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crypto is inherently political though in the sense that you have to talk about government, central bankers, inflation, fiat currency, etc. when you talk about i

by xoxoy 6y ago

crypto is inherently political though in the sense that you have to talk about government, central bankers, inflation, fiat currency, etc. when you talk about it. i don’t know how you separate it from politics when it was literally born out of the failures of government to protect us from the global financial crisis.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
You can do what Coinbase does, and focus on the positive benefits cryptocurrency helps people achieve rather than problems in political governance. It'll be unavoidable to occasionally touch on topics which happen to be political, but there's no reason a cryptocurrency company would have to take sides on how the Federal Reserve should be run or whether the financial crisis bailouts were appropriately administered.
megameter 6y ago
The political element can be cleaned up when the mission is framed as study first. As in, study the options. Study the stakeholders. Study outcomes when implemented and trialed. Study the mechanisms by which outcomes are measured. When you do this the laser focus on the mission stsys near the surface: You can't address all the political elements by building or lobbying from within your team, but you can say "our study shows that..." and thus create the environment for another group to act upon, while not doing every suggested thing yourself because the dependencies needed will take you off mission. It's coherent with the idea of decentralizing decision making.
erik_seaberg 6y ago
Financial cryptography predates the global financial crisis by about twenty years, and was born out of a desire for private, secure, and censorship-resistant transactions (in which government is not the only attacker). https://www.chaum.com/publications/Security_Wthout_Identification.html https://www.chaum.com/publications/Security_Wthout_Identific... https://www.coindesk.com/the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks https://www.coindesk.com/the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks
- cromwellian 6y ago
  I was very active on the cypherpunks in the 90s, and I can tell you from first hand experience and chatting with people like Hal, Nick, and Tim, that a big component of cryptocurrencies was very much the desire of right-wing economics of libertarian thought -- crypto-anarchy. The subject of nullifying the power of governments to tax was a frequent topic. And I would would not be surprised if you found the management team at Coinbase to be compromised of some Trump supporters buying into a Faustian bargain of using him to rubber stamp libertarian friendly policies. Quite a lot of SV tech-bros, especially in the investor and fintech community fall into this pattern, e.g. Peter Thiel, Palmer Lucky, etc

by xoxoy 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

You can do what Coinbase does, and focus on the positive benefits cryptocurrency helps people achieve rather than problems in political governance. It'll be unavoidable to occasionally touch on topics which happen to be political, but there's no reason a cryptocurrency company would have to take sides on how the Federal Reserve should be run or whether the financial crisis bailouts were appropriately administered.

megameter 6y ago

The political element can be cleaned up when the mission is framed as study first. As in, study the options. Study the stakeholders. Study outcomes when implemented and trialed. Study the mechanisms by which outcomes are measured. When you do this the laser focus on the mission stsys near the surface: You can't address all the political elements by building or lobbying from within your team, but you can say "our study shows that..." and thus create the environment for another group to act upon, while not doing every suggested thing yourself because the dependencies needed will take you off mission. It's coherent with the idea of decentralizing decision making.

erik_seaberg 6y ago

Financial cryptography predates the global financial crisis by about twenty years, and was born out of a desire for private, secure, and censorship-resistant transactions (in which government is not the only attacker). https://www.chaum.com/publications/Security_Wthout_Identification.html https://www.chaum.com/publications/Security_Wthout_Identific... https://www.coindesk.com/the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks https://www.coindesk.com/the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks

cromwellian 6y ago
I was very active on the cypherpunks in the 90s, and I can tell you from first hand experience and chatting with people like Hal, Nick, and Tim, that a big component of cryptocurrencies was very much the desire of right-wing economics of libertarian thought -- crypto-anarchy. The subject of nullifying the power of governments to tax was a frequent topic. And I would would not be surprised if you found the management team at Coinbase to be compromised of some Trump supporters buying into a Faustian bargain of using him to rubber stamp libertarian friendly policies. Quite a lot of SV tech-bros, especially in the investor and fintech community fall into this pattern, e.g. Peter Thiel, Palmer Lucky, etc