<MoneyLab> Felix Stalder on Crypto

[Geert Lovink]

"It has always been clear to me that bitcoin is not just environmentally but also socially destructive. As a deflationary (by design and intent) currency, it promotes hoarding (hodling, if you will), favoring the rich who can afford to sit on their assets and live off their appreciation. While all the crypto bros see themselves as 'entrepreneurs' their desire is to become rentiers. That is baked into the design. But just how dominant this desire is and how evil its outcomes are, surprises even the cynic in me. I long thought that ransomware was the only true crypto business case (other than Ponzi schemes) but there is a second one: play-to-earn (though that is also a Ponzi scheme). Rather than burning through CPU cycles, you burn through people's lifetime to mine tokens. he schemes are set up in a way that the people from whom this might be attractive as a shit-job (better than no job) cannot afford to get in. High upfront costs. So the real business case is for rich people to upfront these costs and to take a cut off poor people slaving away doing mindless, socially unproductive work. All fully automated, a rentier's dream which destroys society and the planet. This bubble needs to burst."

https://twitter.com/stalfel/status/1485912763658649600