Much as it can be enjoyable to poke fun at the crypto bros — with their silly memes, irritating acronyms, puerile jokes and frankly ridiculous ideas about the world — I have to confess: I don’t believe they’re the main problem. As far as I’m concerned it’s the earnest, strait-laced types who insist that we should all be taking the whole thing terribly seriously who pose the biggest threat to our survival as a rational and prosperous society. Welcome to the plague of what I like to call “sensible crypto”. What I am talking about when I use this oxymoron is the men in suits — and it is most commonly men, though there are women too — who will tell you that sure, the vast majority of cryptoland is a gigantic grift, but that their crypto coin is going to change the way we send money around the world, making the financial system fairer and more inclusive and democratic.
It’s the political leaders who insist that we must embrace this noxious industry in order to stay at the cutting edge of innovation. It’s the Wall Street types with money to lose who appear on CNBC to tell the less well-off that crypto is a safe place to put their money. And yes, it’s the crypto exchange bosses who don’t care about the Lambos and designer clothes; they just want to make a few billion dollars so they give it all away and make the world a better place.
These people lend credibility to a high-risk, opaque and ill-understood industry that should be thought of as something between a multilevel marketing scheme and a Ponzi scheme, that preys on — and indeed relies upon — those who cannot afford to gamble their money away.