Follow the Crypto

https://www.followthecrypto.org/

by neilk • 2 years ago

114 86 2 years ago

neilk2• 2 years ago

Molly White’s latest project, tracking political contributions of the cryptocurrency industry. White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle.

verdverm2• 2 years ago

I had a back and forth with Molly on Bluesky about this and the source of the data

https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.bsky.social/post/3kvjythgh...

There is a lot of nuance to the data and the context, so "dwarf" is probably not the best term, especially in a more general PAC context

https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/pac-party/?cycle=2024

neilk2• 2 years ago

“Dwarf” was my word, not hers.

Even so, if you click through she has another page that lists hybrid PACs. I have no idea if even that is the full picture; US politics are complicated. The project is open source so perhaps you can submit a PR to make it better.

roenxi5• 2 years ago

White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle.

How does it show that? It suggests there was 200 million raised for the 2024 election, but that doesn't seem to be in comparison to anything. The US government borrowing alone is multiple trillions per year; people would be expected to spend way more than a few hundred million to influence it.

Presidential campaigns alone can run into a billion dollars.

qqqult3• 2 years ago

Here's a breakdown by industry for 2024: Finance largest at $50mm, healthcare at $30mm, agriculture at $20mm.

I'm not familiar enough with the details to claim that the numbers in OP take the #1 spot but they're definitely in the top 3 and that's very significant as we've seen with the recent change of tone from parties

mike_d2• 2 years ago

The fact that it is a Molly White project means take it with a basketball sized grain of salt. She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them.

I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying, I think they are just doing it via a single PAC rather than spinning up dozens of targeted PACs for each race.

sph4• 2 years ago

Yes, this and her previous projects have started to look more of a crusade to me, than a critique of "cryptocurrency", whatever that is, bundling them all together rather than analysing the merits and faults of each.

Mind you, given the deep bias HN has against cryptocurrencies of any shape or form, I feel here she has her ideal audience here and we're the ones swimming against the current.

acdha5• 2 years ago

She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them.

That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples?

On that note:

I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying

What data are you using to support this belief? Do you have additional data that she left out? That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking.

molly0x574• 2 years ago

The project uses public data from the FEC, and the code is all open source. I'd invite you to verify for yourself that I am not cherrypicking data.

nutshell89• 2 years ago

I kind of wish Molly White spent more time researching and disseminating information on CBDCs — the PACs to me are emergent behavior due to popularity and rise of crypto ETFs so there's not much of a story there.

ETFs aren't really financial instruments that the mainstream public will likely interact with or directly invest in, but CBDCs will probably proliferate wildly throughout the global economy in a matter of years so it's a bit of a missed chance for the public to weigh in on them.

monero-xmr• 2 years ago

A voluntary monetary system that you can use to avoid crushing money printing and inflation? What monsters

henning• 2 years ago

Copy-and-paste meme shitcoins are not a "monetary system". Thanks!

nailer5• 2 years ago

The post you are replying to did not state that they were. You can easily look up practical application of cryptocurrency by looking up stablecoin usage over time.

robbyiq9993• 2 years ago

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/money-transfer/currency-conve...

RestlessMind3• 2 years ago

Copy-and-paste meme shitcoins are not a "monetary system".

Agreed. But we are talking about crypto here which seem to have a lot more than shitcoins. (Hint: search for "bitcoin" or "stablecoins")

roenxi5• 2 years ago

Although Molly may or may not believe that, this site doesn't seem to be capturing that thought. It is just interesting to see how different interest groups interact with the political sphere (reminding me that I should spend more time reading about such things - https://www.opensecrets.org/industries deserves a glance).

nailer5• 2 years ago

Any breakdown for what incumbent banks, payments platforms and remittance organizations have spent to maintain existing dominance of these industries?

Every time you purchased something with a card, you give the card provider 2% of the price. There's a lot of interest in maintaining that.

FabHK2• 2 years ago

Only in some jurisdictions.

Wikipedia: > In the United States, the fee averages approximately 2% of transaction value.[2] In the EU, interchange fees are capped to 0.3% of the transaction for credit cards and to 0.2% for debit cards, while there is no cap for corporate cards.

robbyiq9993• 2 years ago

Crypto!? No thanks. I like my currency constantly inflating and printed on paper IOUs thank you very much.

Quindecillion• 2 years ago

This is the first time I've come into a crypto thread on HN and the pro-crypto people seem to outnumber the anti-crypto people.

Is there a vibe shift happening on HN?

acdha5• 2 years ago

People who hold cryptocurrency have a significant financial incentive to talk it up: their investment is valued solely on social perception.

Everyone else is generally tired of hearing about it in the second decade of not delivering the marketing promises.

matthewdgreen• 2 years ago

Never determine there’s a “vibe shift” based on one HN story. It’s equally likely that some folks got riled up on social media and decided to comment on this story.

curtisblaine5• 2 years ago

Not american, so I don't really get it. As far as I understand, everyone spends to influence the US elections, in one direction or the other. Why is this special?

kitkat_new• 2 years ago

1. I don't 2. who claimed its special?

rexpop2• 2 years ago

in one direction or the other

These data exhibit a clear rightward bias.

curtisblaine5• 2 years ago

Which is plausible and expected, since crypto is all about a smaller state which doesn't control money. On the contrary, most of the other players in the big tech sector exhibit a clear leftward bias. Why is crypto special? Because it's right wing? Or because it's crypto?

curtisblaine5• 2 years ago

Everytime I see this kind of discussion I remember that there are companies not breaking the law whose only way of surviving is bitcoin, because the big two payment circuits (visa and mastercard) have decided in concert, to not process their payments. Gab and Parler come to mind.

pavel_lishin3• 2 years ago

Those are certainly two ... examples.

curtisblaine5• 2 years ago

"Free speech is for the speech you hate, not for the speech you like"

yellowapple• 2 years ago

I can think of plenty of others, like that time PayPal took $1.3m of Flipper Zero's money and ran because reasons: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/flipper-zero-paypal/

And that's just a particularly high-profile example; smaller organizations and individuals routinely face this sort of thing from centralized payment processors. Said risk is nonexistent with any competently-developed cryptocurrency (and even most incompetently-developed ones).

robbyiq9993• 2 years ago

The government is a well intended representative of the people. The government has a solution to money and currency already. The government makes choices on monetary policy with the best interest of the citizenry in mind. Crypto is not good. The government is good.

RestlessMind3• 2 years ago

The government is a well intended representative of the people....The government is good.

Nazi Germany from 1933-1945? Fascist Italy until 1944? Venezuela today? USSR until 1991? North Korea today?

Did you not learn any history ever?

Follow the Crypto

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