Crypto Is Still for Criming from Paul Krugman

[Martin68]

Paul Krugman's May 9th essay says "Democrats shouldn’t give this scam cover, but probably will."

"A bill that would have helped expand the use of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that, unlike Bitcoin and other early entrants, are supposed to have a fixed value in dollars — stalled in the Senate. To advance, the GENIUS Act (gag) needed 60 votes on a procedural measure. With every Democrat and 3 Republicans voting no, it only got 48 votes.

What happened? Republicans tried to ram through a bill that literally had no text. That was too much even for crypto-friendly Democrats.

The setback for Republicans also reflected the stench of Trumpist corruption that increasingly hangs over all things crypto. The $Trump and $Melania memecoins have been used for what amounts to brazen bribery. So has USD1, the stablecoin recently introduced by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto firm. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is. Thanks to crypto, the president of the United States is now effectively for sale, and the buyers appear to include not just wealthy foreigners but foreign governments."

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R! Important read, with a LOT about why crypto is so bad. As Krugman writes, "the entire crypto

enterprise is corrupt" and crimes and scams "are the whole game, more or less the only reason cryptocurrencies exist."

And the paragraph where he says that is followed by several more very scathing paragraphs about crypto, and a plea to Democrats, especially those unwisely pro-crypto after large campaign donations, to rethink their support for crypto:

Any vote that further empowers that industry is a vote for more and bigger corruption, even if you personally aren’t corrupt.