Building a crypto-utopia in Puerto Rico

August 17, 2018 10:23 AM

Crypto developers and investors are moving to Puerto Rico, attracted by lucrative tax regimes They plan to regenerate the island using blockchain technology. But not all of the locals support their bold plans. SLGuardian, leading to SLYT.
posted by carter (20 comments total)

I hate those people already. I imagine they're dreaming of Ex Machina-style homes in the hills. If they want to do good they should just donate a lot of money to PR. As it stands it looks like some neocolonialist BS.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:10 AM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

The Diamond Age's neo-Victorians, without the fashion sense
posted by BungaDunga at 11:15 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

tfw you want statehood but you get a flood of crypto-bro colonizers instead
posted by scose at 11:19 AM on August 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

colonial disaster crapitalism by dunning-krugerand peddlers

.........

heads. spikes. walls.
posted by lalochezia at 11:23 AM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Maybe if we got a bunch of rich libertarians to bail out our economy?

*Everyone laughs*

No, but seriously they show up at natural disasters like rats or cockroaches. We should have a plan to deal with them.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:24 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Can you run blockchain without electricity? Asking for a friend.
posted by heatherlogan at 11:29 AM on August 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

Can you run blockchain without electricity? Asking for a friend.

A diesel generator and a satellite link is enough to track bitcoin transactions but actually publishing new ones does need internet access.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:34 AM on August 17, 2018

It's really kinda fucked up that Puerto Rico may be going from neglected colony to corporate colony. This is like a dry run for techno distopias to replace 'failed' states.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:46 AM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

This needs a 'brockpierce' tag. Maybe 'DEN' and 'IGE' too.

NYT story from February.

Rolling Stone, from July -- Brock Pierce: The Hippie King of Cryptocurrency

Pierce, previously: The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire

Note that aside from the abuse scandal around DEN, IGE associated Pierce with none other than Steve Bannon.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:59 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

They plan to regenerate the island using blockchain technology.

I plan to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure with microwave pizza technology.
posted by straight at 12:25 PM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

This is lazy because I cannot bring myself to read or watch the originals, but the blockchain stuff is to make sure that legal democratic attempts to get back anything they "found lying around loose" and kept can't be enforced, yeah?
posted by clew at 1:28 PM on August 17, 2018

"The JPEG group wants to use blockchain to put DRM into images!"

(hum hum, that's nice, gonna fail)

"People want to use blockchain to rebuild Puerto Rico!"

(ugh, if people fall for that it'd be bad bad)

"Blockchain blockchain blockchain!"

(audible snapping sound)

HOW IN STRAWBERRY-FLAVORED HELL IS A DISTRIBUTED HASH STORAGE SYSTEM SUPPOSED TO DO ANY OF THESE DAMNABLE THINGS?!

(other users): "You know, you could click through and find out?"

(sighs) Okay, I'll do that. Let's see.

[it's a 10 minute video with an advertisement before it, i give up]
posted by JHarris at 2:35 PM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

(other users): "You know, you could click through and find out?"

I watched the video and I guess that I missed the part where their blockchain idea gets explained. All I heard were the Siren songs of a grifter.

My favorite part was Listening Day scene. They listened to locals telling them to fuck off.
posted by NoMich at 3:13 PM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

Obligatory xkcd
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:37 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

There’s a twitter thing doing the rounds at the moment where a guy explains blockchain: “imagine idling your car 24/7 to generate solved sudokus that you can trade for heroin”
posted by um at 9:29 PM on August 17, 2018 [15 favorites]

Tell them I hate them.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:53 AM on August 18, 2018

Meanwhile, Nvidia and AMD, two companies that arguably got the cash out of crypto currency, announced that revenue from that sector has cratered and they anticipate negligible income from miners this year.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 6:14 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh, also:

A diesel generator and a satellite link is enough to track bitcoin transactions but actually publishing new ones does need internet access.

If we're talking the bitcoin blockchain, you'd need a metric fuccload of diesel generators to power an economically-salient mining array anymore. The days of desktop rigs are a distant dwindling memory in the rear-view mirror.

When I shipped the Radical Technologies manuscript at the end of 2016, the estimate we went with was that proof-of-work operations on the bitcoin blockchain burned roughly the same amount of TWh on an annualized basis as Ireland, at a time when the BTC transaction velocity was on the order of 3% of the Visa network's. I'm sure the power draw has grown considerably since.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:16 AM on August 18, 2018

.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:29 PM on August 18, 2018

They plan to regenerate the island using blockchain technology.

WAT.
posted by rmd1023 at 2:26 PM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]