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>>> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished,

>>> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing. >>> I do not agree with the entire statement, but the amount of "self-congratulatory" shit that goes in Blockchain conferences is mind boggling. I went Ethereum Devcon 3, and its not hyperbole when I say ONE entire day of 4 days of conference was about patting on the back.

MrEfficiency 8y ago
I have been explaining to newcomers that there is a difference between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin has become a man-made institution, similar to fiat, marriage, courts, religion, etc... There are people around the world that believe in the 21,000,000 Bitcoin to store value. The leading idea is that local governments print money and Bitcoin cannot be changed. Alt coins are trying their best to promote themselves so people early to the market can make money. These are the people attending those conferences. They speak of using blockchain to store data, but this seems inappropriate given that blockchain cannot handle a large volume of transactions. I would guess many are failed/wannabe programmers jumping on a bandwagon.
liquidise 8y ago
At risk of tangenting the conversation, comments like that from the guardian continue to drive me nuts. I understand that an identity-driven narrative suits their politics. But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" really rolls up a ton of geographical and cultural diversity between even the founders of the top few coins: Bitcoin (unknown), Ethereum (Russian), Litecoin (Asian-American).
- tobr 8y ago
  I guess you could say that Bitcoin is pseudonominally Japanese.
- pochamago 8y ago
  The comment in the article is itself tangential. It's just a pointless bit of racist vitriol against the dreaded White Man, and has nothing to do with any of the substantive criticism
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" They didn't say that; they said it is predominantly being evangelized by white men. There's a significant difference between the claims.
- gojomo 8y ago
  While "The Guardian" published this, it did so as a signed commentary piece, by Nouriel Roubini (which further appears to have come via a syndication service, 'Project Syndicate'). Such pieces are not the publication's opinion any more than a "letter to the editor", and papers will publish many contradicting opinions this way. So it's not really accurate to attribute quotes from this article to "The Guardian". Only a very few, typically unsigned (or signed 'the editors') commentaries in a publication are officially the outlet's house opinion – and these often contradict or reference-but-highly-qualify any differing signed opinions (like this Roubini piece) they've separately published.
  - rmrfrmrf 8y ago
    That's really beside the point and the people at The Guardian know that anything under their masthead is ultimately going to affect brand perception.
    - gojomo 8y ago
      Maybe they're hoping online readers will eventually become as smart as paper readers, for whom this distinction between "signed guest commentary" and "house opinion" was clear for hundreds of years?
      - laretluval 8y ago
        Blaming the users is usually not the most effective way forward.
        gojomo 8y ago
        Blaming those making false attributions is the only way to correct those misattributions!
  - TearsInTheRain 8y ago
    It's under their brand, they published it. Imho we should expect better from them
- LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
  Incitin another virtual riot guarantees clicks.
- KirinDave 8y ago
  No one is saying women and non-white men[0] don't exist in the founding sets and senior engineering sets. They do (and in proportions that to my eye look balanced with the rest of tech, which is damning with faint praise I guess). Many of them are talented, interesting, and perhaps even moral people. But it's definitely the case that outside of the narrow founding set, there's a very specific population bias in the rank and file of the blockchain community on reddit or steemit or whatever silly "libertarian" competitive echo chamber people are retreating to these days. It just can't be terribly controversial to say that that there are tons of white men in the community of people around are and never will contribute to blockchain with anything but pennies and zeal, which arguably hurts a growing industry really badly. [0]: "Russian" is definitely a "white" ethnicity these days. It's pretty wild you're trying to suggest that such a historically rich, anglo-centric and christian nation is somehow an outlier there.
ProAm 8y ago
> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing. To be fair this spiel is almost the same message you hear out of the startup/VC industry. There is always a hustle when there is fast and easy money around and people wanting to get rich quick. That said there is also real opportunity there if you can see through the cruft, just like in the startup world.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Start-ups can at least deliver some tangible value at the end of the day. I'm still not sure what various cryptocoins deliver other than a get-rich-scheme.
  - TearsInTheRain 8y ago
    Crypto systems are platforms for fraud and censorship resistant applications. There is value in that, the markets are just having a tough time figuring out how much.
skipthemeat 8y ago
Can you tell me which day that was and whether there was a way to tell in advance? I'm going to DEVCON4 and would like to avoid that.
- tim333 8y ago
  Devcon 3 was in Nov 17 when Ethereum had run up from approx $9 to $300 over the past year and launched a wave of 10x ing ICOs so you can understand them being a bit puffed up. Now that Ethereum is down from $1300 to $200 and most of the ICOs have crashed or run off with the money I think you will have less of that problem. By the way you can see all 4 days of devcon3 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=devcon3+day+stream https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=devcon3+day+str...
cal5k 8y ago
I tune out the instant an author resorts to using race to further their argument in this way. Argue on the technical, socioeconomic, or political merits - don't resort to race-baiting.
- ldiracdelta 8y ago
  You might even say that they're being racist. Pre-judging the internal motivations and thoughts of some people based on their skin color.
  - cal5k 8y ago
    My honest view is that this is the new form of "acceptable" racism. It's not "reverse racism", it's just racism. The idea that someone's ideas are more or less valid based on the colour of their skin is completely antithetical to the original aims of the civil rights movement.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      And when I see fellow minorities getting in on it and encouraging it I find myself torn between depressed and enraged.
    - Frondo 8y ago
      You are free to hold that view, but nowhere did I see that anyone says their ideas are not valid because they're white. What I did see was that the claim that cryptocurrency is unlocking power and wealth to impoverished people doesn't hold up to the reality that it's just perpetuating the same financial and power structures that have come before. And to people who argue against that, well, I'd love to see who, for example, in Africa, is getting rich or at least better-off from the existence of any of various cryptocurrencies. Or where are the people of color in Chicago or Baltimore, spinning up their own coins or empowering their communities, or any of that? For all the supposed world-changing potential these things supposedly offer, why do the outcomes they're producing so closely resemble the way things already are? I, for one, would turn my opinion on cryptocurrencies 180 degrees if I saw them being used to give any of the war-torn or impoverished African nations (both of which are a consequence of European colonialism being exploitative and drawing borders to maximize regional conflict) a real leg up on the world stage; and one for all the people, not just the ruling elites there. Think of it something like a sovereign wealth fund derived from crypto, giving every citizen a monthly draw -- why don't we see anything like that? --- And the explanation, by the way, for why you often see people making the claim that reverse racism isn't a thing is because, in these discussions, racism isn't just hating someone or assuming something about a person based on their skin color, but about the economic and political power structures that get wielded against certain groups based on skin color. In the US, there's never been a white chattel slavery system (though white supremacists have spun a false narrative about the Irish to try and muddy even this discussion), there's never been policies that exclude whites from living in certain neighborhoods like redlining did for decades, etc. The machinery of the state has never been applied to white people the way it has been applied to people of color time and time again. Black people can hate white people all they want, but you never see wholesale systematic destruction of white communities like, for example, the Tulsa race riots in the 20s. So you can say this is all acceptable racism, but I for one can't imagine how anyone can look at any facets of the history of this country and come up with that same constellation of ideas that there's now anti-white acceptable racism.
m3kw9 8y ago
Popularized by the west

MrEfficiency 8y ago

I have been explaining to newcomers that there is a difference between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin has become a man-made institution, similar to fiat, marriage, courts, religion, etc... There are people around the world that believe in the 21,000,000 Bitcoin to store value. The leading idea is that local governments print money and Bitcoin cannot be changed. Alt coins are trying their best to promote themselves so people early to the market can make money. These are the people attending those conferences. They speak of using blockchain to store data, but this seems inappropriate given that blockchain cannot handle a large volume of transactions. I would guess many are failed/wannabe programmers jumping on a bandwagon.

liquidise 8y ago

At risk of tangenting the conversation, comments like that from the guardian continue to drive me nuts. I understand that an identity-driven narrative suits their politics. But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" really rolls up a ton of geographical and cultural diversity between even the founders of the top few coins: Bitcoin (unknown), Ethereum (Russian), Litecoin (Asian-American).

tobr 8y ago
I guess you could say that Bitcoin is pseudonominally Japanese.
pochamago 8y ago
The comment in the article is itself tangential. It's just a pointless bit of racist vitriol against the dreaded White Man, and has nothing to do with any of the substantive criticism
dragonwriter 8y ago
> But to say the crypto community is started by "white men" They didn't say that; they said it is predominantly being evangelized by white men. There's a significant difference between the claims.
gojomo 8y ago
While "The Guardian" published this, it did so as a signed commentary piece, by Nouriel Roubini (which further appears to have come via a syndication service, 'Project Syndicate'). Such pieces are not the publication's opinion any more than a "letter to the editor", and papers will publish many contradicting opinions this way. So it's not really accurate to attribute quotes from this article to "The Guardian". Only a very few, typically unsigned (or signed 'the editors') commentaries in a publication are officially the outlet's house opinion – and these often contradict or reference-but-highly-qualify any differing signed opinions (like this Roubini piece) they've separately published.
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  That's really beside the point and the people at The Guardian know that anything under their masthead is ultimately going to affect brand perception.
  - gojomo 8y ago
    Maybe they're hoping online readers will eventually become as smart as paper readers, for whom this distinction between "signed guest commentary" and "house opinion" was clear for hundreds of years?
    - laretluval 8y ago
      Blaming the users is usually not the most effective way forward.
      - gojomo 8y ago
        Blaming those making false attributions is the only way to correct those misattributions!
- TearsInTheRain 8y ago
  It's under their brand, they published it. Imho we should expect better from them
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
Incitin another virtual riot guarantees clicks.
KirinDave 8y ago
No one is saying women and non-white men[0] don't exist in the founding sets and senior engineering sets. They do (and in proportions that to my eye look balanced with the rest of tech, which is damning with faint praise I guess). Many of them are talented, interesting, and perhaps even moral people. But it's definitely the case that outside of the narrow founding set, there's a very specific population bias in the rank and file of the blockchain community on reddit or steemit or whatever silly "libertarian" competitive echo chamber people are retreating to these days. It just can't be terribly controversial to say that that there are tons of white men in the community of people around are and never will contribute to blockchain with anything but pennies and zeal, which arguably hurts a growing industry really badly. [0]: "Russian" is definitely a "white" ethnicity these days. It's pretty wild you're trying to suggest that such a historically rich, anglo-centric and christian nation is somehow an outlier there.

ProAm 8y ago

> A few self-serving white men (there are hardly any women or minorities in the blockchain universe) pretending to be messiahs for the world’s impoverished, marginalised and unbanked masses claim to have created billions of dollars of wealth out of nothing. To be fair this spiel is almost the same message you hear out of the startup/VC industry. There is always a hustle when there is fast and easy money around and people wanting to get rich quick. That said there is also real opportunity there if you can see through the cruft, just like in the startup world.

noobermin 8y ago
Start-ups can at least deliver some tangible value at the end of the day. I'm still not sure what various cryptocoins deliver other than a get-rich-scheme.
- TearsInTheRain 8y ago
  Crypto systems are platforms for fraud and censorship resistant applications. There is value in that, the markets are just having a tough time figuring out how much.

skipthemeat 8y ago

Can you tell me which day that was and whether there was a way to tell in advance? I'm going to DEVCON4 and would like to avoid that.

tim333 8y ago
Devcon 3 was in Nov 17 when Ethereum had run up from approx $9 to $300 over the past year and launched a wave of 10x ing ICOs so you can understand them being a bit puffed up. Now that Ethereum is down from $1300 to $200 and most of the ICOs have crashed or run off with the money I think you will have less of that problem. By the way you can see all 4 days of devcon3 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=devcon3+day+stream https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=devcon3+day+str...

cal5k 8y ago

I tune out the instant an author resorts to using race to further their argument in this way. Argue on the technical, socioeconomic, or political merits - don't resort to race-baiting.

ldiracdelta 8y ago
You might even say that they're being racist. Pre-judging the internal motivations and thoughts of some people based on their skin color.
- cal5k 8y ago
  My honest view is that this is the new form of "acceptable" racism. It's not "reverse racism", it's just racism. The idea that someone's ideas are more or less valid based on the colour of their skin is completely antithetical to the original aims of the civil rights movement.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    And when I see fellow minorities getting in on it and encouraging it I find myself torn between depressed and enraged.
  - Frondo 8y ago
    You are free to hold that view, but nowhere did I see that anyone says their ideas are not valid because they're white. What I did see was that the claim that cryptocurrency is unlocking power and wealth to impoverished people doesn't hold up to the reality that it's just perpetuating the same financial and power structures that have come before. And to people who argue against that, well, I'd love to see who, for example, in Africa, is getting rich or at least better-off from the existence of any of various cryptocurrencies. Or where are the people of color in Chicago or Baltimore, spinning up their own coins or empowering their communities, or any of that? For all the supposed world-changing potential these things supposedly offer, why do the outcomes they're producing so closely resemble the way things already are? I, for one, would turn my opinion on cryptocurrencies 180 degrees if I saw them being used to give any of the war-torn or impoverished African nations (both of which are a consequence of European colonialism being exploitative and drawing borders to maximize regional conflict) a real leg up on the world stage; and one for all the people, not just the ruling elites there. Think of it something like a sovereign wealth fund derived from crypto, giving every citizen a monthly draw -- why don't we see anything like that? --- And the explanation, by the way, for why you often see people making the claim that reverse racism isn't a thing is because, in these discussions, racism isn't just hating someone or assuming something about a person based on their skin color, but about the economic and political power structures that get wielded against certain groups based on skin color. In the US, there's never been a white chattel slavery system (though white supremacists have spun a false narrative about the Irish to try and muddy even this discussion), there's never been policies that exclude whites from living in certain neighborhoods like redlining did for decades, etc. The machinery of the state has never been applied to white people the way it has been applied to people of color time and time again. Black people can hate white people all they want, but you never see wholesale systematic destruction of white communities like, for example, the Tulsa race riots in the 20s. So you can say this is all acceptable racism, but I for one can't imagine how anyone can look at any facets of the history of this country and come up with that same constellation of ideas that there's now anti-white acceptable racism.

m3kw9 8y ago

Popularized by the west