\u201cAnyone who says that David Gerard personally stopped their crypto getting into Wikipedia is a fuckwit,\u201d says editor, Wikimedia spokesman and professional crypto hater David Gerard in his typically no-nonsense fashion.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of fuckwits.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Gerard is not passionately arguing against cryptocurrencies in Wikipedia editor discussions, the author of the 2017 self-published hit Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain can be found prosecuting the case against Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto on the BBC or in the Financial Times.<\/p>\n
Even among the most notable crypto critics, Gerard stands out. He\u2018s hated Bitcoin and blockchain for more than a decade since BTC was first discussed as an alternative funding source for Wikileaks after mainstream payment processors cut it off.<\/p>\n For Gerard, like a number of other critics, the problem with Bitcoin isn\u2019t just that it\u2019s a hyped-up Ponzi scheme or a glorified database with no genuine use case \u2014 he sees it as philosophically and politically wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw that Bitcoin was created by internet libertarians and figured that would predict everything about it,\u201d he tells Magazine. \u201cI was correct. People who think they don\u2018t need to know what they\u2018re talking about and can reinvent it all from first principles are certain to fuck up in predictable ways, and they have.\u201d<\/p>\n For Gerard \u2014 who leans left and describes himself as \u201cliberal\u201d \u2014 Bitcoin appears to be a right-wing Libertarian project and that\u2019s reason enough to oppose it.<\/p>\n \u201cLibertarianism as a political ideology is fundamentally childish and dumb as hell. Growing up in Australia, I didn\u2018t even believe this shit was real \u2014 I thought Libertarianism was some sort of savage Swiftian satire, not a thing people would actually believe. Then I got on the internet, and oh well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Gerard isn\u2019t the only professional Bitcoin hater out there, with the sector attracting more well-known skeptics and vehement opponents than most. That may be partly because the crypto community seems to hang on their every salvo and negative tweet in a sort of sadomasochistic relationship.<\/p>\n The crypto haters are loud and proud, from gold bug Peter Schiff tweeting in delight at every price drop in his attempts to flog gold to economist Nouriel Roubini shouting bad-tempered invective about criminal Ponzi-like bubbles. They\u2019re not all a bunch of Luddites either: Some have impressive credentials like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman or Nassim Taleb who wrote the celebrated book The Black Swan<\/em> but went on to interject the word \u2018Bitdiot\u2019 into every other tweet.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And, there are plenty of grassroots opponents, too, like the zeitgeist style criticisms from NFT haters in the art community who see it as environment-destroying cancer or those in the gaming community who picture it as a shameless cash grab from game developers trying to squeeze another dollar out of users.<\/p>\n The question is: Why do crypto critics bother? What is it about the sector that both fascinates and repels them? Why don\u2019t they just say, \u201cmeh, it\u2019s not for me,\u201d and get on with their lives?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n this guy works on the most useless tech on the planet\u2026 private blockchains 👇🏻 https:\/\/t.co\/hMoob0qUSq<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Dean Eigenmann (@DeanEigenmann) February 1, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I ask Gerard, who spends much of his waking hours scanning the internet for negative crypto news stories to feed into his blog. Gerard sold 14,000 copies of Attack<\/em> \u2014 an almost unheard-of number for a self-published book in the United Kingdom \u2014 so a certain degree of professional success is undoubtedly part of the appeal. He\u2019s transformed the book into a blog that averages 1000-3000 hits a day, while particularly strong stories like his reports on El Salvador\u2019s Bitcoin Law can get 10,000 hits.<\/p>\n He says that he just can\u2019t look away. \u201cThere\u2018s always stuff to cover, but it is fascinating \u2014 it\u2018s such an endless cavalcade of grifters, suckers and suckers who think they\u2018re the grifter,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe moral core of Attack is that scams and scammers are bad and reprehensible. But, the hilarious stupidity is inexhaustible. There\u2018s always another story to tell about dumb crooks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cIf crypto people would like me to stop, probably the first thing they need to do is stop feeding me material.\u201d<\/p>\n By curious coincidence around about the same time that the Cypherpunks were dreaming up e-cash outside the control of governments in the mid-1990s, Gerard and I were uni student housemates in a shabby former brothel in Brunswick, Australia. I hadn\u2019t seen him since until he popped up in an interview for the film Cryptopia.<\/p>\n Back then, he was a greasy-haired music nerd and student newspaper editor who got into a massive fight with local Scientologists after running an expose on the cult-like aspects of the church and revealing its secrets about the alien Xenu who\u2026 well, you can look it up. The Scientologists were incensed and stole all the print copies. Gerard then started up the Australian Critics of Scientology webpage to get the material out.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Given the almost certain legal action from the church, hosting such a site was a risky endeavor. Gerard enlisted the help of a young hacker and Cypherpunk named Julian Assange, who was the system administrator of a free speech devoted ISP called Suburbia.net.<\/p>\n He recounted the experience in a recent podcast, noting that Assange had \u201ctitanium balls. Depleted uranium nutsack, it was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor about four years there he was getting legal threats, investigators coming around [\u2026] I will say that he stood by me absolutely reliably at that time, in what most people would call quite trying circumstances. I think that\u2018s because we both have the sort of inclination, the sort of person whose response to any slight whatsoever is \u2018bring it on.\u2019 Neither of us knew how to back down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Assange later said the experience with the Scientology site helped him realize how a certain platform called Wikileaks could work.<\/p>\n Gerard was as passionate then about fighting the cult of Scientology as he is today about fighting crypto, and it\u2019s hard not to conclude that he sees himself as the lone voice of reason fighting against indoctrination and insanity in both cases. In a similar fashion, both Schiff and Roubini famously predicted the global financial crisis and now take pride in their ability to see through what they believe is the hype of blockchain and expose its hollow core.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike many critics, Gerard actually does his research and is quite well informed about issues in the space, so if you can handle his relentlessly negative approach and frequently 100% wrong conclusions about how irredeemably terrible everything in crypto is, you\u2019ll probably find at least some crypto news on his blog you won\u2019t have seen elsewhere. In fact, anyone enthusiastic about crypto should probably follow at least a couple of skeptics to ensure they\u2018re getting the other side of the story.<\/p>\n Filmmaker Torsten Hoffman tells Magazine he featured Gerard in his award-winning 2020 Cryptopia documentary because \u201csome of his points are well informed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the film, his take on corporate blockchain projects was spot on. They are often just disguised centralized database projects that the chief technology officer re-branded into blockchain in order to get the budget approved and a NYT headline.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But, Gerard and one or two others are the exceptions that prove the rule. By and large, crypto critics appear to have no idea what they\u2019re talking about. Taleb wrote an academic paper suggesting that the main Bitcoin blockchain will die because all the Bitcoin will move to the Lightning Network. Krugman has been recycling the same views he had more than a decade ago that Bitcoin\u2018s a bubble based on nothing that sets the monetary system back 300 years and is comparable to Bernie Maddoff\u2018s Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n skeptics imagining all the scenarios in which crypto fails but ignoring the one reality in which its working pic.twitter.com\/oi4HO6rcfg<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 David Canellis (@dcanellis) March 28, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Economics Professor Jason Potts, the co-director of the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT in Melbourne, believes there\u2018s nothing like good criticism to sharpen your ideas and thinking<\/a>. The trouble is, most of the current crop of crypto critics offer arguments that are nothing like good criticism.<\/p>\n \u201cI think criticism has an incredibly important role in any intellectual endeavor. You\u2018re developing ideas and you need critics of ideas to help shape their development,\u201d he says. \u201cMy perspective is that in the blockchain space, kind of since the beginning, the self-identified critics have been pretty underwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Potts believes that the rapid evolution of the technology and the concepts involved means anyone not immersed in the topic risks being left behind.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is such a fast moving experimental space where just the knowledge gap between the frontiers and what we knew before is so vast, that unless you\u2018re actually involved in the space and building, it\u2018s really easy just to fundamentally misunderstand what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So, why is it that the crypto community actively seems to enjoy the haters? Roubini has appeared at crypto conferences around the world, where he\u2018s dragged out like an ill-tempered performing monkey to rehash the same arguments for money in debates against crypto proponents from BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes to Bitcoin Cash\u2019s Roger Ver.<\/p>\n And, Schiff\u2018s following seems to be overwhelmingly Bitcoiners. When his son Spencer decided to go all-in on Bitcoin rather than gold, the elder Schiff put up a Twitter poll asking: \u201cWhose advice do you want to follow? A 57-year-old experienced investor\/business owner who\u2018s been an investment professional for over 30 years or an 18-year-old college freshman who\u2018s never even had a job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Against my advice my son @SchiffSpencer<\/a> just bought even more #Bitcoin<\/a>. Whose advice do you want to follow? A 57-year-old experienced investor\/business owner who’s been an investment professional for over 30 years or an 18-year-old college freshman who’s never even had a job.<\/p>\n \u2014 Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) September 7, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The fact that 81% of 83,000 respondents picked \u201cthe kid\u201d suggests a large part of his 650,000 Twitter followers are actually just Bitcoiners that love to hate-read his posts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that the fascination comes from a perverse sense of pride and enjoyment in listening to the haters, given Bitcoin has been declared<\/a> dead by the media 446 times. Yet, the price keeps going up year after year as more and more institutions come on board. Vindication is a great feeling.<\/p>\n Hoffman, who\u2018s currently working on re-releasing his 2015 documentary Bitcoin: The End Of Money As We Know It,<\/em> points out that Schiff exploits this dynamic for his own ends.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2018s give the man some credit. He\u2018s a master troll. His crusade against Bitcoin \u2014 and Bitcoiners crusade against Schiff \u2014 just helps with getting more retweets, podcast downloads and page views. See, we\u2018re talking about him right here\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Rumor has it that Roubini could almost retire off a few more crypto conference appearances.<\/p>\n \u201cRoubini has allegedly made a nice side career with six-digit speaking fees ranting about crypto,\u201d says Hoffman. \u201cThat doesn\u2018t make everything he says wrong, but maybe we should look at people 40 years younger when it comes to understanding the crypto economy.\u201d<\/p>\n BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes said something similar after the famed Tangle in Tapei debate with Roubini in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was quite clear that Roubini is a one-trick pony,\u201d he added. \u201cHe increases his publicity by being hyper-critical of Bitcoin regardless of the actual facts. And that is why the media trots him out whenever they need someone to bash Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayes, of course, later pleaded guilty on charges related to Anti-Money Laundering provisions and agreed to pay a $10 million fine, which lends some credence to Roubini\u2019s criticism that \u201cBitMEX is just an example of everything that is sick and wrong in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n sometimes it seems like it is, given the fondness for replies like these pic.twitter.com\/t01LM905TY<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Molly White (@molly0xFFF) March 27, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Everything new has its critics, of course. When mobile phones came out, anyone seen carrying one was reviled. When MP3 players arrived, no one thought carrying around a flash drive with three albums of low-quality music files was going to take off.<\/p>\n But, as Potts points out, disruptive tech also has to fight against those who benefit from the existing system.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what is coming as criticism of the Bitcoin blockchain, crypto space is really just straight-up standard defensive maneuvers from existing power structures, and that doesn\u2018t strike me as an effective critique, that strikes me as just defensive of the status quo,\u201d says Potts.<\/p>\n Potts says Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are a case in point. Buffett thinks Bitcoin is \u201crat poison squared\u201d and Munger compared it to venereal disease:<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2018re invested in a previous set of institutional technologies and business models that are heavily reliant on the ways in which money and payments and registries and incentive structures organizations work. This is highly disruptive [\u2026] Therefore, just for purely shareholder self interest reasons, they don\u2018t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Krugman has been quite explicit about the need to defend the existing financial order against Bitcoin since he first criticized it in the New York Times in September 2011.<\/p>\n He argued that if Bitcoin became a reserve currency, its fixed supply would mean central bankers couldn\u2018t inflate the money supply to stimulate the economy. In 2013, he approvingly quotes Charlie Stross in a blog post titled \u201cBitcoin is evil.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind\u2014to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n Bitcoiners like to respond to his criticisms by pointing to his 1998 prediction that \u201cBy 2005, it will become clear that the internet\u2019s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2018s far smarter than I ever will be,\u201d says Potts \u201cBut, he\u2018s been very brave and making a lot of claims out loud that, in retrospect, they\u2018ve just been laughably wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are other economists, people like Larry White\u00a0and others, macro monetary specialists and theorists who provide far more nuanced and sharper critique and are advancing an interesting critique of the space.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This you bro? 😂 \u2014 Bitcoin Archive 🗄🚀🌔 (@BTC_Archive) June 6, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The lack of regulation and a plethora of get-rich-quick investors who don\u2019t understand the tech make crypto easy pickings for scammers. This is a driving motivation for critics like the Twitter influencer Mr Whale \u2014 whose bearish and contrarian takes have seen him amass over 430,000 followers \u2014 and independent \u201cnocoiner\u201d journalist Amy Castor. (Both declined to be interviewed for this piece.)<\/p>\n They believe the entire industry is wracked with financial fraud, from the QuadrigaX scandal (involving lost wallet keys, sudden death and an insolvent exchange) to the truth about the stablecoin issuer behind Tether.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n While many journalists in crypto have reservations about Tether, some critics believe that it is an unquestionable fact Tether is unbacked and essentially printed $83 billion in USDT out of thin air.<\/p>\n This appears to be the logic behind Castor\u2019s most famous and often referenced tweet, which makes no sense from a Bitcoin proponent\u2018s perspective, but makes total sense if you believe that everything about crypto is manipulated:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see the price of Bitcoin hitting new highs like this, it means large holders are cashing out\u2014ahead of the crash, which they all know is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tether has survived a New York Attorney General\u2019s investigation and court case about its reserves, so if it is a perpetual money printing machine, they\u2018ve done very well to keep it going. Of course, given some of the stuff that really does go on in crypto, that\u2018s not a non-zero possibility.<\/p>\n As Gerard\u2019s hatred of Libertarians suggests, a reaction to the perceived politics of Bitcoin is a strong motivation for many. While technology is arguably politically neutral, that\u2019s not how crypto critics see it.<\/p>\n David Golumbia wrote The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism<\/em>, which argues that Bitcoin was borne out of the right-wing conspiratorial Libertarian culture of the Cypherpunks and that the technology itself is inherently right wing.<\/p>\n![\"David](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/david-263x300.jpg\")
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Crypto dystopians<\/h4>\n
![\"Crypto](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/magazine-Cryptos-critics-1024x576.jpg\")
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Endless cavalcade of conmen<\/h4>\n
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A long time ago, in a former brothel<\/h4>\n
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Nothing like good criticism<\/h4>\n
![\"Jason](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Big-Ideas-Jason-Potts-1024x576.jpg\")
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Loving the haters<\/h4>\n
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The old guard<\/h4>\n
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Wrong about #Bitcoin<\/a> since 2011
\u2014 citing Paul Krugman! 🤡 https:\/\/t.co\/fIprnim8ao<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/wwJ9DxWvNY<\/a><\/p>\nScams and fraud<\/h4>\n
![\"Amy](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/amy.png\")
Political enemies<\/h4>\n