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My response to Scott's post “Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds”.
Scott Alexander argues that Marc Andreessen’s ‘crypto PAC’ was a success and validates his thesis that donors should donate more. But the evidence of success is lacking, and it's way premature to say he and other crypto donors succeeded.
In fact, something interesting and unexpected happened instead, which runs counter to scott's thesis and premature victory lap: those who donated the least, nothing, or originally opposed Trump and his supporters, got the most and the biggest embrace by Trump. They got actual taxpayer-funded bailouts and other initiatives, but crypto donors got little to nothing. No taxpayer-funded crypto purchases.
So what to make of this? I would say that this again shows why donors do not donate more. There is no assurance of success. Crypto donors wanted Trump to make crypto a priority, and at best it has been pushed to the backburner compared to AI, chips, quantum and other stuff.
You can't just compare outcomes to determine the success of an intervention unless you know the counterfactual outcomes would otherwise be the same! Semiconductor companies were not at risk of the U.S. government banning CPUs, while cryptocurrency companies were at serious risk of the government banning or heavily restricting key features of their business.
Imagine a lobbyist for a criminal justice reform group was bragging about his campaign's success. He thinks they did pretty well: they got rid of a 3-strikes law, reduced minimum sentences, and made more people eligible for parole. But a veterans' lobbyist hears this and responds "Parole? I'll have you know that my lobbying is so effective that they don't throw people in prison for being veterans at all!".
But was crypto at much risk of being regulated out of existence? Bitcoin had gotten as high as $70k when Biden was in office and the 2024 election uncertain. In fact, bitcoin was as high as $60k in early 2021, when Trump was not even seen as a contender due to jan 6th, and it was assumed Biden would be reelected. In 2021, NFTs and other stuff thrived as well, only to collapse in 2022, not because of regulation, but the inherent unsustainability of paying $300k for a picture. The original bitcoin ETFs were approved under Biden no less. Those were highly controversial. Meanwhile , approval for the XRP ETFs under trump was delayed repeatedly https://www.tradingview.com/news/coinpedia:8424cad94094b:0-ripple-s-xrp-etf-misses-another-deadline-are-they-facing-rejection/.
Of course, the counterfactual would be worse under kamala, but how much is that worth when you don't get any of the other stuff, e.g. a reserve funded by purchases? This was a main selling point; in fact, donors rolled out the red carpet for Trump in 2024 on that promise https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trumps-plan-to-hoard-billions-in-bitcoin-has-economists-stumped/ So he signed an executive order for a stockpile, which is not a reserve, and it has sat unfunded as $ goes to Ai and chips, which donated nothing, and there is no evidence to suggest any additional progress will be made. This sounds like a disappointment to me.
Binance and BitMEX CEO indictments. FinCEN guidance outlawing DeFI unless you do KYC which practically kills it (e.g. Bitcoin Lightning liquidity very limited as a result). Head of SEC refusing to give straight answers on whether things like Ethereum are a security.
They couldn't take these steps when everyone was getting rich but a lot of shit went down during the Biden era crypto winter.
That is a far cry or goalpost moving from his original claim of crypto being at risk of being regulated out of existence. The fact bitcoin was trading at $60k in 2021 when Biden was in power, was indicative of confidence in the future of crypto. Coinbase stock was at $300 after its IPO in 2021. 2022 was so bad for crypto due to high correlation with the nasdaq, rising interest rates, and stagflation , not regulatory concerns.
Bitcoin has basically been stuck in the $90-110k range since Jan 2025 despite the nasdaq ripping higher practically everyday and Trump in office.
The phrasing originally used by @sodiummuffin was:
I think that a total 'crypto' ban, i.e. making bitcoin as illegal for Americans to own as cocaine is, was always unlikely. But if you are a crypto company, you are vulnerable to far lesser government interference.
As an analogy, suppose your industry is in the business of selling ammonium nitrate to private customers over the counter. Some of you customers may use it as fertilizer in their gardens, others may use it to make stuff go boom. Business is great with both groups. Sure, sometimes a factory goes boom, but other companies will pop up to satisfy the market demand.
To destroy your industry, the government does not have to outright ban NH4NO3. They can simply step in and pass regulations. Suddenly, "able to figure out how to run Haber-Bosch" is no longer sufficient qualification for manufacturing it. Instead, there are safety standard, certifications, audits, et cetera. And the same goes for selling: you are suddenly required to check that your customers are certified and have a legitimate use. While the regulations might technically allow someone to get certified and buy 100g of AN to fertilize his front yard, the process is designed with bigtime farmers in mind, and nobody is going to bother spending thousands of dollars for that. In fact, anyone buying small quantities of the stuff is a big red flag.
So while AN is technically legal but regulated, your business of cheaply manufacturing it and selling it in hardware stores to the public is suddenly no longer viable.
(The analogy is not perfect, AN is much more intrinsically useful than cryptocurrencies are, and personally I am a lot more willing to have my government prevent my neighbor from mixing ANFO than I am with them preventing her from buying drugs on the darknet.)
In its hayday, the crypto currency industry was a total wild west. Straightforward scams, pyramid schemes, whatever FTX was, the NFT craze. The end uses are to hide assets from the government and to conduct transactions which the government does not want you to conduct. (I think that there is a point to be made that the latter use is at times actually rather pro-social, allowing people to work around de-banking and donating to wikileaks. But good luck convincing your government of that!) Then there is the fact that there is a big traditional financial industry, which has a ton of regulations and decades of experience lobbying politicians to ensure regulatory capture, which were likely less than keen to compete with unregulated crypto bros. They would probably have preferred regulations to the effect that US residents can only buy crypto assets from their home bank.
So in short, the threat that most crypto businesses in the US would be regulated out of existence seemed very real to me.
But this was when Biden was in office. And there was hardly any crackdown. FTX only failed under its own negligence. Of course, there was an increase of KYC/AML, but this is standard banking practice. It's no surprise crypto is no exception.
I disagree. Coinbase and other exchanges boomed in 2021 again when Biden was in office. The bust was due to the price collapsing in 2022 as part of the broader stagnation and rate hikes by a hawkish fed.
I agree there is more regulatory clarity, and more favorable regulation given the counterfactual under Kamala, hence why Bitcoin went up after trump won.
But the past 6 months has seen a worsening picture as Bitcoin falls and lag the QQQ , like today, last week, week before, etc . Trump has at best signaled indifference or apathy to the Bitcoin reserve...doesn't even talk about it. And his very own Treasury Secretary ruled out purchases, basically a huge disservice to those donors.
If I were a donor I would be mad that Trump has dropped the ball . Maybe some donors got their money worth with only the regulatory aspect and the initial Bitcoin price surge, but there are still three more years, and things do not look good. I still stand by my argument it's premature saying the donors "won". Yes, in Jan 2025 it seemed that way, but not anymore.
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Although I agree with you that some crimes are pro-social, I think you have to be very libertarian to think that crime is pro-social on net. Binance facilitated all the crimes, not all of which were victimless, notably including terrorism and human trafficking as well as the usual picayune stuff like ransomware.
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