#1482 The New Hotness in Scam Culture (Crypto Currency and NFTs)
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2022
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 4/13/2022
Today we take a look at the mainstreaming of crypto and NFTs by celebrity endorsements, why they're terrible by nearly any metric and why they are emblematic of our broken culture.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs - Folding Ideas - Air Date 1-21-22
If someone pitches you on a "great" Web3 project, ask them if it requires buying or selling crypto to do what they say it does.
Ch. 2: NFTS and Celebrities: A Match Made in Hell? - Wisecrack - Air Date 4-4-22
How did NFTs become the new Coca-Cola? NFTs are everywhere, nowhere more so than on the lips of celebrities. But why are celebrities getting into the world of crypto? And what can the rise of celebrities endorsing NFTs tell us about our society?
Bennett and Cas are joined by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman who discuss the ideas behind their upcoming book about cryptocurrency, their issues with celebrity shilling of speculative assets, and how it really feels like corporate greed
Ch. 4: Why Scams Are Inherent To Cryptocurrency - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 3-27-22
Explaining the systemic reasons why the features of crypto are so amenable to scams
Ch. 5: Can Our Climate Survive Bitcoin? - Reveal - Air Date 3-25-22
Bitcoin’s demand for electricity is so great that it’s giving new life to the dirtiest type of power plants: ones that burn coal. In Hardin, Montana, the coal-fired power plant was on the verge of shutting down until bitcoin came to town.
Crypto specialist, Dan Olson, shares his takes on NFTs and explains pieces from his insanely popular video, "Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs." John Iadarola and Dan Olson break it down on The Damage Report.
Ch. 7: The Crypto Grift Descends on Ukraine - Scam Economy - Air Date 3-17-22
Matt Binder breaks down how grifting cryptocurrency founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and hustlers are trying to pump their money-making schemes for a profit and generate good PR for the crypto industry under the guise of charity for Ukraine.
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 12: Final comments on how people, myself included, get scammed
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions):
- Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr
- Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent
- Activism Music: This Fickle World by Theo Bard (https://theobard.bandcamp.com/track/this-fickle-world)
- Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award winning best of the left podcast in which we shall |
| 0:07.0 | take a look at the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency and NFTs by celebrity endorsements, why they're |
| 0:14.1 | terrible by nearly any metric, and why they're emblematic of our proven culture. |
| 0:20.7 | Clips today are from folding ideas, Wisecrack, Crypto Critics Corner, the majority report, |
| 0:27.7 | reveal, and the damage report with an additional member's only clip from SCAM Economy. |
| 0:40.2 | In 2008, the economy functionally collapsed. The basic chain reaction was this. Bankers took |
| 0:45.7 | mortgages and turned them into something they could gamble on. This created a bubble, |
| 0:50.2 | and then the bubble popped. When you drill down into it, you realize that the core of the |
| 0:54.4 | crypto ecosystem, the core of Web 3, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between |
| 1:00.6 | the wealthy and ultra wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff |
| 1:05.8 | Bezos, billionaires, minted by a tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification |
| 1:11.6 | and are looking for a do-over, looking to synthesize a new market where they can be the |
| 1:16.6 | one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper wealthy industrialist. It's a cat |
| 1:22.2 | fight between the 5% and the 1%. Ultimately, the driving forces underlying this entire |
| 1:27.8 | movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space |
| 1:32.8 | that they can dominate, where they can be trendsetters and taste makers and can seemingly |
| 1:37.1 | invent value through sheer force of will. This is, in my opinion, the blind spot of many |
| 1:42.2 | casual critics. The fact that tokens representing APFPs are useless, yet somehow still expensive, |
| 1:49.2 | isn't an overlooked glitch in the system, it's half the point. It's a digital extension |
| 1:54.4 | of inconvenient fashion. It's a flex and a form of myth making. And that's how it draws |
| 1:59.3 | in the bottom. People who feel their opportunities shrinking, who see the system closing around |
| 2:04.6 | them, who have become isolated by social media and a global pandemic, who feel the future |
... |
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