WorriedDenizen on Nostr: I watched @ShellenbergerMD's two debates on crypto. They were both interesting and ...

I watched @ShellenbergerMD's two debates on crypto. They were both interesting and painful to watch, and though I expected both of these reactions they were triggered for slightly unexpected reasons.


Here are my impressions, and a wishlist for the next debate:


Backstory:
Shellenberger wrote a piece/thread on crypto. It was a real Gell-Mann moment for me, having followed Michael for a while, and a reminder of how it can look from the outside.
He challenged critics to debate him, and they were all too willing.


For reasons unknown, the first invitation he accepted was from some YouTuber named "Hotep Jesus", who wanted Shellenberger to come on his channel to get schooled by another stranger to me, @cyprianous.
The debate can be found here: https://youtu.be/U44E9y11cUE


First impressions are ~OK. Cyprianous' real name is apparently Vin Armani, which a bit of digging turns out to be a Las Vegas gigolo turned reality-TV star, who is now introduced by Hotep Jesus as a "leading authority on cryptocurrencies".
Colorful... I actually loved it, to be frank.


The first 20 minutes or so of the debate are alright, I guess. Michael repeats his main criticisms, and Vin Armani finds a decent attack vector to answer them. Two things bother me:
Hotep Jesus nods sagely while Armani's speaking, and frows whenever Michael opens his mouth
...and while Vin Armani has been quite explicit about Bitcoin being special, ostensibly talking about that the whole time, "cryptocurrencies" is also used interchangeably as a synonym for it.
He seems to understand how this stuff works, but I increasingly have this ominous feeling...
And around the 24-minute mark, it all becomes very clear. Vin Armani goes: 


"I work on a fork of bitcoin called ecash, XEC [...] there have been forks, forks, forks, basically schisms. It's very religious"
Ah...OK 🤦‍♂️
So e.cash...
Not much to say. Run-of-the-mill shitcoin scam, glossy design, roadmap (going for 1TB blocks 🤣).
But as a friend of mine commented when I announced that Shellenberger was getting a crypto education from a shitcoiner: "Didn't we all start that way?"

I sure did. 


But that's the main problem in this debate. Vin Armani is likely fully aware of what makes bitcoin awesome, but has to watch his step so he doesn't put his shitcoin in a bad light. So certain arguments are off-limits, and he has incentives to promote crypto generally.


For a shitcoiner, Vin Armani actually makes a decent case for decentralization, eliminating middlemen and secure payments. That said, he becomes dominating and unpleasant after a while, and makes quite a few mistakes. These include, but are not limited to the following: 


"The US dollar was pegged to the Mexican dollar"
No, it was pegged to the *silver content* of the Mexican dollar
"Miners are compensated by fees"
Hardly. They're compensated by block rewards.
"My business is more profitable the lower the price [of XEC] is"
lol
"In Bitcoin, no one can pretend to be you"
Just false. If they get your keys, they ARE you from the perspective of the network.


But again, the bigger issue is that Michael is being used as a marketing prop.


And I could not bear listening much past the hour mark. Vin Armani is a reasonably talented con-artist, and he knows things, but it becomes obvious after a while that his main goal is to sound smart and humiliate Michael. 


I say this because Vin Armani:
- Makes claims he has no idea how to back up (repeating something he once heard Balaji say I guess)
- Doesn't keep the conversation on track (what track would that even be?)
- Contradicts himself often
- Goes into long and pathos-laden appeals

I feel kinda sorry for Michael, but props to him for going into this and sticking to his guns. I wish he had known more about the subject, and that someone could have told him what he was actually part of here. It was only a nominal debate, at best, but mostly a marketing scheme.


And the fact that Michael still didn't come out of this debate too well just goes to show that this is pretty complicated stuff. Shellenberger is primarily informed by financial authorities. But if you don't want to read a book, you have to search dark corners of the internet to get properly informed. 


What I wish Michael had heard:
- There is no such thing as "Blockchain technology"
- Only bitcoin has actual use cases
- Bitcoin mining is a virtual extension of the energy grid (still not useful?)
- Bitcoin cannot be stopped (Vin Armani *almost* managed to argue this point)


What needed to happen in this debate was for crypto to be taken completely off the table. The same actually goes for third parties, currency and generally most of it. 
In its place, a single proposition to be defended: The Bitcoin network enables things that were not previously possible. No one actually knows what it will lead to, but it has already enabled:
- setting up a fully functional bank for a fraction of today's cost, in hours. 
- making profits from stranded energy. 
- instant and free global payments. 

...and then it would be up to Michael to argue that these things are A) untrue, B) not useful, C) not new. 


So a missed opportunity, and kinda frustrating, but oh well. 

Next, I'll do a writeup of Shellenberger's debate with Pomp, and perhaps after that my impressions of the recent debate between Michael Saylor and that Rebel Capitalist-guy.

So stay tuned!