2021-09-02
Afghanistan and Cryptocurrency
- Clarifies he never said crypto would save Afghanistan, only that the Taliban's return may drive adoption of parallel settlement systems.
- A broader essay on the post-truth media environment, from fake price headlines to CoinDesk's crypto-colonialism attack on the Ethiopia work.
- Argues the industry must build information-vetting systems since legacy institutions no longer filter truth by design.
- Warns of deepfakes, social-media censorship, and legacy propaganda, framing inclusive accountability and critical thinking as the defense.
26 entries
Opens from Colorado to clarify media reporting that he claimed crypto would save Afghanistan, which he never said.
He only noted the Taliban's presence may drive crypto adoption among opposition needing a parallel settlement system and rebels needing funding easier to send as digital assets to the Northern Alliance than pallets of cash, a case study in offensive and defensive crypto in nation-state conflicts amid sanctions.
Press coverage falls into price mania, like a BitBoy podcaster amplifying a CoinGape article on a fake giveaway-scam headline that he said Cardano would hit 150 dollars, with no fact-checking.
IOG will never comment on ADA's price or valuation, focusing only on use, utility, and adoption, though he will jab at Poly Market from time to time.
Cites FUD like CoinDesk's crypto-colonialism article attacking the Ethiopia work as white guys screwing Ethiopians, and CoinTelegraph misquoting a 90 percent collapse, expecting no fair press for 30 to 60 days.
IOG tries to communicate precisely via Cardano 360, the Summit September 25th at the University of Wyoming with 30,000 registrants targeting 50,000, blog posts, Twitter, podcasts, and AMAs.
People still fall for giveaway scams and read false things at face value with no due diligence on facts or authors, so the ecosystem needs incentives and tools to vet information.
Proposes a whitelist and blacklist for information, treating everything unvetted as the red zone until proven credible, since brand names like the New York Times or CoinDesk no longer guarantee vetting given agendas and subjectivity in the press.
Vetting information is the basis of a good social network that Twitter and others are exploring and some will launch on Cardano, applying first principles and 20 years of de-radicalization and fake-news R&D from the war on terrorism.
Warns deepfakes will let AI create legitimate-seeming fake videos, citing Pizzagate where people believed Hillary Clinton was harvesting adrenochrome, and that persistent propaganda already contaminates thinking so even his consistent vaccine videos get him called both a New World Order shill and a libertarian crazy.
As crypto grows this becomes one of the biggest battles, with Paul Krugman and John Paulson calling crypto rat poison and a Ponzi despite overwhelming evidence, which is propaganda protecting a legacy system they benefit from.
Privacy, resilience, decentralization, governance, and spreading to as many users as possible are defensive measures, since the institutions people rely on to filter information are not working by design via click-optimization or protectionist agendas.
The infrastructure bill showed how misinformation spread about a simple overly-broad tax definition, framing corrections as supporting tax evasion, a sample of dialed-up misinformation to come as regulation is written.
The industry must build media systems that vet and validate information toward objective truth and install them into new media, government, and corporate decision-making over 10 to 30 years.
Warns the legacy system will otherwise use misinformation to justify unnecessary regulation or outright bans, stripping the industry's soul to enforce a morally bankrupt legacy system.
Lists objectively false narratives pushed for six months: double spends in Cardano, extended UTXO being a private blockchain, and Cardano not being decentralized, which are verifiably untrue.
A maximalist-believed narrative that Cardano has infinite inflation instead of a fixed monetary policy, spreading like wildfire in a dry forest of biomass no one cleans up.
Sees authoritarianism in social media, unable to search Israel-revokes-vaccine-passport on Twitter and getting stock COVID answers, warning private companies could form a cabal deciding crypto is like anti-vaxxing with chyrons on his videos in two or three years pointing to a government website, since no law constrains them.
Contrasts inclusive accountability, where a Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Cardano full node verifies a transaction without trusting anyone, with the flow of information and censorship standards in social and mainstream media.
Cites Ivermectin, where meta-analyses show some mortality-reduction evidence more than FDA-authorized Remdesivir, yet journalists with no medical experience proclaim it a fake drug, an honest conversation society cannot have.
Warns this censorship extends to who is a legitimate candidate or solution, like a revolutionary geothermal technology delegitimized by a co-opted institution and deplatformed, and that a free society embraces even wrong ideas because of critical thinking while only those who fear ideas censor them.
AI built correctly is a companion to organize and reveal human biases, and prediction markets are tools, so a free society should upgrade its software as people to sort fact from fiction rather than censoring.
Embracing censorship would have silenced the American Revolution, the Civil War's equality, the civil rights movement, the Church Committee, and the Pentagon Papers, which is fundamentally un-American.
Recalls the Ron Paul movement of 2007-2008 predicting the Afghanistan withdrawal, sound money as debt passed 25 trillion, and the spy state later confirmed by Edward Snowden, all mocked then vindicated, and says COVID is that on steroids becoming the institutionalized new normal unless people build a better system.
Cites a McKinsey report that over 70 percent of workers fear sharing controversial ideas even privately, which is a society built on control, and says IOG as a systems company thinks deeply about these problems.
Holding ADA gives a Catalyst and CIP vote, so they have a moral obligation to ensure the crowd is wise and not co-opted by demagoguery and propaganda, making these tools essential for Cardano and a free society, a passion for 2022 as developers free up, knowing they got it right when polarization gives way to deliberative quiet thinking closer to the truth.