WaPo has an article on cryptocurrency industry efforts to convince candidates for elected office to support cryptocurrency legitimacy and usage, and it struck me as a good addition to this thread. What impressed me is that the description, the quotes, are really a bit weaselly. Possibly the most misleading is this one:
Those opposing views are squaring off in some Democratic primaries. Rhodes, a veteran of Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign who is echoing his call for universal basic income, frames her support for crypto as a matter of economic justice. And she is featuring it in her challenge against Sherman, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee who has called for cracking down on the technology.
“What I hear in the Black community all the time is, ‘We want ownership and to acquire wealth,’ ” Rhodes said. “I’ve met people who’ve pulled themselves out of poverty because of bitcoin.”
What Rhodes fails to mention is the context of bitcoin at the moment. It‘s value is quite volatile, sometimes wildly so, and is not functioning as a primary currency, but as a speculative investment. Did Rhodes’ examples make their money by taking advantage of these temporary, even pathological, conditions?
I don’t know. But yes is the way to bet.
That’s not the only example, the careful reader will find several more quotes that carry red flags, such as this one:
The Democrat [, Senator Wyden (D-OR)], who chairs the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, emerged as a key industry ally last summer when he led an effort to limit the scope of a crypto tax provision in the infrastructure bill. When attendees arrived at the venue — an art gallery in downtown New York that showcases non-fungible tokens — they were asked to scan a QR code for a Coinbase account linked to Wyden’s campaign. They then contributed either a half or full Ethereum, which the campaign immediately sold for U.S. dollars and deposited into its account.
The Wyden campaign collected nearly $30,000 in Ethereum that month, federal records show. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
David Pakman, managing partner at the investment firm CoinFund, said the industry will continue to employ the model. “The only way to understand technology products is to use them,” he said. “If we contribute in crypto, [candidates] are forced to become users to receive them, and that’s a good thing.”
No, technology can be understood through analysis, and it can be understood through object lessons. His statement is mere propaganda.
But particularly interesting is that the Wyden campaign immediately converted Ethereum into dollars. While it can be argued that dollars have greater utility, the suspicion remains that the Wyden campaign has just relieved the donors of a lot of wealth – and converted it into a far more secure form.
There’s more, but I’m stopping here.
