Is Crypto a racial issue now? How long was I asleep?
It isn’t, and it doesn’t need protecting. I say this as someone who was mining bitcoin back when it was still valued at under $1 a coin. The concept of bitcoin was really interesting and I had hoped that it could actually function as a digital currency outside the control of the major credit card processors. The execution however leaves much to be desired. We were promised a federated digital currency, what we got was an unregulated securities market.
Early cryptocoins had the right kind of nerds who cared about solving problems with a strange new digital… thing.
After a few years, the community stopped solving problems and focused on money-making instead. Its a distressing and sad thing to watch, but as it became obvious that Crypto was a ponzi / money making scheme, the nerds and problem-solvers disappeared. Its very demoralizing to see your hard work used for… well… evil. Maybe not the biggest evil but wantonly stealing funds through convoluted tricks and supporting literally black market evils is evil. A lesser evil than murder but evil nonetheless.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with BTC. Its just technology. But the cryptocoin world has drawn all the evil people to it, to the point that the well-meaning community has collapsed. You only see assholes with BTC these days.
There is something fundamentally wrong with BTC and cryptocurrency tech in general: it is incapable of actually addressing the problems it is nominally intended to solve.
It’s a people problem. The people don’t want to fix even well known technical issues.
Are black Americans more likely to be crypto bros? First I’m hearing of it
Maybe there is a fear banks will screw them over?
How about we just do reparations instead of protecting a toxic, scam-filled industry? Anyone? No?
Comment sections for this article have some serious “all lives matter” vibes. These policies likely matter to black people, especially black men, because they’re disproportionately impacted by them.
They’re 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for possession. But almost 10x more likely in some red states.
https://graphics.aclu.org/marijuana-arrest-report/
Want to know what’s a big barrier to economic success? A felony like getting busted with cannabis.
Why Crypto? Well a disproportionate number of Black people don’t trust the banks or financial services in general, and are under serviced by them. There is a generational mistrust of banks due to discriminatory practices in the banking sector. They’re five times more likely to not even have a bank account than white households. This makes loans to start a business harder to get, it increases costs to cash cheques and pushes black people towards less traditional financing or banking services like crypto.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/building-trust-financial-system-key-closing-racial-wealth-gap
Folks, I’m just saying, we all know that you too are impacted by these things, but it’s not out of line at all to direct messages to those who are impacted the most.
When a hurricane hits Florida, threads don’t full up with comments “what about Maine?”
I did a double-take at that title so hard, I think I have ass whiplash.
I don’t understand the connection between crypto, weed, and black men…
I don’t really see one either, but maybe it’s more about how some cops are abusing laws against weed to systematically target black people?
The link to black men is pretty clear as far as I’m concerned. Possession is used as an excuse to target black men, to increase sentences, to imprison, it’s no joke.
Crypto? WTAF?
I just became black, who knew!
No racist overtones there.
To be fair… When the article’s opening line is “In outreach to Black Men”, it doesn’t really matter what you put after. It’s going to sound bad.
Right - I just mean literally any attempt to try and cater to a specific group is gonna be like this.
Both campaigns go after different groups. I just think literally anything that is contained in these are going to sound racist.
In a less charged example, both candidates try and appeal to women. Those could be viewed as sexist.
