>”Still, it has seemed really obvious that these things are both bad and stupid: cozying up to a billionaire who set up shop in a tax haven and became rich on an unsustainable industry which doesn’t provide real value to anybody… This has, frankly, been blatantly obvious to most of the “rational & progressive” people outside EA.”
I am not not an effective altruist. Yet I have often found myself in the position of defending the movement because its extremely atypical view of the dangers of AGI, its obsequious reliance on the ultra-wealthy, and its blindness to the existence of society and politics, have made it into a punch line among most people with ‘progressive’ views.
It is not that crypto doesn’t provide use value to anyone, it’s that:
Its main use case is money laundering and circumventing international sanctions
It draws vulnerable retail investors into destructive boom and bust cycles
It uses huge amounts of (largely fossil-powered) electricity
It tries to place finance beyond the reach of regulation, taxation and enforcement
In my view crypto is wildly net negative, and negative in certain respects (4) which give it more than an incidental relationship to criminality.
I couldn’t agree more.
>”Still, it has seemed really obvious that these things are both bad and stupid: cozying up to a billionaire who set up shop in a tax haven and became rich on an unsustainable industry which doesn’t provide real value to anybody… This has, frankly, been blatantly obvious to most of the “rational & progressive” people outside EA.”
I am not not an effective altruist. Yet I have often found myself in the position of defending the movement because its extremely atypical view of the dangers of AGI, its obsequious reliance on the ultra-wealthy, and its blindness to the existence of society and politics, have made it into a punch line among most people with ‘progressive’ views.
It is not that crypto doesn’t provide use value to anyone, it’s that:
Its main use case is money laundering and circumventing international sanctions
It draws vulnerable retail investors into destructive boom and bust cycles
It uses huge amounts of (largely fossil-powered) electricity
It tries to place finance beyond the reach of regulation, taxation and enforcement
In my view crypto is wildly net negative, and negative in certain respects (4) which give it more than an incidental relationship to criminality.