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I’m no fan of Binance, but to label them as Bond villains while spending zero effort on trying to understand the ideology behind cryptocurrencies (at least, wha

I’m no fan of Binance, but to label them as Bond villains while spending zero effort on trying to understand the ideology behind cryptocurrencies (at least, what was supposed to be the ideology) and why being a distributed business without a physical address is desirable from that point of view – and not just because they’re evil greedy people (of which Binance may still be) – makes this essay not very interesting. It would have been a much better piece had the author attempted to understand the decentralization ideology and then squared that with the apparently very real crimes so widespread in crypto. Edit: found the essay that this link reminded me of: a comparison of Jason Bourne to James Bond, from a societal perspective. A good piece to read after this original link. https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2015/09/20/bourne-aesthetic/ https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2015/09/20/bourne-aesthetic/

fake-name 3y ago
Have you considered that the author did try to understand the underlying ideology? It seems pretty accurate to me.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Well, I can’t read his mind, but considering that he didn’t mention anything about it, I think we can assume that he hasn’t. Even if he did, my criticism was about the essay, not the guy himself.
- olalonde 3y ago
  > He has long been adjacent to money and power, but craves more. > They have no passport and fly no flags; these concepts are thoroughly beneath them. Yeah, this is not an intellectually honest characterization of libertarian and anti-authoritarian ideology. I'd be very, very surprised if Patrick didn't actually understand that.
  - tovej 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - olalonde 3y ago
      > Libertarian ancap bros Resorting to insults is not very conductive to intellectual honesty. Your comment equates libertarianism to "wanting to keep all money" which is an extremely cartoonish understanding.
      - tovej 3y ago
        Libertarians, especially crypto people, are cartoonish in my experience. Cartoonish is not equivalent to false. Some things in life are ridiculous, and then we should be able to call a spade a spade --- or call a bond villain a bond villain.
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        >Your comment equates libertarianism to "wanting to keep all money" which is an extremely cartoonish understanding. Sure, but it's true.
        nerdponx 3y ago
        This squares pretty nicely with more conventional libertarianism that I usually encounter. Lots of blather about non-aggression, intellectual honesty, and personal freedom, but practically they tend to align in favor of things that result in keeping more money, and against things that result in keeping less money.
        bigstrat2003 3y ago
        It's not remotely true.
  - patio11 3y ago
    I am describing actual literal appears-in-the-movies James Bond villains with these sentences, not anyone you know or any real-world political ideology. The way you would know this is to have read the previous two sentences: "James Bond films have a certain formula to them. It is more interesting when seen from the perspective of the villain."
pavlov 3y ago
> “being a distributed business without a physical address is desirable from that point of view” Everybody agrees that CZ owns a majority of Binance (around 70% I believe). How does that square with the idea that it’s a “distributed business”? Its ownership is more centralized than Meta’s. There’s no legal system on this planet that recognizes the notion of a company that’s 70% owned by someone but doesn’t have a physical address. It’s just nonsense that was meant to keep regulators from catching up. But it’s over. The DOJ now has full oversight of Binance, CZ has pleaded guilty, and he may still end up doing jail time.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Geographical distribution and ownership distribution are not the same thing. There’s no legal system on this planet that recognizes the notion of a company that’s 70% owned by someone but doesn’t have a physical address. Yes, and so consider the possibility that some people see this as a problem to be solved and not an unchanging fact of reality. Again, there is a huge rich new field of discussion about this stuff [1] and so I find the lack of curiosity by the author to be very uninteresting. You don’t have to agree with these ideas but to ignore them entirely is intellectually flawed, especially when it’s the supposed reason for these actions in the first place. 1. See the Network State stuff. https://www.youtube.com/live/x-GfuIFkB_Y?si=t1r96klba69rwTtx https://www.youtube.com/live/x-GfuIFkB_Y?si=t1r96klba69rwTtx
  - pavlov 3y ago
    A corporation that's able to do business globally but is not domiciled anywhere is analogous to a person who can travel anywhere but doesn't have any citizenship or a passport. The latter sounds obviously like a fantasy — it's simply not how any of this works. What makes anyone think the former is feasible?
  - anonymous_sorry 3y ago
    So do those people want an individual to be able to incorporate, declare their corporation distributed and then not have to obey any country's laws?
  - 3y ago
camgunz 3y ago
You don't need to dig into the ideology of crypto to make the argument that Binance's business was essentially money laundering and sanctions avoidance. But if you do, you'll have no trouble finding people arguing that ducking state financial regulations is a huge and core utility of crypto (let sex workers get paid, buy drugs, etc). You can disagree with the regime, Patrick does and so do I, but it doesn't change the fact that the whole thing was just crime, crime everywhere.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Yes well that’s why I think it is a nuanced topic. Decentralization is appealing to a lot of people, including myself, but it also obviously has a ton of negative outcomes as well. Acknowledging this and exploring the complexity is interesting; calling everyone evil Bond villains is childish and at the ethical level of a Marvel movie.
  - anonymous_sorry 3y ago
    I think he called CZ an evil bond villain, not everyone.
  - camgunz 3y ago
    Proponents of decentralization should be heralding Binance's demise, as it represents the strongest force for centralization in the crypto world. Also yeah OP is basically about CZ and Binance, not all crypto people everywhere.
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      I'm keen on decentralised cryptocurrencies, particularly ethereum, and I am fairly pleased about Binance's problems. What I'd like to see succeed is easy to use wallet apps running on an ethereum zk L2 with low transaction costs, social recovery, account abstraction, stable coins, and most transactions happening peer to peer on decentralised exchanges. Centralised exchanges are not about cryptocurrency or decentralisation or democratising access, or innovating money to be programmable, they're just about finding yet another source of risk for people to play with in exactly the same ways we've been playing with risk in tradfi for millenia. Pretty boring. Still, I assume that Binance's woes are at least partly because of an antipathy towards all forms of finance not controlled by the current system, and so the fact that they are taking down Binance probably doesn't augur well for the chances of my preferred outcome succeeding either.
mkl 3y ago
The bit about Jason Bourne and James Bond is quoted from https://www.metafilter.com/93504/You-carry-a-00-number-it-means-you-have-License-to-kill-not-GET-killed#3171708 https://www.metafilter.com/93504/You-carry-a-00-number-it-me..., and the rest of that exple.tive.org link is irrelevant other stuff (don't bother).
asdfman123 3y ago
We all understand it, we've read about it since 2012. We just rightfully understand that at least the exchange level, it's not about that. It's about money laundering and making billions.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
In most jurisdictions businesses must have a physical address, in fact it is a requirement to incorporate. This is no government conspiracy against "my freedom", this is to offer a level of protection and allow service of legal documents. Binance has always looked very shaddy and not to be touched with a bargepole.
dumbfounder 3y ago
The author is a pragmatist and simply thinks it ain’t gonna happen.
resolutebat 3y ago
The author, patio11, has been writing about crypto since at least 2018 and is thoroughly familiar with "the ideology behind cryptocurrencies". https://www.kalzumeus.com/tweetstorms/1032033115408031744 https://www.kalzumeus.com/tweetstorms/1032033115408031744
- miohtama 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mef 3y ago
    He left Stripe earlier this year. https://x.com/patio11/status/1627815282776637440 https://x.com/patio11/status/1627815282776637440
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    He's also a guy who doesn't need to work for Stripe, he could easily find something else to do. It's a stretch to say he has his opinions because he is supporting the existing financial system.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Patrick does not, in fact, work for Stripe any more, and Stripe sells crypto solutions: https://stripe.com/au/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/au/use-cases/crypto
zxt_tzx 3y ago
I agree that the author could’ve done more to make the case for the other side. Where I have some firsthand knowledge, I find eg his suggestion that Binance and FTX divided up markets based on US geopolitical affiliation implausible and unconvincing. Nonetheless, it’s fair to wonder if crypto has meaningfully lived up to any of its promises and why it has been hard to point to examples of value creation in crypto in a way that would make sense to an average person
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

fake-name 3y ago

Have you considered that the author did try to understand the underlying ideology? It seems pretty accurate to me.

keiferski 3y ago
Well, I can’t read his mind, but considering that he didn’t mention anything about it, I think we can assume that he hasn’t. Even if he did, my criticism was about the essay, not the guy himself.
olalonde 3y ago
> He has long been adjacent to money and power, but craves more. > They have no passport and fly no flags; these concepts are thoroughly beneath them. Yeah, this is not an intellectually honest characterization of libertarian and anti-authoritarian ideology. I'd be very, very surprised if Patrick didn't actually understand that.
- tovej 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - olalonde 3y ago
    > Libertarian ancap bros Resorting to insults is not very conductive to intellectual honesty. Your comment equates libertarianism to "wanting to keep all money" which is an extremely cartoonish understanding.
    - tovej 3y ago
      Libertarians, especially crypto people, are cartoonish in my experience. Cartoonish is not equivalent to false. Some things in life are ridiculous, and then we should be able to call a spade a spade --- or call a bond villain a bond villain.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      >Your comment equates libertarianism to "wanting to keep all money" which is an extremely cartoonish understanding. Sure, but it's true.
      - nerdponx 3y ago
        This squares pretty nicely with more conventional libertarianism that I usually encounter. Lots of blather about non-aggression, intellectual honesty, and personal freedom, but practically they tend to align in favor of things that result in keeping more money, and against things that result in keeping less money.
      - bigstrat2003 3y ago
        It's not remotely true.
- patio11 3y ago
  I am describing actual literal appears-in-the-movies James Bond villains with these sentences, not anyone you know or any real-world political ideology. The way you would know this is to have read the previous two sentences: "James Bond films have a certain formula to them. It is more interesting when seen from the perspective of the villain."

pavlov 3y ago

> “being a distributed business without a physical address is desirable from that point of view” Everybody agrees that CZ owns a majority of Binance (around 70% I believe). How does that square with the idea that it’s a “distributed business”? Its ownership is more centralized than Meta’s. There’s no legal system on this planet that recognizes the notion of a company that’s 70% owned by someone but doesn’t have a physical address. It’s just nonsense that was meant to keep regulators from catching up. But it’s over. The DOJ now has full oversight of Binance, CZ has pleaded guilty, and he may still end up doing jail time.

keiferski 3y ago
Geographical distribution and ownership distribution are not the same thing. There’s no legal system on this planet that recognizes the notion of a company that’s 70% owned by someone but doesn’t have a physical address. Yes, and so consider the possibility that some people see this as a problem to be solved and not an unchanging fact of reality. Again, there is a huge rich new field of discussion about this stuff [1] and so I find the lack of curiosity by the author to be very uninteresting. You don’t have to agree with these ideas but to ignore them entirely is intellectually flawed, especially when it’s the supposed reason for these actions in the first place. 1. See the Network State stuff. https://www.youtube.com/live/x-GfuIFkB_Y?si=t1r96klba69rwTtx https://www.youtube.com/live/x-GfuIFkB_Y?si=t1r96klba69rwTtx
- pavlov 3y ago
  A corporation that's able to do business globally but is not domiciled anywhere is analogous to a person who can travel anywhere but doesn't have any citizenship or a passport. The latter sounds obviously like a fantasy — it's simply not how any of this works. What makes anyone think the former is feasible?
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  So do those people want an individual to be able to incorporate, declare their corporation distributed and then not have to obey any country's laws?
- 3y ago

camgunz 3y ago

You don't need to dig into the ideology of crypto to make the argument that Binance's business was essentially money laundering and sanctions avoidance. But if you do, you'll have no trouble finding people arguing that ducking state financial regulations is a huge and core utility of crypto (let sex workers get paid, buy drugs, etc). You can disagree with the regime, Patrick does and so do I, but it doesn't change the fact that the whole thing was just crime, crime everywhere.

keiferski 3y ago
Yes well that’s why I think it is a nuanced topic. Decentralization is appealing to a lot of people, including myself, but it also obviously has a ton of negative outcomes as well. Acknowledging this and exploring the complexity is interesting; calling everyone evil Bond villains is childish and at the ethical level of a Marvel movie.
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  I think he called CZ an evil bond villain, not everyone.
- camgunz 3y ago
  Proponents of decentralization should be heralding Binance's demise, as it represents the strongest force for centralization in the crypto world. Also yeah OP is basically about CZ and Binance, not all crypto people everywhere.
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    I'm keen on decentralised cryptocurrencies, particularly ethereum, and I am fairly pleased about Binance's problems. What I'd like to see succeed is easy to use wallet apps running on an ethereum zk L2 with low transaction costs, social recovery, account abstraction, stable coins, and most transactions happening peer to peer on decentralised exchanges. Centralised exchanges are not about cryptocurrency or decentralisation or democratising access, or innovating money to be programmable, they're just about finding yet another source of risk for people to play with in exactly the same ways we've been playing with risk in tradfi for millenia. Pretty boring. Still, I assume that Binance's woes are at least partly because of an antipathy towards all forms of finance not controlled by the current system, and so the fact that they are taking down Binance probably doesn't augur well for the chances of my preferred outcome succeeding either.

mkl 3y ago

The bit about Jason Bourne and James Bond is quoted from https://www.metafilter.com/93504/You-carry-a-00-number-it-means-you-have-License-to-kill-not-GET-killed#3171708 https://www.metafilter.com/93504/You-carry-a-00-number-it-me..., and the rest of that exple.tive.org link is irrelevant other stuff (don't bother).

asdfman123 3y ago

We all understand it, we've read about it since 2012. We just rightfully understand that at least the exchange level, it's not about that. It's about money laundering and making billions.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

In most jurisdictions businesses must have a physical address, in fact it is a requirement to incorporate. This is no government conspiracy against "my freedom", this is to offer a level of protection and allow service of legal documents. Binance has always looked very shaddy and not to be touched with a bargepole.

dumbfounder 3y ago

The author is a pragmatist and simply thinks it ain’t gonna happen.

resolutebat 3y ago

The author, patio11, has been writing about crypto since at least 2018 and is thoroughly familiar with "the ideology behind cryptocurrencies". https://www.kalzumeus.com/tweetstorms/1032033115408031744 https://www.kalzumeus.com/tweetstorms/1032033115408031744

miohtama 3y ago
[flagged]
- mef 3y ago
  He left Stripe earlier this year. https://x.com/patio11/status/1627815282776637440 https://x.com/patio11/status/1627815282776637440
- lordnacho 3y ago
  He's also a guy who doesn't need to work for Stripe, he could easily find something else to do. It's a stretch to say he has his opinions because he is supporting the existing financial system.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Patrick does not, in fact, work for Stripe any more, and Stripe sells crypto solutions: https://stripe.com/au/use-cases/crypto https://stripe.com/au/use-cases/crypto

zxt_tzx 3y ago

I agree that the author could’ve done more to make the case for the other side. Where I have some firsthand knowledge, I find eg his suggestion that Binance and FTX divided up markets based on US geopolitical affiliation implausible and unconvincing. Nonetheless, it’s fair to wonder if crypto has meaningfully lived up to any of its promises and why it has been hard to point to examples of value creation in crypto in a way that would make sense to an average person

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]