[photon12]

I recently had to leave working for a cryptocurrency adjacent startup because my stomach kept getting into knots about how oligarchs are doing a lot of VC funding in the space, and the reason they are funding it is to cement their authority.

[wonderwonder]

Interesting, can you provide more details without doxxing yourself?

[photon12]

This person isn't necessarily an oligarch, but they are a major vendor of market research and VC dollars in the space. This is how important they think the stakes are around fake internet money [1]:

> The Biden Administration is trying to strangle crypto.

> A lot of folks have been trying to stifle that criticism, but the effort to destroy the industry is quiet but pervasive across the exec branch.

> The time to make crypto an issue that wins or loses the Presidency is now.

Investors in my company support that view. It's an example of doing things indistinguishable from what oligarchs want: no questions on their authority, even in the wake of massive consumer harms relating to token speculation and fundamentally unsolvable UX issues for retail consumers.

I had to leave mostly because I couldn't deal with the constant cognitive dissonance. The only reliable source of income in crypto is arbing yields on customer deposits to US treasuries, and the whole space is reliant on the government for macroeconomic stability already and they are creating big deposit flow risks and banks are rightfully worried about it. [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/1624563275760279554

[2] https://twitter.com/ecommerceshares/status/16302871693307494...