The crypto section here didn’t seem to adequately cover a likely root cause of the problem.
The “dark side” of crypto is a dynamic called information asymmetry; in the case of Crypto, it’s that wealthier traders are vastly superior at buying low and selling high, and the vast majority of traders are left unaware of how profoundly disadvantaged they are in what is increasingly a zero-sum game. Michael Lewis covered this concept extensively in Going Infinite, the Sam Bankman-Fried book.
This dynamic is highly visible to those in the crypto space (and quant/econ/logic people in general who catch so much as a glimpse), and many elites in the industry like Vitalik and Altman saw it coming from a mile away and tried to find/fund technical solutions e.g. to fix the zero-sum problem e.g. Vitalik’s d/acc concept.
It was very clear that SBF also appeared to be trying to find technical solutions, rather than just short-term profiteering, but his decision to commit theft points towards the hypothesis that this was superficial.
I can’t tell if there’s any hope for crypto (I only have verified information on the bad parts, not the good parts if there are any left), but if there is, it would have to come from elite reformers, who are these types of people (races to the bottom to get reputation and outcompete rivals) and who each come with the risk of being only superficially committed.
Hence why the popular idea of “cultural reform” seems like a roundaboutly weak plan. EA needs to get better at doing the impossible on a hostile planet, including successfully sorting/sifting through accusationspace/powerplays/deception, and evaluating the motives of powerful people in order to determine safe levels of involvement and reciprocity. Not massive untested one-shot social revolutions with unpredictable and irreversible results.
The crypto section here didn’t seem to adequately cover a likely root cause of the problem.
The “dark side” of crypto is a dynamic called information asymmetry; in the case of Crypto, it’s that wealthier traders are vastly superior at buying low and selling high, and the vast majority of traders are left unaware of how profoundly disadvantaged they are in what is increasingly a zero-sum game. Michael Lewis covered this concept extensively in Going Infinite, the Sam Bankman-Fried book.
This dynamic is highly visible to those in the crypto space (and quant/econ/logic people in general who catch so much as a glimpse), and many elites in the industry like Vitalik and Altman saw it coming from a mile away and tried to find/fund technical solutions e.g. to fix the zero-sum problem e.g. Vitalik’s d/acc concept.
It was very clear that SBF also appeared to be trying to find technical solutions, rather than just short-term profiteering, but his decision to commit theft points towards the hypothesis that this was superficial.
I can’t tell if there’s any hope for crypto (I only have verified information on the bad parts, not the good parts if there are any left), but if there is, it would have to come from elite reformers, who are these types of people (races to the bottom to get reputation and outcompete rivals) and who each come with the risk of being only superficially committed.
Hence why the popular idea of “cultural reform” seems like a roundaboutly weak plan. EA needs to get better at doing the impossible on a hostile planet, including successfully sorting/sifting through accusationspace/powerplays/deception, and evaluating the motives of powerful people in order to determine safe levels of involvement and reciprocity. Not massive untested one-shot social revolutions with unpredictable and irreversible results.