Lol you just knew Glem was going to get in on the Bitcoin grift. It was only a matter of time. pic.twitter.com/9430TNwNiZ
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 8, 2022
Last year’s con was a superspreader event, but surely by now most of the con-goers have been required to sully their anti-vaxx ideals at the hands of their bosses, their campuses, or their moms…
pivoting to buttcoin because he's realized future checks from Russia are probably a non-starter now https://t.co/LolxNEABt7
— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) April 9, 2022
Fast Company, not impressed — “Bitcoin struggles to find its star power in Miami”:
… All over Miami Beach and the hip Wynwood neighborhood, crypto-themed pop-ups try to create some cohesive sense that the city is the home for the Bitcoin cultural movement, but it all feels a bit wonky. And that’s equally true for the conference, housed at a big convention center a few blocks from the water. There’s also a real sense of desperation for some kind of star power that can elevate Bitcoin from digital gold for the techno-libertarian set to the true mainstream cultural movement it needs to be in order to actually catch on. The conference’s expo center features a big fake volcano and a mechanical bull (the latter of which offers a chance at winning one whole Bitcoin), but there’s not a ton to do beyond that.
Cryptocurrency exploded back into the mainstream in January 2021, hot off the heels of a similar, but different viral finance fad: meme stocks. But it wasn’t Bitcoin that was responsible for the 2021 crypto boom, it was Ethereum, the flashier alternative cryptocurrency that supports the majority of NFTs. Since then, Ethereum has continued to be the main driver of popular crypto culture. It’s what backs up the Bored Ape Yacht Club. It’s how decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, organize, including the one that tried to buy a copy of the constitution late last year. When Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton are on TV talking about NFTs, they’re talking about Ethereum, not Bitcoin.
And so this cultural spotlight on Ethereum has left Bitcoin feeling a little stale. That’s led to a palpable void in Miami this week—one that conference organizer BTC Media and the various sponsors and vendors are hell-bent on filling with a bizarre mix of fairly prominent voices from the world of finance and random celebrities. The end result is an event that feels like a low-level comic convention that’s being held in the same event space as an economic forum. It’s confusing and disjointed: There are presentations on the Federal Reserve and economic theory, but also personal sovereignty and cancel culture.
Bitcoin 2022’s highest-profile guests include Jordan B. Peterson, the controversial right-wing psychologist; former presidential candidate Andrew Yang; Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary; Paypal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel; a handful of well-known athletes; and, of course, a bevy of homegrown crypto influencers like entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano. (El Salvador’s crypto-loving president Nayib Bukelele was supposed to appear, but dropped out at the last minute.) The guest with the largest selfie line in the conference’s showroom on Thursday was Barstool Sports founder, Dave Portnoy, the controversial self-described “baron of Bitcoin,” whose pandemic-era trading livestreams made him a popular figure in the crypto world…
Murphy the Trickster God, do I pity the poor souls who had to clean the mens rooms after this two-bit bacchanal.
Oh, so you think crypto is a big scam? Well, you know who else doesn't like it? That's right; Hillary Clinton. Guess you're just a big ol' Hillary Clinton lover.
You can see why he fits in so perfectly on the Right. pic.twitter.com/M9rDcxPWK0
— Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 8, 2022
Uh-oh…
.@ggreenwald says Edward Snowden is the 'happiest person' he's 'ever met' at bitcoin conferencehttps://t.co/SPpT6cY78v
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 7, 2022
he's dead, isn't he https://t.co/SXjFZgUtsH
— Anita (@AnitaM86) April 8, 2022
Probably not dead, but pretty clearly on ice… which, for a fame whore, is an even worse fate!
he's dead https://t.co/dqQXbL5Yl5
— Jort-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) April 8, 2022
War for Ukraine Update 45: BoJo Pays a Visit, There Seems To Be Some Confusion About What Is and Is Not an Offensive Weapon, and the Most Heinous of War Crimes
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Snowjob’s mug needs to go on a milk carton.
Anyway, did you know that by criticizing Greenwald you’re attacking a gay Jewish man, and thus the worst person since Hitler? Just ask him…
NotMax
“I know! Let’s market something we label a “currency,” backed by absolutely nothing, which also gobbles energy more prodigiously than Nero Wolfe scarfs down prime rib at a smorgasbord and changes what we say the value is faster than the mind of a child slavering on the glass of a penny candy display. Who’s with me?”
//
Medicine Man
Does Greenwald have a bad case of broken-brained anti-establishment disease or is he financially corrupted by actors who want to see the USA humbled internationally and shattered domestically?
The answer is “yes”.
piratedan
Sure seems like one of the main tenets of this anti-liberalism is this process of never admitting a mistake for anything past or present. I make mistakes all the time, spend a fair bit of time in introspection trying to come to an understanding of what was done and why and how to do better. That kind of behavior on the right seems as alien as a limb growing from one’s chest.
Without anything like this, everything else just feels like bad faith piled upon a foundation of lies.
NotMax
@Medicine Man
Magic 8-ball sez: Bear. Sh*t. Woods.
(Don’t see that one floating into focus all that often.)
;)
gene108
Snowden had his 15-minutes of fame, and probably got paid a decent amount from the movie made about him.
He can practice his Russian, and live with the fact he’s never going to set foot out of Russia again.
Wetzel
Hey John I was talking earlier tonight at your spot about trying to get a song out from a dream. I just woke up and was able to remember paprika, garlic and lemon. I think that’s funny as hell that instead of songs I’m dreaming soup now.
Mallard Filmore
YouTube has a nice and funny crypto video.
title: “Don’t Miss Out on Crypto – Larry David FTX Commercial”
link: youtu.be/BH5-rSxilxo
tomtofa
Haha – the article doesn’t mention Glemm anywhere in it’s listing of participating A and B list celebrities.
Medicine Man
@piratedan: I think Glenn’s narcissism is visible from orbit. It may even be the main reason he was covertly pro-Trump; like attracting like.
mdblanche
Snowden isn’t dead, he’s just indisposed with a very mild case of defenestritis.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
You’re doing the 21st century equivalent of that! I’d never hear about Edward Snowden at all if it weren’t for his detractors at places like this feeling the need to bring him up for no apparent reason.
You’re his publicity team. Good job!
But really, crapping on him over a tweet where he says, “I was wrong about this so I’ll shut up about it now” is perhaps less than an ideal choice?
Baud
I’ve noticed I now see more gambling ads than crypto ads. Thanks, Hillary!
Also, did anyone notice that another headliner at the conference is Andrew Yang.
I’m curious about what kind of swag they give out at Bitcoin conferences. Can you put NFTs in a bag?
Geminid
@Baud: I don’t like seeing Yang and Thiel in the same place. Yang’s not through with politics, and Thiel is now leaning into poltical financing..
Baud
@Geminid:
I suspect Yang is already on his payroll.
BellyCat
Absolutely! And you don’t even have to lug your conference bag around with you.
Geminid
@Baud: Yang’s run for New York Mayor was sort of an audition. He said some very Thiel-like things.
No one paid much attention to Yang, the affable Presidential candidate. He was taken more seriously in the Mayoral race so people researched his past and they came up with some Thiel-like receipts.
different-church-lady
“This particular topic.” Snort.
different-church-lady
@mdblanche:
Even Snowden has figured out Snowden is full of shit.
different-church-lady
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: No, no, we put people we want to find on milk cartons.
TonyG
One of these days this whole “Glenn Greenwald” persona will be revealed to have been elaborate performance art, like Andy Kaufman doing “Tony Clifton”. (Yup; I date myself.)
Ken
Staleness is a very bad thing for a Ponzi scheme.
Anyone know if they allowed people to pay for conference registration in Bitcoin? I seem to recall they didn’t, last time around.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Crapping on Snowden for that particular tweet might be unfair. But a lot of people hold a grudge against Snowden for his role in helping Russia throw the 2016 election to Trump. Like it or not, Snowden’s name is mud with many Democrats who enjoy a pile-on.
Sure Lurkalot
Peter Thiel and Rebecca Mercer have teamed up to fund media and pick new people for the government their enormous, largely untaxed fortunes and bad Supreme Court decisions enable them to create. Probably bunches of Andrew Yangs and Tulsi Gabbards. Yikes.
different-church-lady
@TonyG: TONY CLIFTON IS A REAL GUY!!1!
Geminid
@Sure Lurkalot: Thiel seems to be building a “stable” of potential Republican candidates. One of the leading candidates in Arizona’s Republican Senate primary was on Thiel’s payroll until recently. More notoriously, the vampire Vance worked on a Thiel-backed hedge before running for Portman’s Ohio Senate seat.
Betty
@Mallard Filmore: Someone needs to do a parody of this showing the opposite position.
Dmbeaster
@Geminid: Snowden name is mud with many people because of his dodgy story. The dude stole a lot more than data about surveillance practices, and fled to Russia with it.
Geminid
@Dmbeaster: And the champion of civil liberties has exiled himself to a nation hostile to civil liberties.
Baud
@Geminid:
To be fair, Russia isn’t hostile to his civil liberties.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@NotMax: Oi! You’d best prepare a lavish apology to Fritz Brenner for that.
Nero Wolfe’s personal cook would be appalled at the insinuation that his client would ever disrespect a meal so badly as to “scarf it down”. Wolfe properly appreciates food. In generous quantities. Archie Goodwin might be the sort to scarf down prime rib at a smorgasbord, but not Wolfe.
I suspect Wolfe would characterize present-day cryptocurrencies as a horrid implementation of a concept that could be used to address problems with modern economies, if the people developing it hadn’t decided to concentrate on the problem of “how can this make me insanely rich as quickly as possible”…
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
As I recall, our military intercepted a plane on its way *from* Russia and searched it because they thought Snowden might be on it. So it’s not like he would feel safe in trying to leave.
Given that I’m first hearing about this alleged interference in 2022, I hope you don’t mind if I ask for a link to something substantive about this. Especially given how the 2016 election was dissected every which way in its aftermath.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Well, you got me there. After I posted that comment I realized that I had conflated Snowden with Assange. Asange was the one who laundered Russian hacks on Democrats by releasing them in Wikileaks. I tend to think of Snowden, Greenwald and Assange as peas in a pod, and they are in intent and effect. But blaming Snowden for Assange’s misdeeds is unjustified guilt by association.
I observed that Snowden exiled himself to a dictatorship. I’ve read that he hoped to move on to a different safe haven, perhaps in South America. Now he’s stuck. He gave Russia the kind of secrets that get people life sentences. There is a Navy petty officer who has been in prison since the early 1980’s for handing over a fraction of the material Snowden did.
So, if Putin were ever to allow Snowden to leave (and Putin has reason not to), Snowden will be arrested and put on trial by the U.S. A life term would be the likely sentence. That might be harsh. On the other hand, Putin would just have Snowden assasinated if Snowden did it to him.
Joey Maloney
@Sure Lurkalot: If the Thiels and Mercers get the government they think they want, I only hope to live long enough to see them find out what happens when you try to dismount from the tiger.
Honus
@NotMax: Nero Wolfe would never eat prime rib at a smorgasbord or buffet. He’d have Fritz prepare his prime rib purchased, boned and tied from an exclusive downtown butcher.
Honus
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Wolfe also quite famously said he would pay his taxes rather than cheat 120 million of his fellow citizens
Honus
Greenwald, Theil, Jordan Peterson, Dave Portnoy and Snowden… talk about your basket of deplorables. Kind of a who’s who of shit for brains pseudo intelligent jerks.
Honus
@Wetzel: you Wetzel as in county? Cause I’m one myself
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: A cynic would be forgiven for thinking some posters here are trying to distract themselves from their own gullibility with their extreme Snowden hate.
I doubt it Snowden is dead, I think his handlers are having him lay low until the War gets to be old, or the Ukrainians do something that shows they aren’t prefect, like say massacre a bunch of Russian POWs for being part of a death squad and then Snowden will release more of his files at peak pearl clutching.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I don’t see the extreme Snowden hate you do. People may despise him, but that is different from extreme hate.
J R in WV
I don’t think I care where wetzel is physically, as long as I can put him away in the pie safe out of my way… Technobabble applied to philosophy of war?
No, thanks anyway!
different-church-lady
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think he died from embarrassment.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: We see eye to eye on Greenwald and Assange. Assange’s a criminal in multiple ways, and Greenwald is now a mouthpiece for a mass murderer and war criminal, on top of the scum he already was. But Snowden: I’ve just never seen the receipts on Snowden’s being worse than a clueless idiot. And a libertarian, but I repeat myself.
I’m afraid that if you ever got back to the previous thread where we discussed Snowden with a link that supports your claim about what Snowden spilled to the Russians, that was after the last time I checked in there. Please feel free to try again.
If he’s done what you say he has, then yeah, he deserves to rot in prison. It’s just that in all the almost random shit I’ve seen thrown at Snowden over the years, you’re the only person I’ve heard this accusation from. And I would think that if the Federal government had the goods on him, they’d have tried him in absentia by now. (They filed a criminal complaint against him in 2013, but AFIAK it’s progressed no further.)
lee
I follow a sex worker on Twitter that attended this conference.
I have less reservations about that statement than claiming knowledge of any of the folks mentioned in this post.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t think I’m only person you’ve seen this accusation from. After you asked for a link that morning at least two other commenters seconded it, one providing cited support. It’s a fairly prevalent view (which itself does not make it true, just prevalent). Have you researched this question? That’s a pretty efficient way to find out.
I’m going to see what Wikipedia says on the matter.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist:
@Geminid: Whew! That’s a long article Wikipedia has on Snowden. I suggest you read it. I was interested to see that Edwin Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and his father served in the Coast Guard. Snowden became very proficient with computers as a teenager, and took classes at Anne Arundel Community College 1974-75.
As to the scope of his releases, I think you should read the article and judge for yourself. Snowden himself maintains that he curated the materials he released and limited them to material involving civil liberties. However, he may be referring here to the materials he passed on to Greenwald and Poitras while in Hong Kong.
U.S. and British officials claim the Chinese and Russians got a lot more. Snowden probably could not curate those transfers. The Chinese might have just shot him with a tranquilizer gun and downloaded everything he had. The Russians probably got whatever they wanted when they took him in.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: I did read the Wikipedia article before my previous post. Well, not all of it, because it is quite long, as you mentioned. But I didn’t see anything there that was particularly damning.
I’ll admit I just skimmed past his early life, and did the same with his political opinions, because who really cares? Unlike Greenwald, his politics aren’t his claim to fame.
In the earlier thread, at the time I replied, you were the only one who had brought up the claim that he’d spilled substantial national security data to the Russians. (Maybe someone else said that between when I started writing and when I hit ‘submit’ but then I went to bed.) The others at that point were the same old same old: the fact that he’s in Russia says it all, the spying program he revealed was old news, he’s a Trump supporter, etc.
There’s one more thing I used to bring up when the Snowden saga was still fresh: he didn’t even work for the U.S. government. How was it that someone who not only wasn’t employed by the NSA or other intel agency and hadn’t been through their vetting, and hadn’t even been at Booz Allen more than a few years, had access to the sort of information we both agree he had, let alone the sort of info you claim he had? That would seem like a massive security failure on the part of the NSA.
Sure, Booz Allen doesn’t hire just anyone off the street, but you know those cattle-call interviews that go on at any field’s annual meetings, where one hour you’re interviewing with one school/agency/corp, and the next hour it’s another? Most of those interviews, they’re checking you out of course, but they’re also making a sales pitch about why you might want to work for them.
I had one of those interviews with the NSA at the AMS/MAA meetings when I was finishing grad school, and it was nothing like that. I was being grilled from the get-go, and not about my mathematical background and skills, either. It was totally adversarial in nature.
I would bet a large stack of money that Booz Allen’s interviews aren’t remotely close to that, and I bet their overall vetting is hardly what the NSA’s is. And yet here’s this guy just a few years out of school, working for Booz Allen, who’s supposedly got access to these killer secrets.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I am not trying to persuade you, just showing why I am persuaded. I agree, this was a massive security failure, and yes, Snowden shouldn’t have access to the scope of materials he is said to have copied. But a lot of things happen that shouldn’t happen. I expect that Snowden exploited weaknesses in the NSA system Booz Allen was paying him to support in order to access files he was not authorized to see. I doubt if he was authorized to download anything at all.
Snowden learned computers outside of any formal educational setting. There are many like him. He was good enough at it for Booz Allen to give him the job, and the fact that he was a “few years out of school” has little relevance in this case. If Snowden could access materials relating to the domestic surveilance that he is credited for “blowing the whistle” on, he could access the other materials that he is blamed for delivering to his country’s adversaries.