled-right-off-template feel. The aesthetics feel programmer, not design driven.
Worse is the lack of mobile functionality. I failed several times to buy Minds tokens through mobile. Users apparently can only complete this task via laptop although the site doesn’t say that. Buying tokens requires a Meta Mask wallet (from a Mozilla or Google browser extension, Brave and Minds don’t seem compatible yet). For those whose crypto buying ends with Coinbase this process can be mind-numbing. Although Meta Mask mobile functionality is also improving. I was only able to figure out the Meta Mask process and link it to my Minds account after an entire day.
Minds tokens went missing and never came back
But that was just the start. The token purchase appeared in my Minds transaction page, but the tokens didn’t FOR TWO WEEKS. The delay was blamed on Ethereum congestion. There is no universe where a simple token purchase should take two weeks, ever, period. During this time, I wasn’t sure if I’d been hacked, one day ETH just disappeared from my Meta Mask wallet. Eventually I got the tokens and start boosting content. I must add Bill Ottman, Minds founder, personally helped me get the issue resolved. I doubt @Jack would be so concerned.
But that wasn’t my last issue. A few weeks later a platform backlog cancelled my boosted content. This did not stop Minds from taking the tokens, nor the ETH fee. (Each “On Chain” Minds transaction requires a separate miner ETH fee in addition to the actual tokens for the transaction). When I emailed about this situation, they told me they would manually return the tokens. They never did despite several follow ups.
Finally, the newsfeed is horrid. A scroll often produces content from the same user for a dozen straight posts. Apparently, some people do nothing all day but continually post. Although straight timelines are preferable to algorithms, the newsfeed is often boring or tedious.
Tokenized apps are the future, embrace the suck
Tokenized apps are the future, they are gaining ground on and notice from the giants. Google has reportedly banned access to YouTube competitor Bitchute. Apple has banned dApps altogether. It won’t end there.
But those wary of the oligarchs and excited for Web 3.0’s promise should support these tokenized apps. We should do so despite inconveniences, steep learning curves, or missing rewards. The oligarchs poison is our ignorance and laziness.
By Jossey PLLC via www.thecrowdfundinglawyers.com
by Jossey PLLC | Oct 12, 2020 | Crypto
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently announced the crypto exchange will run an apolitical shop. The decree seeks to avoid drama-filled, virtue-signaling walkouts that have plagued other tech-focused companies. The move defies not only Coinbase’s Silicon Valley pedigree, but the corporate-culture zeitgeist. Armstrong offered objectors generous severance packages to go, about 60 employees or 5% went.
Normally Coinbase’s stance would evoke shrugs. Indeed, businesses usually avoid emotionally charged work-unrelated topics on company time. And those who complain of political bias in corporate messaging or policies are often met with the snide retort, ‘Go start your own [insert industry] company.’
But these aren’t normal times. Activist bullies dictate terms. They target dissenters socially, economically, and politically. Most cave, genuflecting to grievance is easy, taking unpopular stands is hard. But Armstrong took one; he should be applauded.
Coinbase’s stance isn’t embraced by cultural conformists
But claps won’t come from the enforcers of cultural conformity and submission. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey panned Armstrong’s decision tweeting Coinbase was “leaving people behind.” Former Twitter CEO Dick Costello was more ardent. He offered to provide video commentary of Armstrong’s assassination by mob revolutionaries for practicing “me-first capitalism.”
Costello, whose net worth is reportedly $300 million, would presumably opine from a fortified abode manned with armed private security. Wouldn’t want those revolutionaries getting any ideas about his allegiance to ‘we-first’ capitalism.
The violent imagery evinces Big Tech’s breezy authoritarianism, which has seeped into crypto. Not only do adherents constrict the Overton Window, often without explanation. But they deem any disparity proof of discriminatory intent, no matter how ‘woke’ the industry or company.
Twitter works overtime to enforce cultural hegemony
It’s not clear how Twitter’s corporate mission keeps people from “falling behind.” It’s clearer how it controls the national conversation and censors what an Oceania bureaucrat might call ‘wrongspeak.’
The latest tool is a pop up for tweets Twitter has deemed provides insufficient context. The company will now “suggest” reading the full context before retweeting. One can imagine whose messages will get such treatment—Big Brother on the Information Superhighway.
All of this of course tracks with a larger push for cultural hegemony: science, sports, journalism, academia have all been infected. Free thinking, say the cultural oligarchs, won’t be tolerated. And silence, if activists get their way, won’t either. Pushback happens, just ask the NBA. But it’s slow and churning. Those demanding submission usually have little to lose. Colin Kaepernick’s career was over. Lebron James’s is in twilight.
Blockchain represents the best chance to break the chains of cultural submission
As I have previously written, the shame is that blockchain can solve this, because code is apolitical. A dApp doesn’t care if you support Trump or Biden. Blockchain can rid us from cultural gatekeepers and data chokepoints. Open platforms where users control the rules and people take their followers with them when they go potentially ends cultural conformity and groupthink. It represents the only real way to not leave anyone behind. Coinbase is the first, if Armstrong succeeds he won’t be the last.
By Jossey PLLC via www.thecrowdfundinglawyers.com
