The FBI case against the Southern Poverty Law Center basically says that if you donate money to the SPLC, then they use some of it to pay informants to infiltrate white nationalist organizations to uncover stuff like this.
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@codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yes, the theoretical was so terrifying to incumbents in power that the practical had to be discredited and disabled as quickly as possible.
@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle the truly practical inventions are indestructible, inevitable, and unavoidable. What does this tell us after a decade plus of cryptocurrency?
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@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle the truly practical inventions are indestructible, inevitable, and unavoidable. What does this tell us after a decade plus of cryptocurrency?
@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle My take? That the story is far from complete.
But it’s definitely going through one of those Dark Forest Of The Soul things.
I don’t trade in cryptocurrencies right now and most likely neither should you.
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@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle My take? That the story is far from complete.
But it’s definitely going through one of those Dark Forest Of The Soul things.
I don’t trade in cryptocurrencies right now and most likely neither should you.
@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie @MissGayle Heh. Dark forest is cosmology, dark night of the soul is what should’ve been said, and yet somehow dark forest of the soul still feels like it works
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@mekkaokereke wait. Holy shit, in six years of having a charitable giving account I’ve never had my request refused by Fidelity. But it just happened. Looks like due to government litigation.
@mathowie @mekkaokereke I have submitted a grant request to SPLC from my donor advised fund. Morgan Stanley runs it. It normally takes them a week to process it and I haven't heard anything yet. They have never rejected anything before. So we will see if this is just Fidelity.
Edit: Morgan Stanley paid SPLC today. So this is just Fidelity.
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@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle the truly practical inventions are indestructible, inevitable, and unavoidable. What does this tell us after a decade plus of cryptocurrency?
@codinghorror @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle did anyone already quote Stafford Beer? am I the first in this thread?
POSIWID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does -
@codinghorror @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle did anyone already quote Stafford Beer? am I the first in this thread?
POSIWID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does@joe_vinegar @codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yeah, it’s significant in my version of bitcoin history that the first place you could exchange the digital asset for fiat currency was MtGOX
Magic the Gathering Online Xchange was founded to global-financialize a game that geeks had been griping about the money component of all through the 1990s.
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@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie @MissGayle Heh. Dark forest is cosmology, dark night of the soul is what should’ve been said, and yet somehow dark forest of the soul still feels like it works
@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie
Actually, Dark Forests are a different thing - they are closed online communities. Beyond "invitation only," mostly only pre-vetted people who were originally part of some real life project or community.
One example: https://blog.metalabel.com/dark-forest-theory-six-years-in/
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@mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yes, I was there and watched the same sequence of events. We came to different conclusions about the motives of the characters involved, with me believing at least a few of them were honestly trying to do something good.
And yes: the moment BTC became something that could be converted to [USD|fiat], all remaining idealism was smothered by the profit motive.
The end result is indisputable - whether or not it was conceived as a tool of liberation, it was rapidly co-opted into the toolbox of our oppressors.
I was among the idealists and yes I am still salty as fuck about it.
@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle I guess people just sometimes arrive at different conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein's motivations and life's just funny that way. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/09/jeffrey-epstein-crypto
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@mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yes, I was there and watched the same sequence of events. We came to different conclusions about the motives of the characters involved, with me believing at least a few of them were honestly trying to do something good.
And yes: the moment BTC became something that could be converted to [USD|fiat], all remaining idealism was smothered by the profit motive.
The end result is indisputable - whether or not it was conceived as a tool of liberation, it was rapidly co-opted into the toolbox of our oppressors.
I was among the idealists and yes I am still salty as fuck about it.
@MissGayle @mathowie @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke
BitCoin smelled of Ponzi from the start; but I think the ZCash crew were (are?) really trying
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@cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
I wish! But unfortunately, no it's not.
Bitcoin was designed by fashy hyper-capitalist libertarian bros to extract money from vulnerable communities like sex workers, Black people, and refugees fleeing unstable governments, and the financial predators' plan worked.
None of Bitcoin's promises are real. It doesn't hide transactions. It exposes them. It's not less traceable. It's more traceable. It's not separate from the financial system. It's even more tied to it than cash. It's not harder to block than cash or diamond transactions. It's easier. It's not more liquid, it's less. It's not faster, it's slower.
The people that made the most money from Bitcoin, are the exact same hyper capitalist crypto fascist Venture capitalists that made it so that the current financial system doesn't work for sex workers, Black people, or refugees fleeing crisis.
There is no substitute for having a government that actually works for people. There is no viable separate but equal economy at scale. You can't fight nazis by making them all billionaires first, and then using their monkey money and fake banks to try to pay your rent.
I'll stop here, but I could go on.
@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle I was around when it started, and it started as a (rather naive) attempt at essentially a form of check where you could tell that the check was genuine *and* that there was enough money in the account to cover it just by looking at the check, no need to call the issuing bank or waiting for the check to clear.
Then the sales bros got their hands on it and turned it into an unregulated currency you had to buy with real money.
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@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie
Actually, Dark Forests are a different thing - they are closed online communities. Beyond "invitation only," mostly only pre-vetted people who were originally part of some real life project or community.
One example: https://blog.metalabel.com/dark-forest-theory-six-years-in/
@MissGayle @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie Actually Cixin Liu is credited with coining the phrase in 2008 and it was about life elsewhere in space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
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@MissGayle @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie Actually Cixin Liu is credited with coining the phrase in 2008 and it was about life elsewhere in space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie
That's cool.
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@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle I was around when it started, and it started as a (rather naive) attempt at essentially a form of check where you could tell that the check was genuine *and* that there was enough money in the account to cover it just by looking at the check, no need to call the issuing bank or waiting for the check to clear.
Then the sales bros got their hands on it and turned it into an unregulated currency you had to buy with real money.
@tknarr @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
The history of all currencies is that the governing body guarantees a legal standard, a legal tender. Trust is maintained by the reasonable stability of its value.
There isn’t much about bitcoin to speak for it.
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@cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
I wish! But unfortunately, no it's not.
Bitcoin was designed by fashy hyper-capitalist libertarian bros to extract money from vulnerable communities like sex workers, Black people, and refugees fleeing unstable governments, and the financial predators' plan worked.
None of Bitcoin's promises are real. It doesn't hide transactions. It exposes them. It's not less traceable. It's more traceable. It's not separate from the financial system. It's even more tied to it than cash. It's not harder to block than cash or diamond transactions. It's easier. It's not more liquid, it's less. It's not faster, it's slower.
The people that made the most money from Bitcoin, are the exact same hyper capitalist crypto fascist Venture capitalists that made it so that the current financial system doesn't work for sex workers, Black people, or refugees fleeing crisis.
There is no substitute for having a government that actually works for people. There is no viable separate but equal economy at scale. You can't fight nazis by making them all billionaires first, and then using their monkey money and fake banks to try to pay your rent.
I'll stop here, but I could go on.
@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
“ There is no substitute for having a government that actually works for people. There is no viable separate but equal economy at scale.”
Bingo
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@tknarr @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
The history of all currencies is that the governing body guarantees a legal standard, a legal tender. Trust is maintained by the reasonable stability of its value.
There isn’t much about bitcoin to speak for it.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle Not as what it's been turned into, no. But imagine a system where the US govt. would buy and sell it for $X/BTC. That would lock the price of BTC to roughly $X. Now you have a "currency" with a known value that offers merchants the benefit of knowing the payment is good on the spot, without having to wait or deal with network outages or system failures or payment processors being dicks.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle Not as what it's been turned into, no. But imagine a system where the US govt. would buy and sell it for $X/BTC. That would lock the price of BTC to roughly $X. Now you have a "currency" with a known value that offers merchants the benefit of knowing the payment is good on the spot, without having to wait or deal with network outages or system failures or payment processors being dicks.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle The cryptobros would hate it because there goes their ability to speculate on it, but oh well, sucks to be them.
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle Not as what it's been turned into, no. But imagine a system where the US govt. would buy and sell it for $X/BTC. That would lock the price of BTC to roughly $X. Now you have a "currency" with a known value that offers merchants the benefit of knowing the payment is good on the spot, without having to wait or deal with network outages or system failures or payment processors being dicks.
@tknarr @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
Right so bitcoin is being fixed in terms of dollars which is still the unit of account. Then transaction times of the system are so slow that they could never service the actual demand of the existing currency system for the dollar much less the world that dog doesn’t hunt.
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@tknarr @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
Right so bitcoin is being fixed in terms of dollars which is still the unit of account. Then transaction times of the system are so slow that they could never service the actual demand of the existing currency system for the dollar much less the world that dog doesn’t hunt.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @tknarr @mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle this is typically referred to as a "stablecoin" - see USDC.
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@MissGayle @mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie Actually Cixin Liu is credited with coining the phrase in 2008 and it was about life elsewhere in space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
@cmdrmoto @MissGayle @mekkaokereke @mathowie yes, I knew all that, and the series kinda sucks after the first book anyway.
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Is there evidence that gov't is harassing individual donors?
Is that enough to stop you?
Why comply in advance? It won't save you.
@tomjennings @raven667 @monkeyninja Donating anonymously to SLPC isn’t “complying in advance” wtf.
