Listening to a recent episode of the Solarpunk Presents podcast reminded me the importance of consistently calling out cryptocurrency as a wasteful scam. The podcast hosts fail to do that, and because bad actors will continue to try to push crypto, we must condemn it with equal persistence.
Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products.
People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. So that’s a lie, but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation.
Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech.” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades.
Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate.
Update for episode 5.3: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, they caution against accepting superficial solutions—things that appear utopian but really reinforce inequality and accelerate the climate crisis—while doing exactly that by talking up cryptocurrency.
Because other stablecoins were able to fill that void. As you yourself noted, even one stablecoin collapsing was enough to trigger a total meltdown in the crypto space for years. And Terra-Luna didn’t have anything like the market dominance that Tether has. If stablecoins as a whole went away, any institutional interest in crypto would go with them (and that’s without getting into the fact that the price “recovery” is almost entirely down to Tether printing money and using it to buy up the price of Bitcoin, which drags every other crypto coin with it, because the market is very tightly corellated).
The recent crash was less volatile than previous crashes, and lasted half as long. There were also more factors than just the stable coin crash, there was also the FTX scandal, and silicon valley bank collapse which had ripple effects in the economy.
Still though, the resulting crash was half as long and not as severe as previous crashes.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about stable coins, but saying the entire crypto economy depends on that, while BlackRock has pushed the SEC to allow for Spot ETFs, is an exaggeration.
I’m not even going to say this is a morally good thing. I hate BlackRock because they are the mainstream/institution. But that level of support shouldnt be taken lightly
This is the part you’re missing; institutional investors like Blackrock are only willing to be involved in the crypto space because stablecoins exist. Moving real dollars into and out of crypto is a messy and unpleasant business that big firms want as little to do with as possible. Stablecoins give them a way of buffering those transactions without exposing themselves to additional risk. If you take away stablecoins, you no longer have stuff like Blackrock pushing for bitcoin ETFs.
Is that for the spot ETFs, or their tokenized fund? Do you have a link for how spot ETFs are covered by stable coins?
They’re not, and I didn’t say they were, so I’m really not sure where you even think you’re going with that.
Do you have any link supporting your assertion that BlackRock is only interested in Bitcoin because of stable coins. I genuinely would like to read the source