One big idea in cryptocurrencies is attempting to achieve decentralization through "governance tokens" whose HODLers can control a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) by voting upon proposed actions. Of course, this makes it blindingly obvious that the "governance tokens" are securities and thus regulated by the SEC. But even apart from that problem recent events, culminating in "little local difficulties" for Tornado Cash, demonstrate that there are several others.
Below the fold I look at these problems.
DSHR's Blog
I'm David Rosenthal, and this is a place to discuss the work I'm doing in Digital Preservation.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Fractional Reserve Crypto-Banking
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Source |
Nakamoto's goal for Bitcoin was:
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.Below the fold I examine how this earliest cryptocurrency story changed.
Thursday, May 18, 2023
Lies, Damned Lies, & A16Z's Statistics
This post is a quick shout-out to two excellent pieces documenting the corruption of the venture capital industry:
- Molly White's Narrative over numbers: Andreessen Horowitz's State of Crypto report
- Matt Levine's Crypto Had Its Bank Runs Too
Thursday, May 11, 2023
Flooding The Zone With Shit
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Tom Cowap CC-BY-SA 4.0 |
My immediate reaction to the news of ChatGPT was to tell friends "at last, we have solved the Fermi Paradox"[1]. It wasn't that I feared being told "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it", but rather that I assumed that civilizations across the galaxy evolved to be able to implement ChatGPT-like systems, which proceeded to irretrievably pollute their information environment, preventing any further progress.
Below the fold I explain why my on-line experience, starting from Usenet in the early 80s, leads me to believe that humanity's existential threat from these AIs comes from Steve Bannon and his ilk flooding the zone with shit[2].
Thursday, May 4, 2023
The Cryptocurrency Use Case
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Paul Le Roux By Farantgh - Own work |
One of the (many) times I have been heckled during a panel on crypto was when I argued that it shouldn’t be thought of as money. The only reason to use it other than for speculation, I said, was to buy drugs on the internet. This was a preposterous idea, the heckler retorted; crypto is used for so much more than that.and ends:
So in a funny way, my heckler was right: crypto isn’t just used for speculating on and buying drugs on the internet: it’s used for much murkier criminal activities, too.Below the fold I discuss the details of the "murkier criminal activities".
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Crypto: My Part In Its Downfall

Below the fold is the text, with links to the sources.
Labels:
bitcoin,
copyright,
intellectual property,
metastablecoins,
personal
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Red Team Blues

The first thing to catch my eye was the dedication to the late, great Dan Kaminsky, a fellow attendee of the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop and someone I admired.
It is an engrossing read. The action moves swiftly, the plot requires little suspension of disbelief and has plenty of twists to keep you thinking. The interesting parts are the details about how people and their money can be tracked, and how people with a lot can prevent it being tracked. Doctorow gets to cover many of his favorite themes in a fast-moving story about a character approaching retirement. I'm well past that stage, but I understand some of those issues.
The story ends happily because all the bodies that pile up are bad guys. This is necessary since this is apparently the first in a series. I'll definitely read the next one.
You don't need to understand blockchains and cryptocurrencies to enjoy the story, but I do so, below the fold, I can't resist picking some nits with the technical details.
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