14 ms·

‘I know about lying, I do it for a living’: Ben McKenzie as crypto critic

40 points by lisasays 3y ago

dtx1 3y ago
I loved him as Comissioner Gordon in Gotham and was so suprised to see him expand into this.
LinuxBender 3y ago
Here [1][2] are a couple decent interviews with him on this topic as well. I have to wonder if it is too-little-too-late for these discussions. Has the damage already been done and are peoples heels already dug in? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o3nZHzCwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o3nZHzCwA [video][4 mins][bill maher] [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU [video][8 mins][cnn]
- bhawks 3y ago
  It is definitely too late for his $250,000 short position to pay out, but he still might be able to capitalize on his book project. There has already been a ton of damage done: 9 million jobs lost, 8 million home foreclosures, $20 trillion in household wealth lost[1]. Oh wait that was the 2008 financial crisis. Well at least with our modern and trustworthy financial system we held folks to account. Exactly 1 person went to jail.[2]. Well because our leaders are accountable to the people, we replaced them with new people that will act in our interest going forward. Just kidding they're all still in positions of power - Yellen is the Treasury secretary now. [3]. The real damage is coming from the status quo financial system that protects its own interests long before it cares about the needs of individuals. That is the problem defenders of the status quo need to take on if they really want to invalidate the crypto thesis. [1] - https://www.investopedia.com/news/10-years-later-lessons-financial-crisis/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/10-years-later-lessons-fin... [2] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wall-streets-bankers-stayed-out-of-jail/399368/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal... [3] - https://www.investopedia.com/insights/major-players-2008-financial-crisis-and-where-they-are-now/ https://www.investopedia.com/insights/major-players-2008-fin...
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  I'm confused, what damage? Dug in about what?
  - jurynulifcation 3y ago
    The damage to ordinary people. The damage to the crypto ecosystem. The damage inflicted by huge players in the crypto ecosystem, on all parties involved. I am pretty solidly dug in against crypto now. I have not seen it used for anything besides scamming. I believe, due to the incentives at play, people championing a cryptocurrency future can not be trusted anymore than a degenerate gambler asking you to invest it all in his patented gambling strategy. Other people, the degenerate gamblers in question, are solidly dug in for the matter of their own profits- necessarily at the expense of others. This is the side championing cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are doomed to forever be damaged by their own wreckless stupidity. They will be damaged every time they receive a hard and necessary lesson about why our financial systems have certain properties and structures. Then they will demand the cost of that lesson be externalized onto the lesser-enfranchised.
    - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
      No argument here, I just didn't understand the comment, I still don't see a clarification from the OP so I remain confused.
    - pfisch 3y ago
      Why do you think crypto enthusiasts are net negative on crypto? It is a zero sum game so there are obviously winners, just like the stock market. So what hard lesson do you think the winners are learning exactly?
      - jurynulifcation 3y ago
        The stock market is not zero sum. Liquidity is provided so an enterprise can generate value. Thus a dollar put into the stock market generates value exceeding a dollar, creating more value in the world. Therefore the stock market is positive sum. Cryptocurrency currently does not have a way to generate value outside of illicit activities. There are very few supply chains you can leverage using cryptocurrency to generate anything new: it's either information products (like Axie Infinity or Earth2 or any scam) or illegal products. Its high-visibility, no-trust nature makes it unsuitable for practical daily use. I would not use an immutable, permanent, public ledger for any purchase, let alone for stuff I purchase normally and legally. The concept is laughable. It might be pseudoynmous, but such a high-fidelity and lossless record will be used for future entity resolution. (And also, as Ethereum proved with the hack of the DAO, such promises of "permanency" and "immutability" is couched in the concept of network effects and operative ownership, at least as far as any utility is concerned). And the crypto space keeps learning hard lessons. Like, for example, what "trustless" actually means. Lots of scams based on trust in the space. Those are two different meanings of the word "trust," which I and many technical people can distinguish, but non-specialists can not. They are, inevitably, the crowd that has historically lost the most in the crypto space and will continue to keep losing. Because they have a natural counterparty, the predators and scammers in the space. Now let's talk about the hard lessons the specialists keep learning. They keep learning what "trustless" means. The collapse of TerraLuna, Celsius, Tether, and SBF proves that nobody in the space has any clue what they're doing nor the ramifications of organizing people at scale. Vitalik Buterin was likewise also revealed as a no-talent hack when he hard-forked Ethereum after getting taken to the fucking washers during The DAO hack. On top of all the people who learn why laws are built with an understanding that ambiguity is natural and inescapable. Arbitrariness is both a feature and a bug in natural law. Anyone who has ever been taken to the washers by someone exploiting a bug in a smart contract has learned a hard lesson about subjecting assets to algorithmic vicissitudes. And the scammers in the space are learning hard lessons about what it means for a ledger to be permanent, immutable, and public. As entity resolutions methods get better, the same data remains perfectly amenable to novel methods. The whole thing is a farce, from the tech to the social aspects.
Laaas 3y ago
> He still believes crypto has no real-world use or value Are most cryptocurrencies a scam? Maybe. All? Probably not but let's assume so. That they have no use? Definitely not the case. I have a very hard time believing they have a sound argument for why CBDCs aren't a use case.
- mettamage 3y ago
  Bitcoin is not a scam. Is it worth $30K? That's a totally different question (I'd argue that it isn't in its current state and that a lot of it is speculation). Bitcoin is a set ideas [1]. For all the other cryptocurrencies, given their non-altruistic/non-anonymous nature, it's much harder to make a similar case. I tend to be on the side to not trust it. [1] The idea is described in the paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
  - tromp 3y ago
    > For all the other cryptocurrencies, given their non-altruistic/non-anonymous nature Some others are more altruistic than bitcoin (having a pure linear emission which prevents the current generation from hoarding most of the supply). What do you mean by non-anonymous nature?
    - mettamage 3y ago
      No one knows who Satoshi is. With other cryptocurrencies that I've looked at it's the opposite.
      - tromp 3y ago
        The cryptocurrency I have in mind features not one, but two anonymous creators; one to author the Mimblewimble protocol that improves both scalability and privacy at the same time, and another to implement the protocol in altruistic manner.
        latchkey 3y ago
sporadicallyjoe 3y ago
Ben McKenzie claims the entire sector is a ponzi scheme. This is disingenuous at best.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  of course its not just for ponzi schemes. Other traditional financial crimes are possible and common , as well as financing of embargoed countries and criminal groups. So much possibility! Clearly a growth industry.
  - pfisch 3y ago
    Or is it for having your money retain value in a country with high inflation and/or bad economic conditions and capital controls?
    - martin8412 3y ago
      Put dollars into your mattress then. That's more secure. The value should be denominated in USD anyway, but in many cases isn't. Often the price is listed as BTC/USDT with USDT being yet another shady enterprise where part of the financial backing is from the value of BTC.
      - pfisch 3y ago
        Lots of countries have capital controls that make it hard to get access to dollars. Especially countries with high inflation. Why are you talking about usdt? The price of usdt has always been the same as usd and no one is forced to use usdt. This seems irrelevant.
        owlbite 3y ago
        Well apart from when the 15 or so times in the past few years where the value of usdt wasn't the same as usd... https://protos.com/history-of-tethers-peg-every-time-usdt-traded-above-or-below-one-dollar/ https://protos.com/history-of-tethers-peg-every-time-usdt-tr...
readonlyaccount 3y ago
"Outside of their particular area of expertise scientists are just as dumb as the next person." And this guy isn't a scientist.
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  He has an economics degree, which I certainly trust more than most crypto enthusiast's lack of even basic economic knowledge.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    Wait, supply AND price aren't supposed to go up at the same time?
    - stavros 3y ago
      Why not, if demand outstrips supply?
rvz 3y ago
Another one has a book to sell you with the Guardian. Let's hope that this one isn't full of errors and mistakes like the previous critic (Stephen Diehl) who could not get a proof reader according to this review. [0] > McKenzie’s enthusiasm, and the surety of his predictions, ramped up. He essentially bet $250,000 that the crypto market would collapse but got the timing wrong and lost most of it. I see. That is why. He fell on the wrong side of the prediction. Now has to make it back by selling books. Oh dear. [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R23I5OPZJEC73L https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R23I5OPZJEC73L

40 points by lisasays 3y ago

dtx1 3y ago

I loved him as Comissioner Gordon in Gotham and was so suprised to see him expand into this.

Here [1][2] are a couple decent interviews with him on this topic as well. I have to wonder if it is too-little-too-late for these discussions. Has the damage already been done and are peoples heels already dug in? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o3nZHzCwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o3nZHzCwA [video][4 mins][bill maher] [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU [video][8 mins][cnn]

bhawks 3y ago
It is definitely too late for his $250,000 short position to pay out, but he still might be able to capitalize on his book project. There has already been a ton of damage done: 9 million jobs lost, 8 million home foreclosures, $20 trillion in household wealth lost[1]. Oh wait that was the 2008 financial crisis. Well at least with our modern and trustworthy financial system we held folks to account. Exactly 1 person went to jail.[2]. Well because our leaders are accountable to the people, we replaced them with new people that will act in our interest going forward. Just kidding they're all still in positions of power - Yellen is the Treasury secretary now. [3]. The real damage is coming from the status quo financial system that protects its own interests long before it cares about the needs of individuals. That is the problem defenders of the status quo need to take on if they really want to invalidate the crypto thesis. [1] - https://www.investopedia.com/news/10-years-later-lessons-financial-crisis/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/10-years-later-lessons-fin... [2] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wall-streets-bankers-stayed-out-of-jail/399368/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal... [3] - https://www.investopedia.com/insights/major-players-2008-financial-crisis-and-where-they-are-now/ https://www.investopedia.com/insights/major-players-2008-fin...
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
I'm confused, what damage? Dug in about what?
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  The damage to ordinary people. The damage to the crypto ecosystem. The damage inflicted by huge players in the crypto ecosystem, on all parties involved. I am pretty solidly dug in against crypto now. I have not seen it used for anything besides scamming. I believe, due to the incentives at play, people championing a cryptocurrency future can not be trusted anymore than a degenerate gambler asking you to invest it all in his patented gambling strategy. Other people, the degenerate gamblers in question, are solidly dug in for the matter of their own profits- necessarily at the expense of others. This is the side championing cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are doomed to forever be damaged by their own wreckless stupidity. They will be damaged every time they receive a hard and necessary lesson about why our financial systems have certain properties and structures. Then they will demand the cost of that lesson be externalized onto the lesser-enfranchised.
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    No argument here, I just didn't understand the comment, I still don't see a clarification from the OP so I remain confused.
  - pfisch 3y ago
    Why do you think crypto enthusiasts are net negative on crypto? It is a zero sum game so there are obviously winners, just like the stock market. So what hard lesson do you think the winners are learning exactly?
    - jurynulifcation 3y ago
      The stock market is not zero sum. Liquidity is provided so an enterprise can generate value. Thus a dollar put into the stock market generates value exceeding a dollar, creating more value in the world. Therefore the stock market is positive sum. Cryptocurrency currently does not have a way to generate value outside of illicit activities. There are very few supply chains you can leverage using cryptocurrency to generate anything new: it's either information products (like Axie Infinity or Earth2 or any scam) or illegal products. Its high-visibility, no-trust nature makes it unsuitable for practical daily use. I would not use an immutable, permanent, public ledger for any purchase, let alone for stuff I purchase normally and legally. The concept is laughable. It might be pseudoynmous, but such a high-fidelity and lossless record will be used for future entity resolution. (And also, as Ethereum proved with the hack of the DAO, such promises of "permanency" and "immutability" is couched in the concept of network effects and operative ownership, at least as far as any utility is concerned). And the crypto space keeps learning hard lessons. Like, for example, what "trustless" actually means. Lots of scams based on trust in the space. Those are two different meanings of the word "trust," which I and many technical people can distinguish, but non-specialists can not. They are, inevitably, the crowd that has historically lost the most in the crypto space and will continue to keep losing. Because they have a natural counterparty, the predators and scammers in the space. Now let's talk about the hard lessons the specialists keep learning. They keep learning what "trustless" means. The collapse of TerraLuna, Celsius, Tether, and SBF proves that nobody in the space has any clue what they're doing nor the ramifications of organizing people at scale. Vitalik Buterin was likewise also revealed as a no-talent hack when he hard-forked Ethereum after getting taken to the fucking washers during The DAO hack. On top of all the people who learn why laws are built with an understanding that ambiguity is natural and inescapable. Arbitrariness is both a feature and a bug in natural law. Anyone who has ever been taken to the washers by someone exploiting a bug in a smart contract has learned a hard lesson about subjecting assets to algorithmic vicissitudes. And the scammers in the space are learning hard lessons about what it means for a ledger to be permanent, immutable, and public. As entity resolutions methods get better, the same data remains perfectly amenable to novel methods. The whole thing is a farce, from the tech to the social aspects.

Laaas 3y ago

> He still believes crypto has no real-world use or value Are most cryptocurrencies a scam? Maybe. All? Probably not but let's assume so. That they have no use? Definitely not the case. I have a very hard time believing they have a sound argument for why CBDCs aren't a use case.

mettamage 3y ago
Bitcoin is not a scam. Is it worth $30K? That's a totally different question (I'd argue that it isn't in its current state and that a lot of it is speculation). Bitcoin is a set ideas [1]. For all the other cryptocurrencies, given their non-altruistic/non-anonymous nature, it's much harder to make a similar case. I tend to be on the side to not trust it. [1] The idea is described in the paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- tromp 3y ago
  > For all the other cryptocurrencies, given their non-altruistic/non-anonymous nature Some others are more altruistic than bitcoin (having a pure linear emission which prevents the current generation from hoarding most of the supply). What do you mean by non-anonymous nature?
  - mettamage 3y ago
    No one knows who Satoshi is. With other cryptocurrencies that I've looked at it's the opposite.
    - tromp 3y ago
      The cryptocurrency I have in mind features not one, but two anonymous creators; one to author the Mimblewimble protocol that improves both scalability and privacy at the same time, and another to implement the protocol in altruistic manner.
      - latchkey 3y ago

sporadicallyjoe 3y ago

Ben McKenzie claims the entire sector is a ponzi scheme. This is disingenuous at best.

LegitShady 3y ago
of course its not just for ponzi schemes. Other traditional financial crimes are possible and common , as well as financing of embargoed countries and criminal groups. So much possibility! Clearly a growth industry.
- pfisch 3y ago
  Or is it for having your money retain value in a country with high inflation and/or bad economic conditions and capital controls?
  - martin8412 3y ago
    Put dollars into your mattress then. That's more secure. The value should be denominated in USD anyway, but in many cases isn't. Often the price is listed as BTC/USDT with USDT being yet another shady enterprise where part of the financial backing is from the value of BTC.
    - pfisch 3y ago
      Lots of countries have capital controls that make it hard to get access to dollars. Especially countries with high inflation. Why are you talking about usdt? The price of usdt has always been the same as usd and no one is forced to use usdt. This seems irrelevant.
      - owlbite 3y ago
        Well apart from when the 15 or so times in the past few years where the value of usdt wasn't the same as usd... https://protos.com/history-of-tethers-peg-every-time-usdt-traded-above-or-below-one-dollar/ https://protos.com/history-of-tethers-peg-every-time-usdt-tr...

readonlyaccount 3y ago

"Outside of their particular area of expertise scientists are just as dumb as the next person." And this guy isn't a scientist.

jurynulifcation 3y ago
He has an economics degree, which I certainly trust more than most crypto enthusiast's lack of even basic economic knowledge.
- antisthenes 3y ago
  Wait, supply AND price aren't supposed to go up at the same time?
  - stavros 3y ago
    Why not, if demand outstrips supply?

rvz 3y ago

Another one has a book to sell you with the Guardian. Let's hope that this one isn't full of errors and mistakes like the previous critic (Stephen Diehl) who could not get a proof reader according to this review. [0] > McKenzie’s enthusiasm, and the surety of his predictions, ramped up. He essentially bet $250,000 that the crypto market would collapse but got the timing wrong and lost most of it. I see. That is why. He fell on the wrong side of the prediction. Now has to make it back by selling books. Oh dear. [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R23I5OPZJEC73L https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R23I5OPZJEC73L