When Did Crypto Become Republican? | Hacker News Reader

When Did Crypto Become Republican?

slate.com

5 pointsandrewfromx11 comments

Both seem rooted in a strong disbelief of the state. Their views are self vindicated when things go wrong.

> right-wing politicians, particularly those of the MAGA variety, have an affinity for cryptocurrency due to the heightened distrust of major institutions that former President Donald Trump sowed among his supporters. "Bitcoin was supposed to create a monetary system that functions without trust — and the modern right is all about fostering distrust," Krugman says

Good to see this written up. I don't feel like there's a lot of big-scale sensemaking like that that's going to help fill in the future as to what was happening. I appreciate this good truthtelling.

Since when was cryptocurrencies 'ever' left or right leaning? So every single cryptocurrency is republican and right wing? Maybe Jack Dorsey is 'right wing' too and Donald Trump is a Democrat for hating Bitcoin then. It is libertarian or somewhat of an anarcho-capitalist creation; 'supposedly'.

If you are going to critique cryptocurrencies (especially Bitcoin), rather than creating an entirely fallacious blanket association of the whole industry towards the characteristics of 4chan users, critique it on its white-papers, cryptography, utility and its impact on the environment.

The author knows it is libertarian but wants to drive partisan outrage (and clickbait) with fallacious associations and focusing on how Republicans use it - most of them were banned / de-platformed from other payment platforms in the first place, which that can happen to anyone. So it is no surprise that they turn to cryptocurrencies for donations and fund-raising.

Of course, it isn't. If a republican says they like ice cream, is ice cream republican? That's obviously not how this works and the people who want you to think otherwise have a narrative they are selling.

This was an interesting podcast on the topic - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-is-a-right-win...

Occasionally someone discusses the idea of a leftist cryptocurrency but pretty much by definition you can't get rich from that so no one cares. Deflationary libertarian cryptos outcompete all others in the market so survivorship bias makes it look like crypto is inherently right-leaning. I guess really the current social/market/media/regulatory environment is easier to exploit by the right.

For a deeper consideration of this topic check out David Golumbia's book The Politics of Bitcoin.

Crypto has always been libertarian, which is a sub-branch of republican. It was never liberal or democratic leaning in the slightest. It's just a techno-fancy remix of the libertarian fixation on the gold standard.

You may be correct with respect to some pop culture version of libertarianism, but I'm a libertarian and none of that resonates with me.

First, I'm not a Republican, and libertarianism is not a "sub-branch" of that party. Second, crypto is basically a scam, there are stupid libertarians like there are stupid people in every political alignment (I'd like to be able to pretend they're not "real" libertarians or something) that have been tricked into thinking the decentralized aspect of crypto aligns with their ambitions. But I think there is a difference between the philosophy around the importance of individual freedoms, and how it manifests, including in alignment with mainstream political parties (neither of whom have individual freedoms as a key issue) or specific technologies, especially poorly understood, scammy ones

David Chaum is the first person to propose and create an anonymous digital cash so far as I'm aware. I'm not finding overt politics in a brief search, but his general leanings and statements I do find seem to be strongly libertarian, away from centralisation and government monopolies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum

Chaum is one of the names mentioned in this Reason retrospective --- the publication itself being a Libertarian mouthpiece.

https://reason.com/video/2020/10/07/before-the-web-the-1980s...

It is a Libertarian thing. A way to make transactions while staying semi-anonymous. Investing in a new way to make money via mining Bitcoins and holding onto them.

A friend of mine had $6000 in Bitcoins about 6 years ago, but killed himself. He was a Liberal Democrat. Degree in Physics.

Was his private key recovered?

No sadly it was not. It was supposed to be on his MacBook Pro but nobody knows what happened to it.

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