Thread by @davetroy

Cryptocurrencies are a vehicle for social radicalization.

We can either arrest that process now, or arrest it later.

From experience, how does addressing late stage radicalization tend to work out?

How does this work in the context of war, hybrid war, and civil war?

When cryptocurrency zombies talk about “community” they are talking about social radicalization.

And they talk about “community” nonstop. What are the values of this community? What does “belonging” mean for its members?

Who (and what) are the enemies of this community? Why?

What will those people do to defend (or advance) their community and its goals?

How will that community react when its wealth is threatened? Not only with losses but with devastation born from extreme over-leverage.

Who will they blame? What kind of revenge might they seek?

The goals of this community are entirely unrealistic, misanthropic, and antisocial. And ultimately their “dream” is unlikely to work out.

But that doesn’t mean we can ignore it. It won’t just “go away.”

Because when the dream dies, the social radicalization will remain.

And that community will have a very clear opinion about who is to blame.

Populist demagogues will be happy to foment their outrage and incite violence.

Dealing with *social radicalization* born from cryptocurrencies is a national security emergency for every democracy.

Anyone who perceives this as *only* a financial risk for those participating has their head in the sand.

1) growth of these schemes poses increasing systemic national security risk for the entire economy,

2) social radicalization threatens the very function of our democracy.

This is why @POTUS is framing this as a National Security issue, ahead of what could be the biggest conflict since WWII, this time a full spectrum hybrid war.

The quickest way to crush this would be to advise participants of intention to impose heavy taxes on exchanges.

This would spark an immediate exit from the sector and de-leveraging.

We did this with wildcat banking in the 1860s, and with the Hunt Brothers silver scheme in the 1980s.

Allowing this to continue puts national security at risk as those schemes did then. Enough.

We see overlapping social radicalization: election deniers, Jan6, COVID deniers, anti-vaxxers, neonazis, neofascists, anti-Semitic attacks, and bomb threats.

Do you think these are all separate? Or are there overlapping communities of radicalization? Crypto is part of this.

Here is what Robert Jay Lifton had to say regarding thought reform in high-control groups. This applies to the crypto “community” as well as it does to the many other radicalizing communities I mentioned.

And Ponzi schemes like crypto have worked before to destabilize countries. In fact, Russia has had direct experience with this and would be happy to help advance this on the west, especially right now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponz…

We need to stop being so f*cking naive and look at the big picture.

The fact that this is being advanced largely by useful idiots doesn’t make it not dangerous. It’s just sad.

We must look first and foremost at the *societal* effects on our ability to function as a nation.

Everything else is just noise. Web3 is nonsense; there is nothing there. An idea or two may live past this mess but right now the primary goal of the United States should be to crush this Ponzi scheme, aggressively and without mercy.

We can evaluate the situation after that.

The linkage between self-uncertainty and desire for both “property” and community / belonging are well understood. Bitcoin feeds both tendencies and drives social radicalization.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…