Crypto tokens allow venture capitalists to dump their investments on an enthusiastic public without regulation, in the midst of a speculative mania
These days I read a lot of cross-disciplinary commentary on the crypto asset bubble, and what strikes me as particularly strange is the sheer level … Tweets: @smdiehl , @carnage4life , @techwontsaveus , @j2bryson , @ruchowdh , @aidanfeldman , @phaase , @madbyk , @smdiehl , @adamrfisher , @alex , @davetroy , @antoniogm , @carnage4life , @riptari , @niallharbison , @eric_seufert , @chrisamccoy , @antoniogm , @eric_seufert , @carnage4life , and @carnage4life Tweets: Stephen Diehl / @smdiehl : Ever notice how there's a huge disconnect between how the VC thought leader class talks about NFTs and crypto coins, and how your average software developer friends talk about it. Let me explain why. The Token Disconnect https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : This chart from @vitaliqubuterin shows how token allocations are just startup cap tables with a different name. It's rather mind blowing that it's legal to effectively sell stock without regulation if you say it grants voting rights but not ownership. It's a tremendous hack. https://twitter.com/... @techwontsaveus : “If there is any innovation in crypto assets it's not in software engineering, but in financial engineering.” @smdiehl explains how many software engineers can see through the hype, but VCs love it because it effectively offers unregulated securities. https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Joanna J Bryson / @j2bryson : “To the overwhelming majority of us in the software engineering profession who live closest to the metal, we see blockchain as a technology that barely works and whose use cases (if any) are vanishingly small and niche.” Yup. Via @rodneyabrooks https://twitter.com/... Rumman Chowdhury / @ruchowdh : “The accreditation divide is largely the fuel behind the Valley's obsession with crypto tokens ... [It] looks like a security, swims like a security, and quacks like a security, but is not regulated as a security. In fact it's not regulated at all.” https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Aidan Feldman / @aidanfeldman : “Silicon Valley ran dry on large breakthroughs in software, so we decided to invent the “blockchain”, ... an absurdly large asset bubble with absolutely nothing at the center.” 🔥 https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Peter Haase / @phaase : “The central myth of the crypto ideology is faith in a fintech deus ex machina that will save us from ourselves, and that's a tough nut to deconstruct.” Once again a great post by @smdiehl: The Token Disconnect https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Burak Yigit Kaya / @madbyk : “The central myth of the crypto ideology is faith in a fintech deus ex machina that will save us from ourselves, and that's a tough nut to deconstruct.” https://getpocket.com/... Stephen Diehl / @smdiehl : “With crypto we've decided to do the most American thing ever, to commoditize our rage at the financial system into a financial product.” https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Adam Fisher / @adamrfisher : Everything you probably feel about crypto but are afraid to say. “The Token Disconnect” by @smdiehl https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... @alex : Yeah this is a read https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Dave Troy / @davetroy : Blockchain skeptics should take note of this seriously cutting analysis from Stephen Diehl today. https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : This was sparked by reading a crypto-hater's take that crypto was the new CDO as 1. CDOs are bad, and 2. they somehow went away as crypto will (they did not) As long as we have sophisticated credit markets, we'll have CDOs in some form. Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : “it's also like the 1920s again and you can insider trade, wash trade, and pump and dump and there's basically no enforcement.” Seeing VCs buy up NFTs then pump them to their audience on Twitter knowing it would be illegal if it was stock or product placement has been a trip. @riptari : “... the ‘blockchain’, a simulacrum of innovation that organically fermented from the anti-institutional themes in the Western zeitgeist to spawn an absurdly large asset bubble with absolutely nothing at the center.” https://twitter.com/... Niall Harbison / @niallharbison : If you ever read one thing about Crypto I'd urge that it is this. Superb analysis https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : 2/ It makes eminent sense: TARP made money for the government but other than that, the American public mostly paid the price for the moral hazard of the pre-2008 financial order. Why should only Wall Street benefit from bubbles? Why not the everyman? McCoy / @chrisamccoy : Fair critique but the author doesn't get read-write-own. https://twitter.com/... Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : Wonder if the world is finally ready for my “CDOs are good actually” take. Have we all healed enough yet? Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : I believe that the 2008 GFC inflicted a level of long-term economic & psychological trauma with which various segments of American society still grapple. In this piece, @smdiehl posits that cryptocurrency is a populist reaction to the GFC (1/X) https://www.stephendiehl.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : I had some draft tweets about why VCs and startup founders are so enthusiastic about the financial engineering that's been unleashed by web3/crypto but @smdiehl beat me to it. Tokens basically allow projects to IPO without any regulatory steps. It's ICOs rebranded as web tech. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : It's been startling to dig into web3 to find its just crypto where the focus has gone from making your own currency without regulation to selling your own stocks without regulation. It's the future of VCs & Wall Street financialization not the future of the world wide web. https://twitter.com/...