Cryptocurrency Updates
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When Dominic Cummings said in May that he had the “only copy of a crucial historical document” and was going to auction it off as NFT, we hoped it was just a flirtation. ephemeral with the world of blockchain. . One way to show off his technical brother credentials, perhaps, or even an attempt to push Brexit and Barnard Castle further down the suggestion list when you type “Dominic Cummings b” into Google.
But alas, it looks like our Dom is still driving this crypto wagon. Here is his last tweet “very very little appreciated” (by us anyway):
I think this is very, very little appreciated in political circles and that there will be many startups that will solve government problems based on this https://t.co/hai7i7aQbD
– Dominic Cummings (@ Dominic2306) August 24, 2021
“It” does a lot of work, doesn’t it. What is “this” in fact? Blockchain? Activating automated accounting by something crypto-flavored? And what specific “government issues” is he referring to?
As you can see, Cummings was actually quoting a quote-tweet from Balaji Srinivasan, a bitcoin-broish VC whose Twitter bio is: “Endless Money, Infinite Frontier, Eternal Life.” #Bitcoin”. Balaji quoted the following response to his tweet (yes, that’s a bit convoluted sorry):
Ironically, the majority of the world (or at least the US) is paid by the hour, an extremely inefficient system of rewarding production / impact.
– Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) August 22, 2021
(The “Carry” there is a term VC that refers to “vested interest” meaning their compensation, and not anyone who has ever been cruelly referred to as Princess Nut Nut.)
We don’t know what crypto accounting has to do with people getting paid by the hour, or how “more complex models of economic alignment” can help solve government problems. Does our Dom think complexity should be an end in itself? We assume that political circles just don’t appreciate complex, technical stuff (and maybe neither do we).
Luckily, a sane person on Twitter (yes they do exist) quickly pointed out to Dom that much of the accounting is already automated and crypto isn’t very useful in this area, but Dom used a real deal. mathematical probability to win the argument:
Chance of you knowing more about crypto than Balaji is around 0%
– Dominic Cummings (@ Dominic2306) August 24, 2021
We asked our friend Martin Walker, director of banking to finance at the Center for Evidence-Based Management, which has been advising banks on blockchain for about six years, what he thinks about the matter, and he told us :
People, usually who don’t know anything about accounting, have been putting out this c ** p for years.
He then thought he better give us a slightly more polite version, and said:
Accounting is more than keeping a record of transactions. . . The use of a form of blockchain does not in any way facilitate the modeling of financial transactions. Arguably, depending on the form of blockchain used, it can make things considerably more complicated.
During the writing of this article, Dom also retweeted the following, about the ability of a “coin community” to fundamentally solve the problem of lack of free speech:
Prediction: The one-piece community will build the frontend, backend, and payments for a sufficiently decentralized release over the next 12 months.
The tech stack is ready, the market is proven, exchanges exist and decentralized social networks are already working. Just need the teams. https://t.co/Dd7VxTUJOW
– Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) August 20, 2021
We abandon.
Related links:
Cummings swaps Barnard Castle for blockchain – FT Alphaville
