Customer Review for The United States Of America
👮 * * * * * *
John Doe Still one of my go-tos, but I`m not sure how
I feel about the new management.
El Salvador's surf city: The Bitcoin haven for tourists and investors alike
We Should Call It Bit"Con"
It was during a particularly dull Zoom meeting that I found myself drifting off in front of the screen, half-asleep, when an astonishingly shameless statement jolted me awake. “Trump’s election is a dream come true,” the crypto baron declared, his face glowing with excitement.
I shouldn’t have been surprised: this man was sitting on a mountain of Bitcoin, whose value had skyrocketed nearly 40% ever since Donald Trump crushed Kamala Harris in the race for the U.S. presidency.
Even more thrilled than this particular crypto kingpin was Marc Andreessen, Silicon Valley’s venture capital overlord and one of crypto’s loudest evangelists.
According to him, Biden’s administration was engaging in “repression,” and Trump’s victory felt like “a boot being lifted from [his] throat... Every morning, I wake up happier than the day before.”
The "Better Future" They Keep Selling Us
Of course, these crypto bosses will vehemently deny that they’re just talking up their own assets. No, no. What’s happening here, they insist, is the dawn of a grand libertarian future—one where cryptocurrency is freed from the shackles of overregulation and paves the way for human prosperity.
Sounds great, except for one small issue: crypto regulation, in reality, is virtually non-existent, and no one in the industry has been able to articulate what massive benefits this so-called "better future" actually offers us.
In fact, even minor benefits are nowhere to be seen. Bitcoin has existed for sixteen years, yet you still can’t buy a damn cup of coffee with it, let alone engage in a seamless online shopping experience.
The claim that crypto will replace fiat currency is looking increasingly ridiculous, but that hasn’t stopped its believers from making new promises.
A trendy new argument is that Bitcoin will serve as “digital gold” in our increasingly turbulent world—a safe haven asset.
But if that’s the dream, then it’s a yawn-inducing one. Gold has existed forever, and yet only a tiny fraction of the world’s savings are stored in bullion.
One reason? Gold prices are volatile—though nowhere near as erratic as Bitcoin, which crashes with astonishing regularity every few years.
Another argument is that cryptocurrencies will make payments and money transfers significantly cheaper. And while that isn’t entirely false—traditional banks, like my own New York institution, do charge absurd fees like $30 per overseas transfer—it’s also an irrelevant point.
We don’t need crypto to solve this. Competition from online banks and agile fintech startups is already doing the job.
So where does that leave crypto? Still a solution searching desperately for a problem. The only new development is a chorus of fraudsters, demagogues, dictators, and conmen, all trying to convince us otherwise.
The Lie They Keep Repeating
These crooks keep telling us that crypto is about one thing, while the reality is something entirely different.
We’re supposed to believe that cryptocurrencies will liberate us from oppressive governments by replacing their corrupt fiat currencies.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has become one of the biggest political influencers in America. Nearly half of all corporate donations in the 2024 U.S. presidential race came from the crypto sector, with the crypto-friendly super PAC Fairshake alone throwing more than $200 million into the election.
We were also promised that crypto would make banks obsolete. Yet, here we are—crypto companies still need bank accounts like everyone else to run their operations.
And now, they’re crying about "debanking"—a trendy term for the very reasonable (and legally required) practice of banks denying accounts to businesses with possible ties to money laundering and illicit activities.
The Salvadoran Shitshow
Some demagogues make grand promises they can never keep. Take Elon Musk, another tireless crypto pusher, who claimed his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) would slash the U.S. budget deficit by "at least $2 trillion." The problem? A staggering 88% of all federal spending goes to legally mandated entitlements, interest payments, and defense.
As Harvard professor Jeffrey Frankel pointed out, even if Musk eliminated every non-defense discretionary expenditure, the savings wouldn’t even come close to $2 trillion. It’s nothing more than a delusional fantasy.
And then there’s Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Bitcoin-loving president-turned-autocrat. Sure, he was democratically elected, but he long ago dispensed with constitutional checks and balances.
Human Rights Watch reports that his government has imprisoned “around 3,000 children,” many of whom were subjected to “severe mistreatment amounting to torture” and held “under inhumane conditions, denied adequate food, medical care, and family contact.”
Crypto fanatics love Bukele anyway, because in 2021 he made Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador.
Never mind that his grand experiment was a colossal disaster. His government gave away $30 worth of Bitcoin to anyone who signed up for a digital wallet—only for most people to immediately cash out for U.S. dollars.
The much-hyped “volcano bonds,” which were supposed to be backed by Bitcoin, never even materialized. And now, the International Monetary Fund is demanding that Bukele stop forcing businesses to accept Bitcoin as a condition for a $1.4 billion emergency bailout to rescue El Salvador's tanking economy.
The Ultimate Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
Tax evaders and money launderers continue to be among the most enthusiastic users of cryptocurrency. And why wouldn’t they be? Crypto is a technology designed for transactions where no questions are asked.
Take stablecoins, for instance—crypto tokens allegedly backed by real U.S. dollars. But why would anyone use these fake dollars instead of the real thing?
Simple: because opening a U.S. dollar bank account requires answering inconvenient questions about where your money comes from. But by setting up a wallet on a public blockchain and loading it up with stablecoins, criminals can bypass these pesky regulatory hurdles.
This is exactly how participants in a massive scheme, recently exposed by British authorities, helped drug dealers and Russian spies launder their money.
Fraudsters, demagogues, dictators, and scammers all have one thing in common: they pretend to be libertarians.
Any attempt to regulate their grift is framed as an attack on "freedom." But with friends like these, freedom doesn’t need enemies.
A Solution Looking for a Problem
They told us Bitcoin would heal the world. Instead, what we got is an unholy choir of crypto zealots, con artists, and autocrats, all singing the same tired tune—hoping that if they repeat it enough times, we’ll finally start to believe it.
Sincerely,
Adaptation-Guide
No comments:
Post a Comment