A quick note to flag that I am moderating a panel with Ben McKenzie, the actor, and Jacob Silverman, the journalist, at the inaugural nocoiner conference, a.k.a the Crypto Policy Symposium, which is happening on Sept 5.
I just did a short pre-interview with Ben and Jacob, so I’ve got the scoop on the fact that it should be a really fascinating conference – especially for policymakers. It’s also free, so do sign up and put it in your diary.
Ben is best known for his role as Ryan in the OC [CALIFORNIAAAA!], but has since 2020 turned into a major critic of the crypto space. He has a very interesting perspective on things as he comes at it from the celebrity endorsement side of things. Beware Matt Damon. Ben studied economics at college, but the acting life took over so he never really got to focus on matters finance or markets. Then Covid struck and while out of work with nothing to do he found himself going down the crypto rabbit hole. Thanks to his economic priming, however, he soon started questioning the koolaid.
Ben is now working on a book with Jacob focused on calling out the excesses of crypto. He’s also been reading a lot of Robert Shiller.
I’m writing a book about crypto and fraud. 🧵 https://t.co/b74nuzzhHc
— Ben McKenzie (@ben_mckenzie) February 24, 2022
This includes a significant chunk of work on what’s been happening in El Salvador — where, he notes, bitcoin has been a primary mechanism facilitating corruption rather than keeping it at bay. The two travelled to the Central American state to speak to people experiencing the reality of living in the first bitcoin-denominated country. Crypto Commander in Chief Nayib Bukele wouldn’t speak to them, obviously, but they did manage to speak to Bukele’s opposition as well as lots of everyday El Salvadorians.
Ben and Jacob make an important point with respect to the El Salvadorian situation. Bitcoin, rather than protecting freedoms and liberties, is actually doing the opposite there. This weighs on my mind.
As most of my readers probably know, I’ve moderated my criticism of bitcoin since the end of 2020. I’m still hugely critical of the broader industry and think most of it is just reinventing financial history in a worse way, but I came to realise that in the context of CBDCs, monetary digitisation, political polarisation and economic destabilisation, having a challenger system around that could keep an increasingly centralised and politicised monetary system honest was probably no bad thing.
On that basis, if there are “sophisticated” investors who want to invest in bitcoin and support it (and can afford to do so), I began to think it works to the broader population’s advantage to have it around. That doesn’t mean, however, that bitcoin should be the go-to model for payments or finance or the currency of first resort. Bitcoin remains hugely inefficient, cumbersome and volatile. None of that is going to change. Bitcoin makes sense in my mind only as a last resort mechanism when all other systems have failed and/or you have no choice but to resort to its censorship-resistant qualities for the sake of pushing back against government corruption or whatever.
All that said, as Ben and Jacob rightly highlight, bitcoin’s neutrality also means it can be used the other way around to repress people’s freedoms. If a corrupt crypto bro takes charge of an economy and decides to enforce bitcoin as a mechanism to make corruption easier, there’s no stopping that. And this is a problem.
But that I guess is the problem with any neutral technology. It can be used for both good or bad. Over in Ukraine, crypto is helping to fund stuff that would usually be considered illicit in the AML/KYC sense (like arms) for the sake of defending against a more repressive force.
Life is complicated. And risk is ever present. But what’s worse? A neutral system that can be utilised by both the forces of good and evil in offsetting increments. Or a biased system that is either perfect or hell on earth if perchance it is corrupted and falls to the dark side?
Speaking of the latter, I had not heard about the great Kim Kardashian EthereumMax (EMAX) gate fiasco. Ben and Jacob have been all over it, so much so they have even been referenced in a lawsuit against Kardashian and the EMAX people.
All in all, they’re a powerful and influential addition to the nocoiner arsenal and are more than ready to engage with their opponents too.
Do let me know if you have anything specific to put to them.
