WEBVTT - Is Web3 Really Going That Great?

0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.640
<v Speaker 1>This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I heard podcast,

0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.400
<v Speaker 1>and I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for

0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:26.639
<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg News. It's Monday, October three. Perhaps you've heard of

0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.440
<v Speaker 1>Molly White. So one thing that I really care about

0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:32.880
<v Speaker 1>is taking information that's not always the easiest to find

0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:35.400
<v Speaker 1>and trying to make it more accessible to people. The

0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.280
<v Speaker 1>software engineer and crypto skeptic has been profiled in The

0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:42.320
<v Speaker 1>Washington Post, in Fast Company, and The Boston Globe. She

0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:45.120
<v Speaker 1>has more than eighty thousand followers on her personal Twitter

0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.199
<v Speaker 1>account and more than a hundred thousand on an account

0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:52.120
<v Speaker 1>called web three is Going Just Great, which is based

0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.200
<v Speaker 1>on her website of the same name. These are as

0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.279
<v Speaker 1>you might guess, a chronicle of all the ways at

0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:09.000
<v Speaker 1>web three is not going so great. Molly, delighted to

0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.280
<v Speaker 1>have you on the show. Thanks for having me. It's

0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:13.320
<v Speaker 1>my absolute pleasure. Why don't you tell our listeners a

0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.920
<v Speaker 1>little bit more about you. I'm a software engineer and

0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:20.720
<v Speaker 1>a researcher um and I've been focusing pretty heavily on

0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:26.039
<v Speaker 1>researching crypto, blockchains, web three everything related to that, and

0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.399
<v Speaker 1>I run the website web three is going just great

0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.200
<v Speaker 1>where I keep track of some of the hacks and

0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.480
<v Speaker 1>scams and other general disasters that have been happening in

0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.039
<v Speaker 1>the crypto space. In other words, Web three is not

0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.800
<v Speaker 1>going just great. It's a bit of a sarcastic title. Yes,

0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.319
<v Speaker 1>what got you interested in becoming kind of the chronicler

0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:48.120
<v Speaker 1>of our time as it were, of these various as

0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.720
<v Speaker 1>you put it, hacks, scams, and disasters. I'm a bit

0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:55.280
<v Speaker 1>of a chronicler by nature. I think I have kind

0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.520
<v Speaker 1>of Wikipedia editor for you know, over a decade, and

0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.320
<v Speaker 1>that's just something that I've always been really passionate about.

0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:04.520
<v Speaker 1>But around the middle of last year or so, it

0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.000
<v Speaker 1>felt like crypto was really reaching a bit of a

0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:10.800
<v Speaker 1>fever pitch when it came to the marketing and the

0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.560
<v Speaker 1>hype and the social media coverage. It was, you know,

0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.840
<v Speaker 1>it was pretty extreme around everyone should be investing in crypto,

0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.160
<v Speaker 1>you should be putting your retirement money into it. You

0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.000
<v Speaker 1>could become a millionaire overnight, all these types of things,

0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.080
<v Speaker 1>and I felt like we weren't seeing as much of

0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.280
<v Speaker 1>the other side of things, where projects were getting hacked

0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.400
<v Speaker 1>for sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, people were losing

0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.160
<v Speaker 1>their money because of individual hacks or because of you know,

0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.079
<v Speaker 1>not securing their crypto well enough. And there was sort

0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.800
<v Speaker 1>of a very serious, you know, predatory side of things

0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.040
<v Speaker 1>that I felt like wasn't getting enough coverage, and so

0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.079
<v Speaker 1>you know, I felt like I would do my part

0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.320
<v Speaker 1>to try to change that. Well, you've certainly redirected a

0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.600
<v Speaker 1>lot of the conversation in ways that are arguably more

0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.680
<v Speaker 1>constructive from a consumer protection standpoints then had necessarily been

0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.120
<v Speaker 1>the case before. But one of the things I'm sort

0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.600
<v Speaker 1>of most interested in, and we have a very nerdy audience,

0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:11.200
<v Speaker 1>so it's like, feel free to go deep into this.

0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.720
<v Speaker 1>When you call yourself a natural kind of chronicler, an

0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.320
<v Speaker 1>archivist as it were, how do you even keep track?

0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.320
<v Speaker 1>Because I say this as an editor whose literal job

0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.639
<v Speaker 1>is staying on top of, you know, the various things

0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:26.440
<v Speaker 1>in crypto and every morning and I'm I wake up

0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.360
<v Speaker 1>and I'm surprised by something like, what's your curatorial process?

0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:32.680
<v Speaker 1>How do you decide what things kind of rise to

0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:35.640
<v Speaker 1>the occasion of being worthy of inclusion? For you, it's

0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:39.280
<v Speaker 1>a pretty uh holistic process, I would say, you know,

0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.680
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of just based on vibes. Typically all include

0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.560
<v Speaker 1>things if there was, you know, a major monetary amount,

0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.240
<v Speaker 1>so anything over like a hundred thousand dollars they'll typically include.

0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.760
<v Speaker 1>But I also will try to include things that show that,

0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:55.680
<v Speaker 1>you know, sometimes the things that are going really wrong

0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.880
<v Speaker 1>are affecting individual people really badly. And so even if

0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.200
<v Speaker 1>a monetary amount might not be enormous compared to what

0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:07.000
<v Speaker 1>an institutional loss might be, it still feels useful to

0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.839
<v Speaker 1>describe that, you know, individual people are sometimes losing their

0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.320
<v Speaker 1>entire savings in crypto, you know, even if for an

0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.920
<v Speaker 1>institution it might not be that much money. As far

0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.159
<v Speaker 1>as how I find things, that's pretty all over the place.

0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.839
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of I'm an RSS, you know lover,

0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.280
<v Speaker 1>so I have a pretty active RSS feed that I follow,

0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.120
<v Speaker 1>and then a lot of stuff comes through on Twitter.

0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:33.279
<v Speaker 1>But you know, one thing that's been great is as

0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.200
<v Speaker 1>the site has gotten a little bit bigger and there's

0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.200
<v Speaker 1>become more of a devoted readership, a lot of people

0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:40.839
<v Speaker 1>will just send me things, and that's really helpful because

0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.040
<v Speaker 1>you can never find everything yourself. That's true. Shout out

0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.040
<v Speaker 1>to RSS. I want to pick up on one thing

0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.280
<v Speaker 1>that you said, which I think distinguishes your approach from

0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.520
<v Speaker 1>that of others who are cropping up in this space,

0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.640
<v Speaker 1>and which is the allowance for the individual and the

0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.040
<v Speaker 1>highlighting of individual harms and not just institutional ones. I

0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:05.320
<v Speaker 1>think one of your more recent and frankly harrowing threads

0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:11.320
<v Speaker 1>was around the individual letters sent by creditors who had

0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.880
<v Speaker 1>lost everything in a big kind of crypto bankruptcy sort

0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:17.680
<v Speaker 1>of fall out. Can you talk a little bit more

0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.599
<v Speaker 1>about what motivated you to do that and if there's

0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:25.960
<v Speaker 1>anything that you learned, you know, as you undertook that project. Yeah,

0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:28.599
<v Speaker 1>I mean, so, one thing that I really care about

0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.000
<v Speaker 1>is taking information that's not always the easiest to find

0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.479
<v Speaker 1>and trying to make it more accessible to people. And

0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.880
<v Speaker 1>that's really what I was trying to do when I

0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.960
<v Speaker 1>highlighted some of the excerpt from the letters that were

0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.520
<v Speaker 1>being sent to the judge in the Celsius and the

0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.240
<v Speaker 1>Voyage of bankruptcy cases, because you know they're online, but

0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.240
<v Speaker 1>they're in a very obscure place there in these pdf files.

0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:50.920
<v Speaker 1>You know, they're very long and it's a lot of

0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:52.880
<v Speaker 1>reading to do, so I was just trying to sort

0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.400
<v Speaker 1>of distill down some of the examples of how people

0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:01.039
<v Speaker 1>were really materially harmed in those particular their cases. And

0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.120
<v Speaker 1>you know, in a lot of cases, it wasn't individuals

0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:08.839
<v Speaker 1>losing millions of dollars, but it was people losing substantial

0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.760
<v Speaker 1>amounts of their savings. You know, some of them were retirees,

0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.880
<v Speaker 1>some of them had been working for decades and just

0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.240
<v Speaker 1>scraping together what extra money they could. You know, some

0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.080
<v Speaker 1>of it was earmarked for their children's education. And it

0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:29.000
<v Speaker 1>was really I think illustrative of how sometimes people who

0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:33.200
<v Speaker 1>are getting into crypto are not necessarily what people picture.

0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.200
<v Speaker 1>A lot of the time. You know, people will often

0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:40.120
<v Speaker 1>picture young, usually male people who have a little bit

0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.640
<v Speaker 1>of extra money that they want to just wildly gamble

0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.040
<v Speaker 1>away on crypto, and they're taking these moon shots and

0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.159
<v Speaker 1>you know, they might lose it all, they might become rich,

0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.760
<v Speaker 1>but you know, ultimately it's not a big deal whatever

0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.680
<v Speaker 1>happens to that money. But in this case, that was

0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.480
<v Speaker 1>a market difference from what we were seeing in the letters,

0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.480
<v Speaker 1>which was people who really thought that this was the

0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.640
<v Speaker 1>savings account, that they could actually make interest rates that

0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.840
<v Speaker 1>they weren't able to find in the traditional financial market,

0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:10.800
<v Speaker 1>and who were really relying on this money. I mean,

0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:13.480
<v Speaker 1>some people were sending letters about how they couldn't pay

0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:16.200
<v Speaker 1>medical bills. They couldn't you know, they were risks, they

0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.960
<v Speaker 1>were at risk of losing their homes because of this bankruptcy,

0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.080
<v Speaker 1>and so, you know, I just felt really important to

0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.560
<v Speaker 1>make sure that people understood that, you know, there's actually

0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:26.920
<v Speaker 1>real people being harmed out here. It's not just the

0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.360
<v Speaker 1>crypto bro moonshot folks who it's like, oh, well, they

0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.600
<v Speaker 1>lost their gambling money. I'd like to read one of

0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.920
<v Speaker 1>the ones that you highlighted because I book Market, because

0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.040
<v Speaker 1>I think it it really described the disconnect in what

0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.640
<v Speaker 1>you're describing in terms of you know, people think it's

0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:46.360
<v Speaker 1>like dudes with laser eyes. But here's an example of

0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.000
<v Speaker 1>the reality. This was on. You posted this on the

0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.280
<v Speaker 1>twenty one of July. I'm a Celsius customer with a

0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.000
<v Speaker 1>little more than fifteen thousand dollars worth of deposits that

0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.640
<v Speaker 1>are locked up in Celsius. Fifteen thousand dollars may not

0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:00.320
<v Speaker 1>mean a lot to some people, but it is about

0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:04.000
<v Speaker 1>six of my life savings. Losing all my savings will

0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.680
<v Speaker 1>have irreparable consequences on the well being of myself and

0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.920
<v Speaker 1>my family. I'm ashamed, humiliated, and quite frankly disgusted that

0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.360
<v Speaker 1>I put all my trust into this company. I'll be

0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.720
<v Speaker 1>spending years trying to make back the money I lost.

0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:21.080
<v Speaker 1>That was one of of these kinds of letters. And

0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.360
<v Speaker 1>how are you finding that people are responding to this

0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:27.800
<v Speaker 1>work that you're doing, Because, as you said, you sort

0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.680
<v Speaker 1>of started as a countervailing wind right, everything was going

0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:33.320
<v Speaker 1>up in the markets at that time. You know, like

0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:35.560
<v Speaker 1>nobody really wanted to hear from somebody being like, I'm

0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:37.240
<v Speaker 1>not sure if this is all such a good idea.

0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.800
<v Speaker 1>I think even in you know, a bearer market, a

0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:42.440
<v Speaker 1>lot of people don't really want to hear what I

0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.319
<v Speaker 1>have to say. Um, you know, I think with crypto,

0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.400
<v Speaker 1>there's just an overwhelming incentive to be really positive about

0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.120
<v Speaker 1>crypto at all costs because so much of crypto it's

0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:57.040
<v Speaker 1>value is based on the belief that the token or

0:08:57.160 --> 0:08:59.440
<v Speaker 1>the n f T or whatever the asset might be,

0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.439
<v Speaker 1>will go up in price, and so anyone questioning it

0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.240
<v Speaker 1>or criticizing it, you know, is presenting a risk to

0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.160
<v Speaker 1>the actual value of the asset. And so even you know,

0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.120
<v Speaker 1>when things are going pretty poorly overall in the market,

0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.440
<v Speaker 1>you know, individuals really want to keep that hope alive.

0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.760
<v Speaker 1>I think, but you know, I think there has been

0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:25.840
<v Speaker 1>more openness to hear the critical perspectives, as you know,

0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:30.040
<v Speaker 1>people have seen that things have gone poorly overall, as

0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.360
<v Speaker 1>some skeptics have been predicting. You know, I think that

0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.640
<v Speaker 1>it's really easy to brush off critics when you're seeing

0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.040
<v Speaker 1>tokens double in price overnight and you know the lines

0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:45.000
<v Speaker 1>are going up. But as we see these collapses, you know,

0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:47.720
<v Speaker 1>of these different crypto projects that were all sort of

0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.480
<v Speaker 1>dominoes knocking each other over in this you know, spring

0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.240
<v Speaker 1>and summer, I think people have realized that there really

0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.160
<v Speaker 1>are serious issues with the industry as a whole, and

0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.760
<v Speaker 1>sut the media and the general public have been a

0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:08.160
<v Speaker 1>little more receptive to those viewpoints. Coming up, you'll hear

0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.680
<v Speaker 1>more from Molly Whites around what ordinary people need to

0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:37.280
<v Speaker 1>understand about crypto. You've spoken in the past about the

0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:41.640
<v Speaker 1>fact that you have experienced online harassment, you know, in

0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.160
<v Speaker 1>kind of various iterations of in the life of a person,

0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:47.600
<v Speaker 1>particularly a woman who has been very visible and very

0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:52.000
<v Speaker 1>online for a long time. I can share because I

0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:55.480
<v Speaker 1>have shared here before that you know I have on

0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.400
<v Speaker 1>my team. We will have a report to publish a

0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:04.200
<v Speaker 1>story and then in their d MS or their emails

0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.520
<v Speaker 1>or you know, kind of like directly and aggressively. Folks

0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:09.880
<v Speaker 1>will be like, why are you everything from very mild?

0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.520
<v Speaker 1>Or you must be a paid shill who is trying

0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.240
<v Speaker 1>to you know food bitcoin food being a phrase used

0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:19.600
<v Speaker 1>in crypto world to mean fair uncertainty and doubt um

0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.920
<v Speaker 1>or you know, kind of to the extremes of threats

0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.240
<v Speaker 1>and you know, other types of things for you know,

0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:28.720
<v Speaker 1>what I would consider as an editor to be like

0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:33.320
<v Speaker 1>a pretty straightforward story about a market movement or or

0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.240
<v Speaker 1>or a company doing something. Is there anything in your

0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:42.840
<v Speaker 1>experience of having navigated this world that you think leads

0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.800
<v Speaker 1>to this heightening of both emotions and a kind of

0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:51.600
<v Speaker 1>like violent nihilism as it were in some cases. Yeah,

0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:53.600
<v Speaker 1>I mean I think it's related to what I alluded

0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:58.640
<v Speaker 1>to before, which is the financial incentive to be positive

0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.360
<v Speaker 1>to you know, promote the idea that the token prices

0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.040
<v Speaker 1>or the market as a whole are going to go up.

0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.040
<v Speaker 1>But I think there's also a strong ideological component to

0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.720
<v Speaker 1>it as well, where people really see crypto as the

0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:16.920
<v Speaker 1>solution to a lot of serious problems, and when someone

0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.199
<v Speaker 1>is speaking against you know, the potential of crypto, they

0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:23.560
<v Speaker 1>see that as someone saying, you know, I don't want

0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:27.360
<v Speaker 1>to solve those problems, or you know, you are a

0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.200
<v Speaker 1>bad person for trying to solve those problems, which I

0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:32.920
<v Speaker 1>think it's really not the message that a lot of

0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.839
<v Speaker 1>people are trying to get across, but it's become twisted,

0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:37.640
<v Speaker 1>I think in the eyes of a lot of people.

0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:40.520
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I think, you know, generally speaking, when you

0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.440
<v Speaker 1>threatened someone's bottom line, you know, when when they have

0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:45.760
<v Speaker 1>a lot of investment into you a you know, a

0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.360
<v Speaker 1>specific asset and you do something that might cause that

0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:54.199
<v Speaker 1>asset price to change, even if it is fairly unbiased

0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.960
<v Speaker 1>reporting or just you know, just describing what is happening

0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:02.640
<v Speaker 1>in the real world, people will respond very, very aggressively

0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:04.480
<v Speaker 1>to that. And I think, you know, the culture in

0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:08.360
<v Speaker 1>crypto has really contributed to that, where people are somewhat

0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.439
<v Speaker 1>encouraged to do that and it becomes you know, insular

0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:18.439
<v Speaker 1>movement where that behavior is just completely normalized. Is there

0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.200
<v Speaker 1>anything in addition to that financial incentive that you find

0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.920
<v Speaker 1>either unusual or distinct about how some of this takes place.

0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:32.719
<v Speaker 1>I think the level that it happens in crypto is unusual.

0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:36.360
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I've definitely experienced harassment because of my involvement

0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.800
<v Speaker 1>with Wikipedia, my coverage of you know, right wing political

0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.560
<v Speaker 1>movements in the US, and it's definitely, you know, pretty

0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:48.200
<v Speaker 1>serious in that particular group as well. But with crypto,

0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.280
<v Speaker 1>it's a very it's very strange. I think the degree

0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:54.760
<v Speaker 1>to which it's normalized and I don't know if it

0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:57.319
<v Speaker 1>has to do with the amount of people who are

0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:00.760
<v Speaker 1>really anonymous in crypto and so they feel you know,

0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:05.720
<v Speaker 1>protected in saying some really heinous things, but the level

0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:10.760
<v Speaker 1>to which the toxicity has really emerged from crypto is

0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.880
<v Speaker 1>pretty unusual, and I think that has been recognized sort

0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.760
<v Speaker 1>of in the main stream, where people have this view

0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:19.920
<v Speaker 1>of you know, crypto bros who are you know, have

0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.400
<v Speaker 1>the laser eyes and it's sort of everyone. I think

0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.320
<v Speaker 1>there's this sort of perception of crypto people as very

0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:30.240
<v Speaker 1>intense and often aggressive, and I guess I would say

0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:35.720
<v Speaker 1>it's not unearned, right. I want to go back to something,

0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:37.480
<v Speaker 1>you know, a couple of months ago, when you were

0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.240
<v Speaker 1>invited to give a statement to the Financial Stability Oversight

0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.360
<v Speaker 1>Counsole and regulating to just all assets, you talked about

0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:48.240
<v Speaker 1>the trade offs of anonymity and pseudonymity, And one of

0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.760
<v Speaker 1>the things that you said is it's actually really easy

0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:53.960
<v Speaker 1>for people who think their transactions or privates or that

0:14:54.000 --> 0:15:00.080
<v Speaker 1>their identities are obscured to inadvertently out themselves because the

0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.880
<v Speaker 1>the level of technical proficiency that you have to actually

0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:08.080
<v Speaker 1>be secret the whole time is relatively high. Can you

0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.760
<v Speaker 1>say a little bit more about why highlighting those kinds

0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:13.640
<v Speaker 1>of things for what you called, you know, the quote

0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.200
<v Speaker 1>unquote average user is important to you. Yeah, I mean

0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:22.520
<v Speaker 1>I think crypto has, you know, historically been something that's

0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.600
<v Speaker 1>been used by people who are very technically proficient and

0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.080
<v Speaker 1>who are capable of doing things like self custodying and

0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.440
<v Speaker 1>you know, keeping track of all the different wallet addresses

0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.440
<v Speaker 1>and secret keys and all these different things. But you know,

0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:39.920
<v Speaker 1>in the past couple of years, we've seen these attempts

0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.760
<v Speaker 1>to mainstream crypto and to make it something that you know,

0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.200
<v Speaker 1>everyone's got an app on their phone and their trading

0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.520
<v Speaker 1>crypto day to day and everyone should be putting money

0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.920
<v Speaker 1>into it. To some extent, I don't think that it

0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.640
<v Speaker 1>is you know, achievable for average people to be using

0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.600
<v Speaker 1>crypto in the way that people say that you should be.

0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.400
<v Speaker 1>So you know, someone might be able to download an

0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.440
<v Speaker 1>app and trade some crypto, but you know, not your keys,

0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:06.520
<v Speaker 1>not your coins. You know, you're supposed to be keeping

0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:08.760
<v Speaker 1>in it in a wallet yourself, maybe a hardware wallet,

0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.560
<v Speaker 1>something like that. And when you start to actually look

0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:13.760
<v Speaker 1>into what it takes for someone to do that, it's

0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.800
<v Speaker 1>not something that you know, your average person who's not

0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.360
<v Speaker 1>a software person, they're not online all the time, can

0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.800
<v Speaker 1>really do. And so I think it's alarming that people

0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:27.640
<v Speaker 1>are pushing the idea that crypto is something that you know,

0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.960
<v Speaker 1>should become the backbone of a financial system that is

0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:35.000
<v Speaker 1>widely used in society, when that's not achievable at the

0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:41.200
<v Speaker 1>current moment, and they're enormous hurdles to it becoming achievable. Well, first,

0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.840
<v Speaker 1>I'll say I find it interesting how many of the

0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.400
<v Speaker 1>folks who have spent so much time in and around

0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:51.680
<v Speaker 1>software are some of the biggest skeptics of this message

0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:53.800
<v Speaker 1>that like anyone can do it's totally fine, just like

0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.560
<v Speaker 1>slap our user into face one and it's great. But

0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:01.400
<v Speaker 1>if you were asked the question, so someone who is

0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:03.960
<v Speaker 1>not the most tech savvy, but you know, like reasonably

0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.520
<v Speaker 1>away of what's going on, at a minimum, understands two

0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.040
<v Speaker 1>factor authentication, and they insist, absolutely insist, that they want

0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.479
<v Speaker 1>to get involved in crypto. And you could give them

0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.919
<v Speaker 1>one piece of caution or advice, what would that be.

0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:20.640
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's pretty cliche, but don't invest more than

0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:23.560
<v Speaker 1>you can afford to lose. There is no predicting what's

0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.199
<v Speaker 1>going to happen in the crypto markets, and you should

0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.520
<v Speaker 1>really assume that anything you put in could be worth

0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:34.680
<v Speaker 1>zero tomorrow. And so, you know, it's really tempting, especially

0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.119
<v Speaker 1>when the line is going up and people are, you know,

0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.480
<v Speaker 1>advertising all these returns that they're making, to put a

0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:42.560
<v Speaker 1>lot of money into it on the hopes that, you know,

0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.600
<v Speaker 1>you might be one of those people who triples their money.

0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.840
<v Speaker 1>But you know, I've seen so many times that it

0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.480
<v Speaker 1>goes in the other direction too, and you know, people

0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:56.520
<v Speaker 1>over expose themselves. Well, I'll share, just as a closing remark,

0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.280
<v Speaker 1>a quote that you highlighted on your blog from you know,

0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.080
<v Speaker 1>Michael Sailor, who very famously said, you know, mortgage your

0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.639
<v Speaker 1>house on by bitcoin, which is the the exact opposite

0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:13.520
<v Speaker 1>of the kind of prudence and caution that you are recommending. Well,

0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:15.399
<v Speaker 1>thank you so much for taking the time to be

0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.880
<v Speaker 1>on the podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure and

0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:20.320
<v Speaker 1>you know, hope to have you back again. Thanks for

0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:24.480
<v Speaker 1>having me. You can find her work, of course, on Twitter.

0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.600
<v Speaker 1>On the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. When crypto prices

0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.720
<v Speaker 1>were high, you know, around this time last year, a

0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.119
<v Speaker 1>certain class of crypto officianados took full advantage of the

0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.800
<v Speaker 1>digital nomad lifestyle. They showed up in places like Portugal

0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:45.280
<v Speaker 1>and Miami and San Juan, leaving behind their lives in

0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.840
<v Speaker 1>New York and London. How's that going now, you ask, Well,

0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.399
<v Speaker 1>let's just say there's less sun see and sun in

0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:57.879
<v Speaker 1>their lives these days. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily

0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:01.320
<v Speaker 1>podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows

0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.680
<v Speaker 1>from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,

0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:08.040
<v Speaker 1>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us

0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.920
<v Speaker 1>your comments, questions or suggestions for the show to Crypto

0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.080
<v Speaker 1>at Bloomberg dot net or find us on Twitter. We're

0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:20.200
<v Speaker 1>at Crypto. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Verglina.

0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:24.560
<v Speaker 1>Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producer is Sharon Barriro.

0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.200
<v Speaker 1>Associate producer is Ty Butler. Desta wonder At is our engineer.

0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:36.119
<v Speaker 1>Original music by Leo Sidran. I'm Stacy Mariachmal. We'll be

0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:36.679
<v Speaker 1>back tomorrow.