Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto's Nouveau Riche

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: December 9, 2018 at 2:10:22 AM GMT+9
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto's Nouveau Riche
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche
> By Laurie Penny
> Dec 5 2018
> <https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/>
>
> Draw me your map of utopia and I’ll tell you your tragic flaw. In 10 years of political reporting I’ve met a lot of 
> intense, oddly dressed people with very specific ideas about what the perfect world would look like, some of them in 
> elected office—but none quite so strange as the ideological soup of starry-eyed techno-utopians and sketchy-ass 
> crypto-grifters on the 2018 CoinsBank Blockchain Cruise.
>
> It happened like this.
>
> Two months ago, an editor from BREAKER called and asked if I wanted to go on a four-day Mediterranean cruise with 
> hundreds of crypto-crazed investors and evangelists. We’ll cover the travel, he said. Write something long about 
> whatever you find, he said. It was 2 a.m. and I was over-caffeinated. I remember explaining that I know almost 
> nothing about either cruises or blockchain, in the way that Sir Ian McKellen, in the criminally underrated series 
> Extras, explains that he is not actuallya wizard. Five days later I was at the port of Barcelona, boarding a ship. By 
> which point it was way too late to wonder for the umpteenth time about my life choices.
>
> I knew about bitcoin only as an investment vehicle favored by several essentially sweet nerds close to my heart—and I 
> knew, too, that cryptocurrencies are the pet untraceable funding model of the far-right. I was told there would be an 
> overall “Burning Man theme” to the adventure, guaranteed by the presence of Brock Pierce, the cryptocurrency mogul, 
> former child actor, and one-man art installation about peer pressure. (More about him later.) I was anticipating 
> evenings spent listening to crypto-hippies describe the angel-faced space elves they met when they took DMT. I was 
> expecting to fetch water and painkillers for half-conscious corporate executives with dust in their perfect hair and 
> no idea how to get home. I was expecting to get a bit carried away and end up shouting about the government and 
> chalking poetry all over the walls. I was expecting to hear very rich men talk without blinking about tax planning 
> and sacred geometry. I was expecting corporate-branded swimwear. I was expecting to meet smug Californian 
> polyamorists, about whom smug European polyamorists like me are relentlessly judgy. Reader, all of these things 
> transpired, but by the time they did they were a blessed relief.
>
> Let’s step back a moment. For those of you still idling by the side of the cryptocurrency bandwagon, here’s a brief 
> primer, based on a week’s frantic pre-trip cramming. Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies, which are 
> peer-to-peer electronic cash systems unregulated by any central authority. The system bitcoin, pioneered by an 
> anonymous genius (or geniuses) going by the handle “Satoshi Nakamoto” in 2008, was the first digital currency. Those 
> who bought bitcoin at the start are now on-paper squidzillionaires. Other, newer currencies like Ethereum, Ripple, 
> and Bitcoin Cash, are emerging—and there are obvious reasons to get behind the idea of decentralizing the financial 
> system. Beyond money, blockchain has lots of exciting potential applications with very few actual users. For 
> instance, in October, artist Kelly Donnelly released the feminist anthem “I Am She” using Ethereum, making it, in her 
> words, the “first unblockable music video ever released … meaning women living in censored regions like Iran, Saudi 
> Arabia, China, and Turkey have been able to watch the video.” Sounds good to me.
>
> In the short term, though, that’s not what most big players care about—and the major social change blockchain has 
> brought about so far is that a small number of people have become very rich indeed. As blockchain skeptic David 
> Gerard writes, “the cryptocurrency field is replete with scams and scammers. The technology is used as an excuse to 
> make outlandish near-magical claims. When phrases like ‘a whole new form of money’ or ‘the old rules don’t apply any 
> more’ start going around, people get gullible and the ethically-challenged get creative.”
>
> CoinsBank, the company organizing the cruise, has left little welcome gift boxes in each of the rooms. They contain: 
> painkillers, Alka-Seltzer, several condoms, the world's flimsiest pregnancy test, and a half-bottle of Jägermeister.
>
> A huge bitcoin price crash occurs a few hours before we set sail. As I board, I am surprised to find that nobody 
> seems to be particularly worried. CoinsBank, the company organizing the cruise, has left little welcome gift boxes in 
> each of the rooms. They contain painkillers, Alka-Seltzer, several condoms, the world’s flimsiest pregnancy test, and 
> a half-bottle of Jägermeister. It’s the kind of thing you’d leave at the bottom of the chimney for Skeezy Uncle 
> Santa, hoping he’ll stuff a new sex doll under your tree.
>
> The women on this boat are polished and perfect; the men, by contrast, seem strangely cured—not like medicine, but 
> like meat. They are almost all white, between the ages of 30 and 50, and are trying very hard to have the good time 
> they paid thousands for, while remaining professional in a scene where many thought leaders have murky pasts, a 
> tendency to talk like YouTube conspiracy preachers, and/or the habit of appearing in magazines naked and covered in 
> strawberries. That last is 73-year-old John McAfee, who got rich with the anti-virus software McAfee Security before 
> jumping into cryptocurrencies. He is the man most of the acolytes here are keenest to get their picture taken with 
> and is constantly surrounded by private security who do their best to aesthetically out-thug every Armani-suited 
> Russian skinhead on deck. Occasionally he commandeers the grand piano in the guest lounge, and the young 
> live-streamers clamor for the best shot. John McAfee has never been convicted of rape and murder, but—crucially—not 
> in the same way that you or I have never been convicted of rape or murder. I do not interview John McAfee. He 
> interests me less than he scares the shit out of me, though his entourage seems relaxed. They’re already living in 
> the crypto-utopia behind his strange pale-blue eyes.
>
> [snip]
>
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