Tech Community Criticises ‘Anti-Crypto’ Letter to US Congress

On June 1, a group of technology professionals published an open letter calling on the US Congress to resist the lobbying of participants in the cryptocurrency industry and take action against the developing sector.

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The letter was signed by 26 scientists and staff from tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. They asked policymakers to question the assertion of a ‘unconditional boon’ that cryptocurrencies bring.

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“Not all innovations are unconditionally good; not everything we can create should be created. The history of technological development is full of dead ends, false starts and wrong turns.”

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The signatories argue that blockchain technology “is poorly suited for virtually all of the purposes that are presented as existing or potential sources of public good.”

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According to them, distributed-ledger-based products have no application in the real economy but are “instruments for highly volatile and speculative investment schemes.” The authors argue that this poses a threat to ordinary citizens.

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“We recommend that Congress not pay attention to the hype around the industry and focus not only on its intrinsic shortcomings and significant defects but also on the list of technological fallacies on which it is built,” they said.

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The letter drew a response from the community. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin noted that among the authors is tech journalist Cory Doctorow, whom some considered an advocate of blockchain technology.

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Buterin agreed that in recent years the crypto community has become more hostile. In his view, this is a consequence of the growth of the industry and the contradictions that have arisen within it.

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A big difference between the “new idealistic movement” scene 10-15 years ago vs today is that back then it felt possible to be on all the good-guy teams at the same time. Today, much more adversarial thinking and conflict.

I’ve been trying to understand.. where to from here?

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2022

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“The big difference between the scene of the ‘new idealistic movement’ 10-15 years ago and today is that back then it seemed possible to be on all the good-guy teams at the same time. Today, adversarial thinking and conflicts prevail,” he wrote.

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According to Buterin, the emergence of different classes of “normal people” and unscrupulous players is an inevitable part of growth. He noted that the same is happening in non-financial sectors.

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The letter was criticised by Bradley Rettler, a philosophy professor at the University of Wyoming. He said the authors did not back the presented theses with any evidence.

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I’ve now read the tech bros’ anti-crypto letter.

tl;dr When you’re writing an essay, you need to support your claims — the bolder the claim, the more support needed. This letter is long on bold claims and short on support. In short, it’s shockingly bad.

A 🧵

1/24

— Bradley Rettler (@rettlerb) June 1, 2022

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“When you write an essay, you need to back up your claims — the bolder the claim, the more support is needed. In this letter, there are many bold claims and little argument. In short, it is shockingly bad,” he wrote.

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Rettler noted that blockchain technology was never called “unconditionally good,” and none of the major players in the cryptocurrency industry called for anarchy instead of regulation.

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Nick Carter, general partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coin Metrics, questioned the authors’ competence.

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i dont see how being a mid level engineer at linkedin/hubspot/etc with no track record of working on blockchains confers you any authority, especially when the entire letter is an appeal to authority

— nic carter (@nic__carter) June 2, 2022

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“How many of the 26 signatories of this letter are real “technical experts,” particularly in blockchain? I don’t understand how working as an engineer at LinkedIn/HubSpot/etc with no experience with blockchain grants you any authority, especially when the entire letter is an appeal to authority,” he wrote.

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Earlier in March 2022, eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a letter to the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, pointed to the unfounded nature of investigations that the commission conducts into cryptocurrency companies.

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