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What looks like cryptoanarchism but is really just a tired hustle

Four Days Trapped At Sea With Crypto’s Noveau Riche” • This well written article on a typically bizarre ‘blockchain’ conference cruise:

After his event, the attendees mob the aisles to get closer to their heroes—entirely ignoring the “beautiful ladies” who the host tells us have just taken the stage for the “women in blockchain” panel. It’s a shame, because they miss moderator Olga Feldmeier’s summation, delivered in a pitch-perfect Russian lilt: “Being a woman in blockchain,” she says, “is like riding a bicycle. Except the bicycle is on fire. And everything is on fire. And you are going to hell.”

And

…it’s clear this is not the Burning Man-style celebration of the liberatory potential of decentralization I was promised. This is a locked-room, hard-sell pitch session to a literally captive audience of high-roller crypto investors, whose only escape is the lifeboats. The whole place smells of aftershave and insecurity. 


Exhibit A for why people will welcome the inevitable overbearing regulation and market capture by the same too big to fail incumbents of the existing financial system. Because the alternative, they think, is this sort.

But of course it’s a simple, old world hustle. A paid event not unlike those selling Amway or time-shares.