I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Earlier this month, some of the richest men in Silicon Valley, led by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (the billionaire VCs behind Andreesen-Horowitz) announced that they would be backing Trump with endorsements and millions of dollars:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/16/trump-lands-more-big-tech-backers-billionaire-venture-capitalist-andreessen-joins-wave-supporting-former-president/

Predictably, this drew a lot of ire, which Andreesen tried to diffuse by insisting that his support "doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations

In other words, the billionaires backing Trump weren't doing so because they supported the racism, the national abortion ban, the attacks on core human rights, etc. Those were merely tradeoffs that they were willing to make to get the parts of the Trump program they do support: more tax-cuts for the ultra-rich, and, of course, free rein to defraud normies with cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Crypto isn't "money" – it is far too volatile to be a store of value, a unit of account, or a medium of exchange. You'd have to be nuts to get a crypto mortgage when all it takes is Elon Musk tweeting a couple emoji to make your monthly mortgage payment double.

A thing becomes moneylike when it can be used to pay off a bill for something you either must pay for, or strongly desire to pay for. The US dollar's moneylike property comes from the fact that hundreds of millions of people need dollars to pay off the IRS and their state tax bills, which means that they will trade labor and goods for dollars. Even people who don't pay US taxes will accept dollars, because they know they can use them to buy things from people who do have a nondiscretionary bill that can only be paid in dollars.

Dollars are also valuable because there are many important commodities that can only – or primarily – be purchased with them, like much of the world's oil supply. The fact that anyone who wants to buy oil has a strong need for dollars makes dollars valuable, because they will sell labor and goods to get dollars, not because they need dollars, but because they need oil.

There's almost nothing that can only be purchased with crypto. You can procure illegal goods and services in the mistaken belief that this transaction will be durably anonymous, and you can pay off ransomware creeps who have hijacked your personal files or all of your business's data:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

Web3 was sold as a way to make the web more "decentralized," but it's best understood as an effort to make it impossible to use the web without paying crypto every time you click your mouse. If people need crypto to use the internet, then crypto whales will finally have a source of durable liquidity for the tokens they've hoarded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/16/nondiscretionary-liabilities/#quatloos

The Web3 bubble was almost entirely down to the vast hype machine mobilized by Andreesen-Horowitz, who bet billions of dollars on the idea and almost single-handedly created the illusion of demand for crypto. For example, they arranged a $100m bribe to Kickstarter shareholders in exchange for Kickstarter pretending to integrate "blockchain" into its crowdfunding platform:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

Kickstarter never ended up using the blockchain technology, because it was useless. Their shareholders just pocketed the $100m while the company weathered the waves of scorn from savvy tech users who understood that this was all a shuck.

Look hard enough at any crypto "success" and you'll discover a comparable scam. Remember NFTs, and the eye-popping sums that seemingly "everyone" was willing to pay for ugly JPEGs? That whole market was shot through with "wash-trading" – where you sell your asset to yourself and pretend that it was bought by a third party. It's a cheap – and illegal – way to convince people that something worthless is actually very valuable:

https://mailchi.mp/brianlivingston.com/034-2#free1

Even the books about crypto are scams. Chris Dixon's "bestseller" about the power of crypto, Read Write Own, got on the bestseller list through the publishing equivalent of wash-trading, where VCs with large investments in crypto bought up thousands of copies and shoved them on indifferent employees or just warehoused them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

The fact that crypto trades were mostly the same bunch of grifters buying shitcoins from each other, while spending big on Superbowl ads, bribes to Kickstarter shareholders, and bulk-buys of mediocre business-books was bound to come out someday. In the meantime, though, the system worked: it convinced normies to gamble their life's savings on crypto, which they promptly lost (if you can't spot the sucker at the table, you're the sucker).

There's a name for this: it's called a "bezzle." John Kenneth Galbraith defined a "bezzle" as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." All bezzles collapse eventually, but until they do, everyone feels better off. You think you're rich because you just bought a bunch of shitcoins after Matt Damon told you that "fortune favors the brave." Damon feels rich because he got a ton of cash to rope you into the con. Crypto.com feels rich because you took a bunch of your perfectly cromulent "fiat money" that can be used to buy anything and traded it in for shitcoins that can be used to buy nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/matt-damon-crypto-commercial/

Andreesen-Horowitz were masters of the bezzle. For them, the Web3 bet on an internet that you'd have to buy their shitcoins to use was always Plan B. Plan A was much more straightforward: they would back crypto companies and take part of their equity in huge quantities of shitcoins that they could sell to "unqualified investors" (normies) in an "initial coin offering." Normally, this would be illegal: a company can't offer stock to the general public until it's been through an SEC vetting process and "gone public" through an IPO. But (Andreesen-Horowitz argued) their companies' "initial coin offerings" existed in an unregulated grey zone where they could be traded for the life's savings of mom-and-pop investors who thought crypto was real because they heard that Kickstarter had adopted it, and there was a bestselling book about it, and Larry David and Matt Damon and Spike Lee told them it was the next big thing.

Crypto isn't so much a financial innovation as it is a financial obfuscation. "Fintech" is just a cynical synonym for "unregulated bank." Cryptocurrency enjoys a "byzantine premium" – that is, it's so larded with baffling technical nonsense that no one understands how it works, and they assume that anything they don't understand is probably incredibly sophisticated and great ("a pile of shit this big must have pony under it somewhere"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

There are two threats to the crypto bezzle: the first is that normies will wise up to the scam, and the second is that the government will put a stop to it. These are correlated risks: if the government treats crypto as a security (or worse, a scam), that will put severe limits on how shitcoins can be marketed to normies, which will staunch the influx of real money, so the sole liquidity will come from ransomware payments and transactions with tragically overconfident hitmen and drug dealers who think the blockchain is anonymous.

To keep the bezzle going, crypto scammers have spent the past two election cycles flooding both parties with cash. In the 2022 midterms, crypto money bankrolled primary challenges to Democrats by absolute cranks, like the "effective altruist" Carrick Flynn ("effective altruism" is a crypto-affiliated cult closely associated with the infamous scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried). Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, "Protect Our Future," spent $10m on attack-ads against Flynn's primary opponent, the incumbent Andrea Salinas. Salinas trounced Flynn – who was an objectively very bad candidate who stood no chance of winning the general election – but only at the expense of most of the funds she raised from her grassroots, small-dollar donors.

Pedophile and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's connections to Russia deserve more attention. Russia and dictator Vladimir Putin are mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk became the first high-ranking official to ask the question on everyone’s mind on Feb. 4 — Was convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein working with Russia? He added that Poland would investigate possible links between Epstein and Russian intelligence services. The latest batch of Epstein-related documents, released on Jan. 30, mentions Russia 5,876 times and Russian President Vladimir Putin 1,055 times.

So that's a total of 6,931. There are probably contemporary histories of Russia which do not contain as many mentions.

The files show that Epstein cultivated relationships with Russian officials, repeatedly sought a meeting with Putin, and came under investigation on suspicion of acting as an alleged "wealth manager" for Putin. Taken together, the documents depict Epstein as an unusually persistent intermediary attempting to insert himself into Moscow's political and financial orbit — marketing his access to Western elites as leverage.

When he wasn't on the prowl for new Lolitas, Epstein showed interest in being an international influence peddler.

According to the files, Epstein offered to provide the Kremlin with insight on how to deal with Trump. "This reminds me of the famous investigation into the ties between the Trump administration and Russia after the first election," Russian columnist Sergei Parkhomenko told the Kyiv Independent. "That investigation clearly showed how many various swindlers rushed in to create connections between Trump and Putin — building bridges, contacts, deals, and the like." He added that "a lot of shady types have sensed that this community organized by Epstein is a door to some kind of elite political and economic upper world," and "they eagerly worm their way in."

From the Epstein files and other revelations about the mega-rich, we get the impression of a loose network of international oligarchs who wish to exercise control over the world. Sounds almost like a potential scenario for a James Bond film – but with a large collection of Bond villains.

Of course you can't talk about Epstein and Russia without Trump entering the picture.

Epstein also positioned himself as an informal adviser on U.S.-Russia relations under Trump. "I think you might suggest to Putin that (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov can get insight on talking to me," Epstein wrote to Jagland in 2018. "(Russian Ambassador to the UN) Vitaly Churkin used to but he died." He added that "Churkin was great" and "understood Trump after our conversations." "It is not complex," Epstein wrote. "(Trump) must be seen to get something. It's that simple."

Peddling new SPREADS

Is it crazy to think that Joe Biden should be held responsible at some level? It's criminal and eventually it will be treasonous. It's inevitable that there will be a 911 type terrorist attack on our soil. All this damage just to pad the left's voter base.

Even Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, who's a consummate piece of shit, has stated:

We’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole 'nother level after October 7.

Sam Patten and Paul Manafort were associates who worked for the same team. #TrumpRussia  #Crimea  #MagnitskyAct

Sam Patten funneled money to Trump’s Inauguration Committee to set up meetings between Putin’s Ukrainian Oligarch, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Republican Congress members. #NationalSecurity

Diana Denman, a Republican delegate said Trump directed changes to GOP Platform on Ukraine support. Is there a connection between Patten and Trump changing the platform to be less pro-Ukraine and more pro-Russian? #YouBetcha  #MuellerIsComingForYou

As part of a plea agreement under which he pledged to cooperate with federal prosecutors, the lobbyist, Sam Patten, pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent for a Russia-aligned Ukrainian political party, and to helping the Ukrainian oligarch who had funded that party illegally purchase four tickets to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

How Foreign Agents work

They contend that Mr. Patten arranged for the purchase of four tickets for $50,000 by funneling the oligarch’s money through an American “straw” purchaser in violation of rules barring the inaugural committee from accepting money from foreign nationals.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Patten arranged meetings with congressional officials for the oligarch, and one former congressional aide recalled being introduced to Mr. Lyovochkin by Mr. Patten.

Prosecutors also said that Mr. Patten helped the oligarch draft and place an op-ed in an American media outlet in February 2017 “to address concerns regarding Ukraine’s ability to work effectively with the new United States administration.”

Patten, Manfort and Russians used banks in Cyprus and shell companies

Summary

Patten, a respected Republican operative and consultant whose family was once part of Washington’s social elite

Patten faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. 

Prosecutors did not identify the American who purchased the tickets, the oligarch or Mr. Patten’s Russian business partner by name. But people familiar with the work said the Russian is Konstantin V. Kilimnik formed a company called Begemot Ventures International with Mr. Patten in February 2015, according to corporate records filed in Washington. 

Kilimnik is a Russian national who had worked closely with Mr. Manafort in Ukraine and is suspected by the United States of having ties to Russian intelligence.

The description of the oligarch matches that of Serhiy Lyovochkin, who serves in the Ukrainian parliament and is an official in the Opposition Bloc, according to interviews and documents. 

Mr. Gates, Mr. Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman and Mr. Manafort’s former right-hand man, testified that Mr. Lyovochkin was one of a clutch of oligarchs who paid Mr. Manafort more than $60 million to promote pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine. 

Read

Revealed: Members of the Trump $1 million inaugural club, The Hill  

250 donors shelled out $100k or more for Trump’s inauguration, providing 91% of funds, Open Secrets 

What (Lots of) Money Can Buy at Trump’s Inauguration, NYTimes

Inaugurations Are Ethically Problematic. Trump Is Just Taking It Much Further., Huffington Post

Putin’s Russian Oligarchs were at 45′s inauguration,  Washington Post

AND two of the Russians that Don Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met at Trump Towers in June 2016 were there too.

Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin (former military intelligence officer turned lobbyist) went to Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-Calif.) inaugural party in Washington. 

A one-time top aide to former prime minister Stephen Harper was convicted of criminal influence-peddling by Ontario’s highest court on Friday.

In overturning a previous acquittal against Bruce Carson, the Court of Appeal said in a split decision that the case should go back to the trial judge for sentencing.

Carson, a senior adviser to Harper from the time the Conservatives took office in 2006 until 2008 and briefly in 2009, was charged in connection with attempts to promote the sale of water-purification systems for First Nations communities by a company known as H2O Pros and H2O Global. H2O had hired his former girlfriend, Michele McPherson, with whom he developed a romantic relationship in February 2010.

Evidence was that Carson admitted demanding a benefit for McPherson from H2O in exchange for using his government contacts on the company’s behalf. However, he denied his activities had anything to with “any matter of business relating to the government.”

In November 2015, Superior Court Justice Bonnie Warkentin found Carson not guilty, despite concluding that he had admitted trying to persuade officials within Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and cabinet ministers and their staff to buy the systems to McPherson’s benefit.

Those officials, the justice ruled, had no direct ability to sway First Nations communities to buy the equipment because the bands made their own decisions on such purchases and, as such, ‘there simply was no government business” involved.

The prosecution appealed, with the issue turning on wording in the Criminal Code about whether Carson’s lobbying activities were linked to a “matter of business relating to the government.”

In overturning the acquittal, the Court of Appeal found Carson had indeed attempted to ensure his girlfriend could earn commissions on the sales of water-treatment systems to First Nations.

“It was understood that, in exchange, he would attempt to influence government decisions,” Justice Gladys Pardu wrote for the Appeal Court majority. “The essence of the offence is acceptance of a benefit for exercise of influence.”

From Santa, we expect gifts. From Trump, we expect grift.