3 ms·

Why bother: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-trump-coins-civil-fraud-charges/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/cryp

Why bother: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-trump-coins-civil-fraud-charges/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-tru...

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
So this is a good example for a different reason than you think. Let's consider the short history of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was invented and a lot of idealists had a lot of hope that it would bank the unbanked, wrest control of the payments system away from the incumbent oligopoly, solve microtransactions for decentralized systems, etc. It also generated a lot of hype, which attracts fraudsters. Fraud has been illegal for a long time and you can prosecute fraud without shutting the whole system down, but wait, what was that thing there on the list of things cryptocurrency was supposed to do? Disrupt the incumbents? Then somehow, for some reason, the rules around cryptocurrency ended up not being the ones narrowly tailored to stamp out fraud, but instead being the ones that swamp ordinary people with paperwork if they try to use it for any of the neat things it was supposed to be good for. Which killed those things before they could become too big to fail, which left only the crimes, which turned public opinion against the concept. Which allowed the government to start really smashing things up. Then you get a candidate who supports the now-hated thing that was once a hope. They put their money where their mouth is and get into the industry, and then once in office they start reforming the laws to not be so harsh and end some of the existing prosecutions, including of people who might have been involved with their previous ventures. Is that corruption or is that just what they're supposed to do when they're supportive of something? You can cast it either way, which is the problem, because then people will want to choose how to characterize it based on whether the target is in their preferred party.

Why bother: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-trump-coins-civil-fraud-charges/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-tru...

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

So this is a good example for a different reason than you think. Let's consider the short history of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was invented and a lot of idealists had a lot of hope that it would bank the unbanked, wrest control of the payments system away from the incumbent oligopoly, solve microtransactions for decentralized systems, etc. It also generated a lot of hype, which attracts fraudsters. Fraud has been illegal for a long time and you can prosecute fraud without shutting the whole system down, but wait, what was that thing there on the list of things cryptocurrency was supposed to do? Disrupt the incumbents? Then somehow, for some reason, the rules around cryptocurrency ended up not being the ones narrowly tailored to stamp out fraud, but instead being the ones that swamp ordinary people with paperwork if they try to use it for any of the neat things it was supposed to be good for. Which killed those things before they could become too big to fail, which left only the crimes, which turned public opinion against the concept. Which allowed the government to start really smashing things up. Then you get a candidate who supports the now-hated thing that was once a hope. They put their money where their mouth is and get into the industry, and then once in office they start reforming the laws to not be so harsh and end some of the existing prosecutions, including of people who might have been involved with their previous ventures. Is that corruption or is that just what they're supposed to do when they're supportive of something? You can cast it either way, which is the problem, because then people will want to choose how to characterize it based on whether the target is in their preferred party.