Here's a cover story you didn't see coming. Our fav magazine, The Economist:
At least they got the subheader somewhat right.
Gandhi apparently said: "First, they will ignore you, then they will laugh at you, then they will fight you, then you will win."
In Bitcoinland, we're somewhere between them(?) laughing at us and fighting us. Between the FT film (#980092) — my teeth are scarce! — and indignant NYT-Bitcoin/Trump derangement syndrome, we're definitely being either fought or aggressively laughed at.
It's a little bit flattering to be singled out like this
No presidency has generated so many conflicts of interest at such speed in modern history. Yet the worst self-dealing in American politics is found not on a runway but on blockchains, home to trillions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.
When bitcoin was started in 2009, a utopian, anti-authoritarian movement welcomed it. Crypto’s earliest adopters had lofty goals about revolutionising finance and defending individuals against expropriation and inflation. ... They wanted to hand power to small investors, who would otherwise be at the mercy of giant financial institutions. This was more than an asset: it was technology as liberation.
Not crypto, Bitcoin* — but OK, fine.
...and this is a little rich. What, crypto bros have more influence that Wall Street or Big Pharma...?
Crypto has not just facilitated fraud, money-laundering and other flavours of financial crime on a gargantuan scale. The industry has also developed a grubby relationship with the executive branch of America’s government that outstrips that of Wall Street or any other industry. Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset.
Get out of here.
Also, can you believe that the publication centered around free trade, always pushing the virtues of free markets, is actively effing calling for "regulations", whatever the eff that means in a digital world of cryptography. Pass laws all you want; they don't do anything.
The result is that crypto needs saving from itself in America. New rules are still needed to ensure that risks are not injected into the financial system. If politicians, scared of the industry’s electoral power, fail to regulate crypto properly, the long-term consequences will be harmful.
And... this will come as a shock to y'alls: Not a word about bitcoin, the ONE THING that matters.
Fuck right off.
non-paywalled: https://archive.md/ZeEWc