6 Comments
Dec 1, 2022Liked by John Dizard

This piece is the best descriptive writing I’ve read in a long time! Great imagery, well worth the wait for excellent pieces like this.

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Interesting point about lack of regulation insulating the ‘real’ banking system from crypto contagion. Still, the evaporation of trillions has to impact world liquidity in some fashion even if it reduces the capital of foolish, gullible people. Some of them must be widows and orphans. Hopefully, some greed heads have headaches and less power to distort

other over leveraged markets

.What will the impact of FTX be on the blockchain concept in the future?

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Is there an instructive parallel between media/social media and currency/crypto - both regulated/unregulated, both disrupting big time....

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"...there would be a much closer integration of the regulated conventional banking system and fairy gold traded by the cryptonians"

Seems likely that we will learn of a few banks that were swimming naked as the tide goes out.

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I think a larger issue here is a kind of populist "democratization" of capital. From crypto to meme stocks to the NFTs and the Metaverse, a certain libertarian sensibility is at work that essentially says, "If we all close our eyes and click our red shoes, nothing will become something because we all agree it's something." There's something delightfully Trumpy about it. Create your own reality, defend it repeatedly with metaphysical certainty and it becomes true. A useful metaphor is the cartoon coyote chasing the roadrunner off a cliff, floating momentarily, his feet spinning in a flurry of motion, until he looks down and plummets like a rock.

None of it's real, kids. Except for the first few early adopters in the Ponzi scheme.

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Dear John, it is great fun to read you when your humor is rampant. You are a brightly trimmed Christmas tree. VM

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