It Could Happen Here - The President of Argentina's Meme Coin Scandal

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Mia and crypto journalist Molly White take a vacation from the horror of American politics to discuss Argentina's president Javier Milei promoting a pump and dump meme coin as Mia attempts to explain Peronism. https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki Sources: https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-77/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-main-stock-index-falls-after-milei-crypto-scandal-2025-02-17/ https://crimethinc.com/2024/06/17/six-months-in-a-neoliberal-dystopia-social-cannibalism-versus-mutual-aid-and-resistance-in-argentinaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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basically since Trump took office. So instead of doing another episode about how doomed the US is, we are taking a I don't know, a field trip to Argentina to talk about something extremely funny and that that extremely funny thing is the Argentinian president Javier Malay promoting a meme coin and maybe going down for it and With me to talk about this is really the only person I could I could have on to talk about a crypto thing Who is Molly White and my trying to explain who Molly White is but my explanation of this is in the same way that the great the great 20th century Marxist theorist CLR James's book Beyond a Boundary is both universally considered to be the best book ever written about cricket and Also literally calling it the thing that it is the best book ever written about cricket is like a damning insult

To to how good the actual book is Molly is like probably the world's best crypto journalist It writes the newsletter citation needed also does web 3 is going great Which is amazing everyone should go listen to it and Molly welcome to the show Thanks for having me what an intro I've been waiting for an opportunity to use that one for such a long time Great book by the way, which everyone should both go subscribe to citation needed and also go read Beyond the boundary because it's great. So, god, we were talking about this before the show. I had planned this episode out before

Elon Musk showed up at CFAC with Javier Malay, like with Malay's signature chainsaw doing like doing an even weirder version of the Malay thing about like cutting regulation with a chainsaw But Jesus Christ Yeah, what a spectacle that was even weirder version of the main thing about like cutting regulation with a chainsaw, but Jesus Christ. Yeah, what a spectacle that was. Oh my god. Like Steve Bannon doing the Nazi salute wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened there. That was only like day one.

Well that's overdone now, you know, everyone's doing it. You have to do something new. Yeah, you have to wander around the stage with a chainsaw like he didn't even do the the Malay thing which is you have it you have like a book of regulations or whatever you cut it with a chainsaw you didn't even do it. And you saw it in half. Oh god. So I am very excited to talk about the crypto scandal that might finally bring this administration down however and I am deeply sorry I already I apologize before this recording started I am deeply sorry in order to explain who Javier Malay is I have to do the single most difficult thing I've ever attempted in

my like not just in my like my history as a podcaster like that's obviously trivially true but like my entire history doing theoretical work in general Which is I'm about to attempt to explain Peronism in under 10 minutes on four hours of sleep. Let's see it! So... So... So... So...

So... So... So... Here we fucking go because because so I guess that's why you know why we have to do this, right? Like Malay is able to take power Like basically because he he's like one of the first candidates in a long time to in Argentina to run as an anti-peronist. And that may seem weird because hold on, wait, shouldn't there always be like, okay, if you have an ideology, shouldn't it shouldn't that

the person from like either the left or right side of the political spectrum, you know, be running against that ideology and no, no, up until basically now, both the left and the right in Argentina were both Peronists. So to get an understanding of what Peronism is, we need to go back not just to who Juan Perón is, and we'll get to who Juan Perón, who's like the guy this ideology is named after, and you know, the ideology is based on like this guy returning from exile from the military coups but we have to Go back to one of the sort of foundational parts of of the modern Argentinian state and That element is the fact that Argentina has one of those militant workers movements in the entire world and has had it for about a century

I was on Margaret show it could happen here here. Jesus Christ not I could have here Good Lord you tell my four hours. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you. I haven't even gotten We have not gotten to my final analysis of Peronism where the closest thing I can compare it to is post short cultural revolutions 1970s era China, so this is about to get so much more unhitched But a while back I was on Margaret show cool people who did cool stuff to talk about the second Argentinian giant anarcho-syndicalist uprising in about a span of four years

which was the giant anarchist rebellion in Patagonia in 1921-1922 and this is the second one because the first one was the the the 1919 general strike which ends in an event called the tragic week Where everyone sort of gets killed by the military But you know the fact that there's there's two in different parts of the country Enormous and narcosyndicalist uprisings in a span of about four years Is a demonstration of the fact that this is one of the most militant working classes in the world and any political movement That is trying to hold power in this country Is going to have to deal with the fact that the Argentinian working class at any moment can you know?

If you're a factory owner, you can wake up one day and there's a black flag flying over your factories because your workers have seized it and the sort of culmination of this and the reason this is even still relevant today is that Like the last of what you would I guess you could call like the classical 20th century revolutions. A line of uprising started with like the original formation of the workers councils in Russia in 1905. You know, and that continues to like the occupation of the factories in Italy during the two red years, like 1918, 1919, like the anarchist parts of the Spanish revolution, with revolutions in Hungary and Algeria, like, you know, all like through 68, like the factor occupations in France and Italy and like all this

whole this whole lineage of like, the thing that happens when you do revolution is workers occupy the factories trying to seize control of the country. The last one of those ever was in Argentina in 2001, like everywhere else in the world, this shit was gone. And then randomly in Argentina in 2001, like there's a there's a giant one of these uprisings that is, you know, only really put down by a sort of left Peronist government agreeing to like tell the IMF to fuck off, which was like, you know, a

sort of seismic change in the political landscape. But all of this is to say that, okay, if you were a capitalist in Argentina, and you have to deal with this, like, what do you do? And the answer is to create the most unhinged ideology the world has ever seen by uniting socialism and fascism under the single banner of Argentinian nationalist class collaboration, which is the thing that makes no sense, but you have to understand, like, Perotism is —oh, God, Perotism is oh god Perotism is simply the weirdest ideology ever. I

Promise we were going to get to the fun crypto stuff, but we have to unfortunately do this We have to do our homework first and part of this is So Juan Peron the actual guy who whose ideology is based off is an enormously popular president in like the late 40s and 50s until he gets overthrown by military coup and To get a sense of again like how weird this guy is like this is a guy who? When he comes into power a bunch of the most famous Nazi war criminals and like not just you know Obviously like like the famous Nazis flee to Argentina. There's a whole meme about that, right? But I mean we're talking about guys from the Ustasi like guys guys who literally did the Holocaust by hand

Like flee to Argentina during his administration and when a military coup overthrows him, they flee the country. So again, like the US-backed military junta is less pro-Nazi than this guy is. He is also personal friends with Che Guevara and considers like the Cuban Revolution to be like part of his like revolutionary project. So a deeply, deeply weird, deeply weird guy. And the result of this is that, okay, so you have a military dictatorship through like the 50s and the 60s, right? And like the entire time this dictatorship, not the entire time, but most of the time this dictatorship is happening, right?

The entire political spectrum sort of projects all of their political energy onto we want Peron back, because Peron is remembered as like the guy who like brought workers rights to the country and also like gave women the right to vote and also is remembered as like a stable nationalist right-wing government by the right so like everyone on like both sides of the political spectrum project all of their political aspirations into the single figure of Perrone which works because he's not in the country he's not not there so you know and because he gone, you can project anything you want onto him. And this is to a large extent the origin of modern populism, right? Like, you know,

modern populism is the projection of all grievances onto one guy, and then having that guy come in, take power, do constant sort of semi-political mobilization to like fix your issues. And one of the interesting threads here is that like the theoretical origin of left populism is very specifically Peronism because one of the theoreticians of like modern left populism one of the most famous ones is my old nemesis the Argentinian political philosopher Ernesto leclou and His wife Chantal Mouffe who were like they were like, you know these are these people were like the theoretical forces behind a bunch of like the European left in this sort of Euro communism era

And even up until like like po Deimos in Spain 2011 like these are the people who are the theoretical force behind So much like left electoral stuff in the last like 50 years And it's all from the clout who was a per was a left peronist So all of all the dots are going on the pin board and while he's gone He's this guy that like, from an American perspective, it's like, imagine that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump from 2016 were both the same guy, and both sides were just trying to get this one guy to come back to Argentina and fix everything. So this creates the left and right Peronists.

And when Perón comes back in the 70s and like immediately gets elected president again the right Peronist just I mean literally start slaughtering the left Peronist in the streets and Perón like backs the right Peronists against the left and you would think this would destroy left Peronism but no no left Peronism was in power in Argentina until like malay's election like a few years ago, it's until like, Malai's election, like a few years ago. It's... Oh. So, okay, so like, why would you still be a left Peronist after Peron, like, had all your boys machine guns in the 70s? Part of the reason this works also is that he dies and his wife takes power and there's like another military coup. So, you know, he's not like in power long enough, kind of, for like the disenchantment to really set in.

He's just, he's in power just long enough for people to remember it as like the break between the dictatorship's. And at this point, I can finally attempt to go what is Peronism? Like, how many minutes of like, oh God, I think I've gone over my 10 minute limit of what is Peronism. But okay, Peron's deal is this, right? Like, so okay, like if you're a Peronist, right? In a Peronist state, everyone is supposed to be equal before the power of the Argentinian state.

And so if you're a leftist, you focus on the everyone is going to be equal part. And this means on the one hand, you know, there are real substantive gains for the Argentinian working class that they didn't get under the, you know, the sort of previous administrations and under the Junta, right?

You know, you have like massive expansions of workers rights, a nationalization of a bunch of sectors of the economy. You have this like strategy of national development through like import substitution. There's just like a long strand of like feminist Peronism from, you know, his like, like him being the administration where women got the right to vote. On the other hand, if you're a fascist, you focus on the like before the power of the Argentinian state part, which means like permanent class collaboration. And this is the part of the deal that brings the right in is like the deal is that okay,

so you give the workers all this stuff and you set up these really complicated patronage networks. And you know, people have jobs and like they have a social safety net, at least in theory. And the trade off is you will never ever again attempt to like occupy a factory or like drive these parasites who run your entire life out of power. And the second part of that is this like this hardline, unhinged right-wing like Argentinian nationalism, which is wielded against, for example, like Argentinian indigenous groups. And so I promised a comparison to the long culture, the 70s long cultural revolution. We've reached that point of it. So to understand like really what this is, right?

It's an active counterinsurgency that is sort of that is waged by The state and waged by a bunch of like parts of the social sector to enfold This really dynamic and militant workers movement into the state in such a way that there can still be politics, kind of, but it won't actually be a threat to the ruling class. And my sort of like closest thing to this is this very, very weird period in Chinese history between like the end of the short culture revolution in like 1969 and the death of Mao in 76, where like the most unhinged parts of the Cultural Revolution are sort of over because Mao has set off, you know, so 1967, like Mao sets off this uprising in

Shanghai. He does this deliberately as part of his like strategy to like gain power of the party. The problem is that control of Shanghai is no longer in the hands of Chinese Communist Party, like the workers take the city. And this is a disaster because they've all been reading about the Paris Commune. I think what the Paris Commune is that they had like direct elections of people and there's a moment I actually like I found this this moment of this transcript where Mao was talking to Zhou Enlai and Zhou Enlai is like if we let these people do direct elections

like it's going to lead to anarchism and Mao is like oh shit we have to stop this. So what happens is that he wheels together this baffling coalition of like, student Red Guards and the sort of something like a loyal like rebel workers factions, along with a bunch of like the remaining party bureaucracy and the military, which is a coalition comprised of everyone on every side of the Cultural Revolution, right? Like, normally the Cultural Revolution is broken down into very roughly, there are rebel factions and there are like government factions, right? And he's pulled together a coalition of a bunch of elements of both of them with the explicit thing of we are going to end the revolution. And in the short run, what this does is it leads to the back half of the Cultural Revolution that people don't talk about very much, which is

instead of like everyone dying because there are rebels running around, everyone's dying because the state is killing everyone to like bring everyone back under control. And that's what like most of the people who die in the Cultural Revolution are killed, putting the whole thing down. If you want to try to understand like what Peronism is, right, it's this ideology of bringing together all of the different sort of disparate political factions in a moment, right? You're bringing to everyone from like the fascist on the right to like the socialist on the left and you're bringing them into the banner of this one guy in the same. And the reason Mao is able to do this is because like he's Mao, right? Every single like faction on every side of the Cultural Revolution, whatever they're trying to do is justifying it in the name of like, oh, this is what Mao wants.

This is what Peron is doing, right? He's drawing together the entire political spectrum in a way that he can sort of stabilize power, take it away from like the Junta and forge this permanent political coalition. And this results in like the sort of total dominance that this ideology has over Argentine. Politic means that like basically every election

in Argentina until like Malay takes power is an election between the left and the right Peronists And okay, okay. I am so sorry. This finally is the end of my attempt to explain Peronism We're gonna go to ads when we come back. I'm gonna Actually do this interview that I've been promising. I'm so sorry that I've been promising, I am so sorry. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds, but what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the cover of night?

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might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends? We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.

But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Blum generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over a hundred people for over $15 million. One of the victims was his own grandmother. I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning.

And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we are back. Thank you so much for surviving this. This sort of brings us to like how he kind of takes power and how, you know, there's an economic crisis, there's like all this inflation. And so he comes in on like, I don't know, you were talking about this beforehand, I

want to talk to you about this. Like, there's all these really weird parallels between this and the American election where it's like, except the inflation in Argentina is like real yeah we just have this sort of like boogeyman version of it they actually have hyperinflation yeah yeah we check the current inflation rate yeah I think I mean it's like several hundred percent right now I think I think it's like 300 something percents, which is actually, Lale's entire thing was that he was going to stop inflation. It's actually it's way worse

under him than it was under the previous, like, Perotist administration. Oh, there's one last thing I forgot to mention, which is like, you know, why if you're on the left, would you take this deal? And this also ties into like how this politics how his politics I took over the state, which is that like, you know, there were people in Argentina, like under these proneness governments got things that are like unimaginable here. Like there's one that's important to me. And like, obviously, like it's still, you're still living under capitalism.

A lot of it still sucks. But like one of the things that people won under these governments was this mandate that 1% of all government employees had to be trans, which is like unimaginable here. Like, like, even at the height of like, you know, like sort of trans acceptance or whatever, like that's, there's what like that's, that's not, that's not a thing that's even like, no one even like thinks to ask about that. And like, yeah, like, I don't know, like, yeah, like, I might sell my soul to Juan Peron if it meant that like none of my trans friends ever had to sleep in an alley again, like I you know, but the wheels fall off of this and They put the self-described and narco capitalists in power

which is this is great and God Okay, this finally gets us to the fun part of this. I said the top this episode that like he did a meme coin, right? Can you explain what that is? Because, like... Oh, God. Yeah, so meme coins are a particularly weird part of the cryptocurrency world where they basically go out and say that this is a token that has no inherent value, which, I mean,

skeptics would argue that that's true of all cryptocurrency, but meme coins very actively embrace that fact and they're often themed around a meme. So, a lot of people know of Dogecoin, which is themed around the Sheba Inu dog. They're also sometimes just themed around sort of an idea or a person or just sort of whatever is capturing the public attention at any given moment. And the idea is that you buy in, and all of the attention

causes more people to buy in. And if you're really good at it or really lucky, you're one of the first people to buy in. And so you buy in at a low price, and then you sell after everyone else has bought in and pumped the price up higher. That's the idea. In reality, it doesn't really work that way.

It's full of insider trading and market manipulation. And it's not sort of a fair game where anyone has a chance to be one of those early people. But that's sort of the shape of it, at least. And so I guess that brings us to Libra, which is the coin that Millay was convinced, I guess, to endorse. Yeah. I mean, I think there's this interesting thing here, too, where it's like, our government is just like a fucking meme coin now.

Like the thing that is in control of the American state is Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is just the Dogecoin meme. Like I... Yeah. We're in sort of a post-ironic world at this point where crypto and the US government are somehow completely intertwined. And I guess we should probably mention that just before Trump took office, he launched his own meme coin, which was the Trump token, followed very shortly after by his wife launching

the Melania token. And they did what all good meme coins do, which is that they spiked in price based on the original interest and then they lost everyone a bunch of money once the price came back down because with meme coins people lose interest and move on to the next one and you know the Trump token shockingly does not have enduring value so yeah and like and that's just interesting thing about it which is like okay this is just a pump-and-dump scheme yes like it's just securities fraud like we have an entire economy based on security That's the interesting thing about it, which is like, okay, this is just a pump and dump scheme. Yes. Like it's just securities fraud.

Like we have an entire economy based on security. Everyone doing securities fraud and everyone knows that securities fraud. I don't know. I mean, it's really cynical. Like if you actually talk to people who are deep into meme coins, either creating them or trading them, there's this broad acceptance that like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's totally a scam. People are trying to run off with the money after they launch these tokens.

There's all of this market manipulation happening. Average, everyday people who are seeing these stories about people buying in super early and then making a million dollars out of thin air, that never happens. Those aren't average people. Those are deeply sophisticated trading bots or people with insider knowledge.

Like, everyone knows this and openly discusses it, and yet there's still this active participation in it because the idea is that, like, okay, sure, it's a scam, but if you get in on the scam early enough, you can be the scammer, and you can be the one who profits, and, you know know screw everybody else So it's like this really deeply rotten like cynical world

Yeah, I remember you talked about this on Jamie's show about like how just deeply nihilistic it all is Yeah, and I think you know I mean, it's not even it used to be you had to do metaphors to draw a direct line between It used to be you had to do metaphors to draw a direct line between this sort of like the nihilism of this shit and like the nihilism of putting like Malai or like putting Trump and Elon like in office. But now it's just, I mean, they just do the meme coin, right? Like there's no... Yeah, the mask is like fully off of crypto in the meme coin era, I think.

It's kind of amazing how during the previous crypto boom in like 2020 and 2021, there was this phrase that everyone was saying, which was wag me, which was like, we're all gonna make it. And the idea was like, we're all gonna get rich together, everyone's gonna succeed. And now it's like, they've totally, you never hear that anymore.

And now it's like, oh, I will punch you in the face and steal your wallet if I get the moment Opportunity and that is like broadly accepted throughout the crypto world Yeah, you know and like that is also like what malai has been doing to like everyone in Argentina, right? Like his his play as it came in is he I mean I got one of these I remember from like the very first days He was in office as he's talking about all this stuff about how They were gonna take away will for benefits from anyone who was arrested at a protest Yeah, and like that didn't stop there's been massive protests like basically the sense the moment he took power, but

You know like it's just this really deeply cynical a very explicit thing of like pitting Like everyone in society against each other like you know like making this argument to is like a crime thick article about this word It's like they you know like you know, like making this argument to, there's like a crime thick article about this where it's like they, you know, like he's very explicitly making this argument that like, well, okay, if you're, if you're like a private sector worker and you're making no money, the reason you're making no money is because wages are too high in the public sector, it's because taxes are too high and if taxes and corporations were lower they would pay you more. It's like, yeah, no, but it, but it, but if it fits into this sort of like pure nihilism

of like, yeah, everyone trying to grift each other. And it's, I mean, it's really recognizable here in the United States too, where it's the same story of like, oh, you're not making enough money because, you know, people are stealing your tax money and it's going to, you know, people who don't deserve it, or it's going to these programs to fund foreign aid instead of people in the United States.

Or, you know, it's like very much trying to pit everyone against one another so that you don't notice that the person who's actually taking the money is the guy who launched the meme coin or the people who have the insider information. It's like this very direct mirror of what is happening in society, and yet it's so obvious.

The problem that we have is I think people do broadly recognize that like Everyone who is rich got rich by fucking robbing people But instead of trying to do anything about that the the solution that's being positive by these people is like well instead of you just Being scammed all the time like you could be the scam artist. You could be the robbery Yeah, yeah Like that's like the new scam instead of like, you know, because like organizing is fucking hard, right? And like attempting to fight these people is really hard. They have all the the money they have all the power they have the police they have the military

And so you get like this shit on the other hand Sometimes in backfires because these people like are like all in enough on on this fucking meme coin shit to like run it So yeah, let's let's let's talk about this specific being coin Libra. Yeah. So it's kind of a weird example of a meme coin because, you know, most meme coins, the idea is like this has no intrinsic value. This has no purpose. You just gamble on the token price and hope for the best. Libra was ostensibly supposed to actually have some sort of point to it, making it much unlike most of the meme coins. But it was still, you know, basically a meme coin under the hood. But the idea was that like somehow some of the profits from this Libra token were going to be put towards supporting Argentine entrepreneurs or something like that.

There was a sort of like social benefit side to it where which was all very vague and like very little detail like you you know you never really know with these things what what is actually supposed to happen but that was the story is that like this is gonna support Argentine entrepreneurs and it's gonna funnel money to their projects and all this it almost feels like an older kind of scam like it reminds me of like an NFT scam we're like yeah they'll be like ah so we're the future we're gonna make a game and you're all gonna vote. It's like that thing, but They brought it back for one last ride

It's like a historical like 2020 era crypto scam where it was like look we have this beautiful roadmap of all these things We're gonna do and we're gonna give you gifts and rewards and and then it's like okay, but how is it gonna work? And they're like oh, don't worry about it. We'll tell you later. Just give us your money now. And that was kind of the idea with the Libra coin. But basically, the team behind it had some folks who were involved in something

called Tech Forum Argentina, which was like a group of tech entrepreneurs with this sort of like blockchain angle to it, who had access to Malay via this sort of like blockchain angle to it, who had access to Malay via this sort of project that was happening in Argentina where you could like pay to come to this conference and Malay was going to be there and all this. And so they joined forces with some meme coin guys who had a lot of experience launching other meme coin projects, including the Melania token, including the

Enron token, which was literally launched by someone who purchased the trademark rights to the Enron company. I forgot about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That came back to haunt us. And so they all joined forces and launched this meme coin and they were able to get President Millet to promote the meme coin on his Twitter account

by saying, like, here's this Libra project, it's gonna support Argentinian entrepreneurs, here's the contract address, buy in. And so everyone got super excited because a president had just endorsed a meme coin and he unfortunately was too slow to be the first president to do such a thing with Trump beating him to that particular record

But I actually I actually can't believe I like blanking on his name the guy in El Salvador hadn't pulled one yet Oh, yeah, Buckele. Yeah, I'm like stunned. He hadn't done it yet Yeah, it's probably because he's a real Bitcoiner and Bitcoin maximalists are not a huge fan of any other cryptocurrencies That would be my guess but yeah, it is a little surprising. Yeah. Oh, also, okay, there's another unhinged angle here, which I want to briefly mention because it's extremely funny. One of my good friends, Julie, pointed me to, which is part of the thing that originally made me want to do this is that, so one of the people who was involved in this hookup process with the crypto people Was this guy named Augustine Lehay who's like this very very famous conservative writer

And he's the guy who like introduced the concept of gender ideology to Argentina So he's you know like one of and one of what lays like big things is like being a turf all the time Right and the guy who like got all these people into turf shit is like the guy who introduced him to this fucking crypto scam And he might have to sell him out in order to get out of the crypto scam Which is just oh god Trans people getting our revenge Speaking of crypto scams, we should take one more ad break before we get into all of the rest of this bullshit. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up

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This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

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Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Bloom generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over 100 people for over $15 million. One of the victims was his own grandmother.

I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning. And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. Charge David Blum! I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back to the main story of the really unprecedented access this administration has given the crypto people. Can you talk a bit about like who the like who the people involved in this are?

Because it's a lot of like very, very large players in this world. Yeah. So, I mean, it's still sort of coming out like who exactly was involved and to what degree they were involved, but it's really starting to look like the creation of this meme coin was spearheaded by a bunch of guys at a group called Kelsey or Ventures that has been involved in, like I said, launching a bunch of these tokens, and that's sort of a family run operation. There's a guy named Dr. Tom and then his two sons,

Hayden and Gideon, I believe the other one is named. Hayden and Gideon, I believe, the other one is named. Hayden and Gideon, Jesus Christ. Like, oh no, they're making these guys in a lab. And they're kind of young guys, like Hayden is like 28 or something like that, which is typical for the crypto world, I guess. But yeah, and so Hayden Davis is the mastermind behind much of the launch.

But they're working very closely with a bunch of other people in the crypto world. And that's something that they sort of have to do with these big splashy token launches. The Trump token had to do this as well, where you can't just show up as a president and launch a meme coin and expect everything will just work. Because when that many people all try to buy a token at once,

you need someone on the other end to actually be selling the tokens. And there's all of this infrastructure behind it that goes into these launches. And so you need people to do the market making. And there's the liquidity providers. And there's all these projects under the hood that are

involved and it's beginning to look like a lot of those people were deeply involved in these token launches in ways that was perhaps not entirely proper. Yeah. I know propriety around meme coin launches is maybe a lot to expect, but you know, there's sort of talks about how one of the co-founders of a project called Meteora, which is one of these huge liquidity platforms and also a place where people are actually buying these tokens. Can you explain like what a liquidity platform is for listeners?

Yeah, yeah. So it's basically sort of what I suggested, which is that like, if you go out and launch a token and you don't do any prep, when goes to buy that token there's or sell that token there's there's no one on the other side of that trade you need some amount of liquidity in the markets when you start off yeah so they're like there have to be like there have to be like actual tokens that you can sell to people just yeah and if someone you know if someone buys one of your tokens they want to be able to sell it to someone as well and so you need to be able to sell it to someone as well.

And so you need to be able to sort of absorb that kind of trading without just assuming that, you know, out of thin air, these people will exist on both sides of the trade. And so there are these projects called liquidity providers where, you know, sometimes it's like big firms will provide liquidity and they'll step in in that role. And that's sort of the market maker end of things. Meteora is a little bit unusual in that they do like decentralized liquidity provision, which I'm not gonna go into too much detail about because it's very mind-numbing. But it's also so funny that like the terms that have taken hold for these things like our financial terms, and it's like,

yeah, it's like like this is not liquidity in the sense of like does the US government have cash on hand to pay something this is like are there these like stupid little weird program things to like move other programs around yeah and it's not even dollars you know we're not we're not talking about real dollars here we're talking about like people providing you one fake token in exchange for another fake token But I think they very much intentionally use the traditional financial terms to sort of lend a degree of legitimacy to it and cover up The fact that like oh and if you're a liquidity provider and you just like Siphon all the liquidity out of there. You've just made a ton of money in a total scam But it sounds legit because it's a liquidity provider and it's something that exists in like traditional finance.

But yeah, so there's this Meteora project where that liquidity operation all happens and you know, Meteora was deeply sort of involved in some of these big token launches like Trump token was starting out on Meteora, Melania started out there, this Libra token started out there, and now it seems like the co-founder was like very closely connected to this Hayden guy. He even supposedly introduced the Melania team to Hayden Davis, the the Kelsier guy. It sounds like, you know, according to some of the allegations out there, he was personally involved in a lot of this early insider trading that I'm sure we'll get into when it comes to LibreToken and why everything went so wrong.

And it seems like there is this sort of network of people throughout this meme coin world who are running these big platforms and who are making connections and all of that, who are personally insider trading a lot of these big token launches so that when those people who are personally insider trading a lot of these big token launches so that when those people who are buying it up early and making all this money, it's like, oh yeah, that's the guy who runs Meteora. This happens so much in the crypto world and I should stop being surprised every time it

happens, but what happened is when the co-founder of Meteora stepped down, the other co-founder, who is previously not really known, stepped up and was like, hey, I'm the other co-founder of Meteora stepped down. The other co-founder, who was previously not really known, stepped up and was like, hey, I'm the other co-founder. And he released this whole statement about how Ben Chao, the co-founder who stepped down, was, you know, he thought he was totally innocent of all this and nothing shady was happening at Meteora, et cetera.

The other co-founder who just came out of the woodwork, he runs Jupiter, which is the other, it's like the ostensible Meteora competitor. It's like, oh yeah, it's all just the same people, you know, behind the scenes. And, you know, some of the insiders who were sort of whistleblowing on this were saying, oh yeah, the Jupiter guys were all insider trading too. The Meteora guys are insider trading.

Like, they're all trading against you. So it's really exposed a lot of the rot in this sort of meme coin world in all of this infrastructure. And the fact that like, oh yeah, yeah, when you're buying meme coins, like you are playing in a rigged casino. Which has certainly not done any favors to the meme coin reputation,

but certainly also to you, malaise as well. Yes, well, let's get into like malaise involvement in this. Can you lay up to the timeline of this because it's Yes a little wild so unlike the trump token mule did not launch this token he was not the mastermind behind it It's not clear how much he really knew about the team behind it or what they were doing But he was certainly convinced to endorse this token and you know Pump it up on Twitter and all of this and again. This isn't not an unusual thing for meme coins to do

I mean, it's unusual for them to find a president, but I get apparently not now like But you know, there's this whole process with meme coins where they try to find influential people to talk about them, to drive the interest in the token. And so they will hire celebrities or people who are influential in the crypto world or anyone with some degree of a platform to promote a token. And ostensibly they're supposed to disclose

that they are being paid to promote the token. They rarely do. Yeah. It is technically illegal, but like rarely, rarely enforced for someone to promote a token without disclosure. One of the very few cases where it was enforced was against Kim Kardashian of all people. Yeah. Although that shit's all gone now. Yeah, and that was years ago before the SEC was bought by the crypto companies.

And so... Yeah, and like, I mean, they literally, like, I think like yesterday? Was it this, yeah, was it yesterday as we're recording this? Recording this on Friday. Was it yesterday that the, the, the, is it the SEC or the SEC that dropped the case against Coinbase? SEC. SEC, yeah. That was today today. Yeah this morning. Oh my god Yeah, yeah, and I mean we're seeing this everywhere

But the SEC has paused a case against Binance which had involved allegations of actual fraud Not just the sort of like minor securities law Fraud is also actually a securities law violation Yeah, those are all by the way a bunch of bunch of very, very like Binance and Coinbase are the biggest players in the regular crypto market. Yeah, Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Coinbase is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Coinbase spent over $75 million on the most recent political cycle in the US and now is reaping the rewards by having the SEC case against them dropped. So I would not expect much in the way of SEC enforcement against crypto founders or companies,

especially given that they have also installed crypto friendly people at the SEC, at the CFTC. The CFTC nominee for chair is an Andreessen Horowitz guy who is advising them on crypto policy Like it's totally rotten now. Yeah, well and also it's like the actual guy running the government right now is Elon Musk who is you know What are their fucking boys? Yeah, and the guy who's ostensibly running the project has his own meme coin project So I suspect he's not gonna be super keen on anyone enforcing laws against meme coin operations either. Yeah, good God. It's such a mess.

Yeah, all right, back to Argentina. Back to Argentina before we get lost in despair. Oh God. Yeah, so basically, you know, the coin launches, Melee, you know, fires off a tweet about how this is such a great meme coin and he gives the token address so you can all go buy it. And then very early on, it becomes clear that there is some degree of insider trading happening. So the beauty and the horror of crypto is that it's all recorded on a public blockchain.

People can look at who is doing the early trades in these tokens. And it fairly quickly becomes apparent that the wallets that were involved in launching the token, and so the ones that are being controlled by the people who actually created this token and are promoting it, are also involved in this early sniping of the token. And sniping is when you use crypto trading bots, you know, like automated programs, to buy up the tokens very early on at low, low, low prices, you know, earlier than any human could reasonably be expected to go but hit the buy button. Yeah, it's the thing that like fucking ticket scalpers do, or like the reason why you can't

buy a PS5 is that all these trading bots get in like immediately. Exactly. It's 100% analogous to that. But in the case of these trading bots, you know, often they have insider information, they have the contract address before it's public so that they can be like split-stack in on it to buy these tokens early and then they usually dump them really early too. So you know if if Melee tweets about a meme coin the price shoots up within minutes of this thing launching and within minutes these snipers sell

off and they make millions of dollars often in profits and it is that selling that often causes the price to crash right back down again, causing those average people who thought that they were early to be the ones basically subsidizing the folks who make millions of dollars off these launches. Yeah, like it's pump and dump. It's literally just a pump and dump. Like it's just fraud. Like I just, I don't know. like I just this is by my like old like 2010 sense of ethics emerging here Which apparently doesn't exist in the sort of bold new world of like nihilism like this is just fraud

Yeah, no, I know like people talk about you know Oh, we need crypto regulations like you don't need any new regulations Fraud is still fraud like stealing from people is illegal But that's like a whole separate point this entire thing when everyone was doing this on Wall Street It like crashed the economy a bunch of times. We were like, holy shit Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to do this But I don't know capitalism is such that you could just buy the government and now all your failure like fraud schemes are legal Right if you do it on the blockchain crime is legal apparently. Yeah,. But yeah, so you know, there's this really early scandal where it's like, oh, you know,

insiders are trading this token, everyone's calling it a rug pull because that's like the colloquial term for when someone launches a project and then steals all the money and it certainly looks like that's what's happening. And so, Millay very quickly distances himself from the project. He deletes the tweet that he made and he sends out a new tweet saying, basically, I didn't know anything about these guys. I don't really know what their project is. I just thought it was this, you know, cool thing that was going to support

Argentinian businesses. I, you know, I renounced all affiliation with it, basically. And then he, of course of course blames his political opponents for trying to weaponize this against him. And he goes very much out swinging on people being like, I can't believe you're taking advantage of this scam to come after my reputation. Oh, the protists made me do it.

Oh, one perot. Yeah, right, exactly. He's like, this is all your fault somehow. So anyway, that all happens and it sort of launches the project into chaos because the way that the people on the inside are talking about it and huge grain of salt here because, you know, these are people who are potentially admitting to their crimes. Well, and also, like, these are professional liars. Like, their job is to lie to people for a living.

Like, it's... And, yeah, and several of the things that they've said have already been proven to be untrue. So, like, huge, huge, huge grain of salt here. But their story is that, oh, we were sniping the token, yes. But it's not bad because we were doing it to try to protect people from the other token snipers who show up on launches like this.

Like, we did it. No, no, you don't understand. We had to do the scam to save you from the other people who were trying to do the same scam. You're not even exaggerating. That's literally what they said. That's so good. And so they come up with this like harebrained theory where they're like, okay, if we snipe

the tokens early, we can stop other token snipers from accumulating these huge piles of the tokens and then dumping them and causing the whole thing to crash. And so, they will be limited to sniping smaller quantities that won't totally wreck the whole chart basically and cause it to go to zero. And then we'll take our accumulated pile of tokens and slowly seed it back in to try to stabilize the chart. I mean, it's like blatant market manipulation that they're describing.

In defending themselves against allegations that they're committing crimes, they're admitting to new crimes. It's like this whole thing. But that's the story, is that they were like, we had to do this to protect the chart. And the idea was that like, Melee was gonna make this video promoting the token even more. And at that point, they were gonna put all this money

that they had taken back into the project. But of course that video never came because Melee had already cut his losses and was like, I don't want anything to do with this. And so now the guys who launched this token are sitting on like, ostensibly a hundred million dollars worth of tokens. I use the word ostensibly because it's crypto

and the numbers aren't real. And you know, there's really not a hundred million dollars floating around in there. Again, people talk about how this is like a $4.5 billion crypto scam. There was never $4.5 billion in this. It's all fake money. But like, it is true that there were people who put real money into this. They got totally scammed, basically taken for a ride because they thought that they might be able

to make money on it because the president endorsed it because they thought there was this, you know, somewhat legitimate scheme behind it to go to Argentinian businesses. They lost their money and it all went to this guy, Hayden Williams, who is, you know, connected to Millet, who has some degree of influence with Millet, who claimed in text messages that he controls Millet. Oh my God, yeah.

By the way, use the N-word, by the way, in this too. Like, who these people are? Like, this is a white guy using the N-word, by the way, in these two. Like, who these people are? Like, this is a white guy using the N-word. Like, yeah, this guy is like whiter than I am and using the N-word to say that he controls. Jesus Christ. Not great. He said in this text message that was leaked

that he was sending money to Millay's sister, who is very influential and who sort of is Millay's right-hand sister, you know, it's sent money to her and that as a result of that, Mille will do anything that I want. He'll say what I want, he'll tweet what I want, he'll, you know, use my puppet basically. Of course, Mille was very unhappy about this characterization, but it seems like there's money trading hands behind the scenes, even though Mille was not, you know, behind the

token directly. And this has all resulted in somewhat of a political scandal for Mule, which is both surprising that like of all things that could have caused a political scandal for Mule, there are so many things to choose from and this is what it was. But he's now facing these allegations that he was complicit in the fraud, that he should be impeached even. You know, there's some rumblings among the opposition party about trying to start some sort of

impeachment proceedings against him. And it's all gone very south very quickly for him, I think. God, it really would be so incredibly funny if this is the thing that brings him down. I don't know if it will but also like I don't know This is one of these like It even bigger way than like the Trump plane crashes are like a political fucking Godsend like handed down to the opposition the Democrats aren't don't use it right because you know the Democrats right instead of just like

Doing is it's not doing anything. I would do which is starting literally every speech with fucking no cops no kings no crashes They're like they're like no, we're not doing anything like this is like if you were like a Catholic opponent of this administration Like this is like fucking God like reaching a giant hand down and going hey have this thing to beat him We have the stick to beat over the head Yeah, you know to their credit. I feel like Argentinian Yeah, and to their credit, I feel like Argentinian politicians are taking better advantage of this than US politicians have taken of their many opportunities because they are calling for impeachment. There have been many lawsuits filed against Millet and there is a judge looking into his

degree of connections here. Obviously there is some amount of corruption over in the Argentinian government and so you know the degree to which they will adequately investigate themselves is somewhat questionable let's just say. Yeah. And you know the the likelihood of an impeachment proceeding actually you know getting the votes to go to trial is certainly questionable but this has been used, you know, in a somewhat effective way to attack the credibility of Melee, which is, you know, worth doing. And you know, I will say this about Peronism, right?

Like the thing that the thing about Peronism is that it's like the engine that devours social movements, right? Like anytime a social movement comes in, the Peronist sort of like consume it from the inside. But the thing the thing about the way that like produce and functions is like, okay, so they've eaten all these social movements, but it's not quite like the US where you can just like disband it and make it go away. Like you actually have to still have to have the thing the social movement does.

And that means that these motherfuckers could throw a protest like whatever else you say about the Perot is like aren't capable of putting an unbelievable number of people into the streets. And I'm really interested to see what's going to happen like this weekend and over the coming weeks to see if we see another 17th giant round of protests like also specifically about this. Yeah. Yeah, I'll be curious too. It's really interesting to me like to what degree this resonates with everyday people I guess in Argentina, because there's a lot to complain about

with the Melee government. And so it's sort of fascinating to me that people are latching onto this. And it's sort of interesting just to compare with the United States where there's a lot to complain about with the Trump administration. And people were complaining about the meme coin, but by the time

that was partly because it was pre-inauguration and so Trump hadn't started signing all the executive orders and so it was very quickly overshadowed by the other sort of blatantly illegal things happening within the Trump administration. And so it didn't get that much traction in sort of the longer term. So it's interesting to me to watch this play out in a different country where, you know, Millet has been in office for some time now, and you know, this has gained at least some degree of a foothold, and I'll be curious to see, you know,

if that endures or not. He's sort of trying to play it off as like, you know, oh, everyone knows crypto is risky. He said something, he tried to do this like damage control interview on TV where he said that basically like the people who bought this token knew they were playing Russian roulette and they got the bullet, which is a wild thing to say.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's just a nutty thing to say, but also very in character for him. And you know, he said something in that interview to the effect of, only a couple thousand people lost money. What's the chances that those people were even Argentinian? We shouldn't even care if they were not Argentinian.

And so it's sort of interesting to watch him try to downplay this. It's like, well, yeah, of course people lost money. It's a scam. Yeah, I guess. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds.

But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones, Or are they?

We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new

fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say,

God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer

who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-racism spin class and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

Karen, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends? We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere

and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Blum generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over 100 people for for over 15 million dollars.

One of the victims was his own grandmother. I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning and I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think part of the reason this is like a real issue for him is that like, he really, truly, you know, and this is something that

like Trump is also doing this like that he but he like really truly went out to like his main base of supporters yeah and was like I was going to take you up behind a woodstead and shoot you and like take the money out of your pocket and like the way he's like systematically fucking all of the people who are supposed to be his political base and like like Trump was also doing this but like people sort of like haven't isn't set in that this is what's happening Where it's like this rug pull thing. It's like this is like the only thing that the fucking Unhinged right-wing crypto bro people care about like this is like the one thing you could possibly do Yeah, it's really interesting to see like what causes crypto people to turn on you because it did happen in a much more limited way with

Trump where you know the US crypto Movement, I guess that's not the right word for it But the industry or the crypto world had really supported Trump very heavily and you know They had donated to him But there was also this widespread belief among people who traded crypto that Trump was going to be good for crypto He was going to cause crypto prices to go up He was going to fix all these regulations that they thought were holding the industry back and all this stuff And then when Trump came out and launched a meme coin some of his most devoted fans among the crypto community were horrified by it

And they they really responded in a way that I think a lot of people didn't expect which which was like, I can't believe he's doing this grifty meme coin. He's supposed to believe in crypto, not just use it to steal money from his supporters. And so like there was actually this degree of shock that very briefly rattled the crypto world in the US as well. And so I think that's, you know, sort of interesting to see is that like, okay, you're allowed to do scams and run your government in a way that personally benefits you as long as it's not reflecting poorly on us and it's not taking money from us. But as soon as it starts to make people look askance at meme coins or the crypto world in general, or it starts to affect crypto prices, then things turn bad somewhat quickly. Yeah. I wonder, I don't know, I'm interested in your take on this.

How much of that is people who are in less meme coin-y things, who are worried about their assets because they at some point have to be able to cash out? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. There are factions are factions in crypto where I sort of referred to this earlier when we were talking about Bikale, but, you know, there are Bitcoiners who believe that Bitcoin is the one true cryptocurrency and that everything else is a total scam. And so they are really upset when these meme coins come out because they feel like it reflects poorly on Bitcoin because people just sort of lump everything together. There's sort of a step down from that, which is people who think that there are more legitimate

cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin, but meme coins are not them. And so there's been all this talk recently where they're like, look at all these meme coin scams that are getting in the news. You know, there was like the Hawk Toa meme coin that totally like stole a news cycle for a minute there. And they're terrified that, you know, people are starting to think of crypto as meme coins. You know, it's just one in the same. And they're like, people are not going to think of all these wonderful, legitimate cryptocurrencies and all of their use cases if they're thinking about Hawk tua coin and

how they ripped off a bunch of people, which like, personally, I think that the reputation is perhaps somewhat deserved, but, you know, there is this belief among some people that like, oh, this is not real crypto, and it's giving the rest of crypto a bad reputation. And we're actually starting to see talk of that in some of the higher places where, you know, I've been seeing reporting that people are talking

about the Hoctua coin on Capitol Hill, like when they're talking about shredding regulations to prevent people from running securities frauds. The opposition is like, well, do we want Hoctua coin everywhere? Is this really what we want? And so it is affecting the public perception and the know, Congress to some extent, which I think is what's really scaring people because they've just made these huge inroads with, you know, all of these now crypto friendly politicians and friendly regulators.

And now crypto is out here making a fool of itself, right? As you know, new legislation or regulation might be installed. Yeah. And this gets me to, I think the thing I want to close on which is you know Like we actually did successfully as a society kill the NFT. Yeah, like we took that motherfucker out back at standard death Um, yep And I'm wondering whether you think that like this is this is a moment where we can like use this as a wedge thing to Try to like fucking kill this entire industry and how vulnerable they are to like the negative PR

rattleings from all of this? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point that like the NFT, even as crypto has had a resurgence, you know, Bitcoin crossed $100,000 NFTs are like nowhere to be found, you know, like the NFT platforms are struggling there. A couple of them just went out of business. And I think it is largely thanks to the fact that NFTs became really cringe, you know? Like everyone was like, oh, those stupid monkey pictures. And that had like a really devastating impact on this entire industry that was supposed to be like

the future of art or whatever. And so I think there is that potential throughout other portions of the crypto world. I would not be shocked to see that happen to these meme coin platforms where they sort of lose their novelty value and people just see them as big scams and there's really no point.

But unfortunately, I don't think that, you know, all of crypto can be undermined by the cringe factor or, you know, the sort of societal distaste for it because I mean, there are people who have bought Bitcoin early who have billions of dollars in crypto in Bitcoin. They are now working in the US government. They have like very strong control over very powerful institutions.

And so there is this countervailing force to keep crypto alive at basically any cost. And I think we're seeing them somewhat desperate to do that as we're seeing calls for say a Bitcoin strategic reserve, which is something that keeps coming up. The idea that like the US government should personally stockpile Bitcoin, which they make a couple of arguments

as to why they should do that, which are not very convincing even to some of the people in the crypto world. But the sort of underlying thread through it is that if the US government holds a substantial amount of Bitcoin, they won't be able to afford to let the Bitcoin price collapse

or to do anything that might threaten the cryptocurrency industry. And so I think that's why we're seeing the attempts to sort of work crypto into government checkbooks, into the banking system, into traditional finance, people trying to get Bitcoin ETFs into your pension plans and your retirement funds and things like that is really to make it so endemic and so contagious, I guess, to the rest of the financial world that it's almost like this threat that they're holding against the government, which is like, all right, if you kill us, we'll kill you.

And I think it's this interesting thing of like,, I know so we were going to close out like no This is fun. Um there's this interesting way in which like this seems like the end game for the entire like tech bubble economy is like You know like none of these fucking companies have ever been able to make money, right? none of these fucking companies that they all they all every like fucking like everything from like like fucking uber to like all every like fucking like everything from like like fucking uber to like Fucking like Google and Amazon like hemorrhaged money uber will hemorrhage money until it eventually the bubble pops and it dies right? But like Amazon only really started making money

You know Google was kind of making money like Amazon was already making money when they started getting government contracts for like their cloud computing shit Yeah, like that like looks like the end game like you know this is this is the thing with like Elon's like fucking electric armored vehicle Contract is like the only thing that can keep the bubble going is just pure state intervention But that also gives me a little bit of hope because I think the thing that's kept this giant bubble economy going for like over Like a decade and a half now has been really really even under the original Trump administration. I mean, the original Trump administration kind of got bailed out by COVID to some extent. Like, you know, I mean, like the original Argentinian economic crisis was this there's this there's this huge wave of currency collapses in 2018, where it was sort of contains like the IMF did a bailout in while I was trying to do a bailout in Argentina, like it kind

of got contained, but it set off like a wave of uprisings. But like, there's been this like really it's just taken this really careful financial management and like all of these like like a trillion dollars of like overnight repo purchases like every day from the Treasury to like make sure there's enough liquidity in the banking like industry to like prevent like the kind of like 2008 style collapses and I think it's taken a really delicate hand and You know like I don't think it's a good thing, but on the other hand, like, these guys just fire the nuke police, like, while they were moving a nuke.

And I wonder if they can actually keep the dance going, or if they're just gonna, if they're gonna fuck up their bubble economy, just blow it all up, which might maybe nuke all of these people in the process. Maybe. I also think that, you know, if we're talking like acceleration Maybe I also think that you know for talking like accelerationism I think that one of the most interesting things that we're gonna be seeing now is that

The crypto industry has long argued that they have all this potential You know they are just around the corner from reinventing the financial system to be wonderful and spectacular And the only reason that they haven't actually made true on that is because of those pesky regulators that are stopping them from doing all the stuff that they want. And so they've spent years now vilifying the regulators, claiming that the industry would be so wonderful if these regulators would just let them innovate.

And now they've got the regulators. They're in a world where they basically own the regulators. All of the enforcement cases against them are gonna go away. The friendliest possible regulations are going to be introduced. And now crypto doesn't have that excuse anymore, right? They can't just say that the reason we don't do anything useful is because

these stupid regulators won't let us lend you Bitcoin or whatever. And so I think there is going to be this moment where people are like, okay, so do it now. Do the innovation now. And it's going to expose a lot of the popsicle sticks and bubble gum that's holding up this crypto industry because they don't have that excuse anymore, which I think will be interesting I just hope it doesn't take like you know the economic collapse of an entire country to prove it well my line on this is that like

Accelerationism as an ideology doesn't exist anymore because there's not there's nothing you can do to do the acceleration Yeah, right like or something like left accelerationism like Trump and Elon Musk like just have their fucking foot hammering the pedal all the way down we are accelerating as fast as we could possibly go and all we have left is to like make sure that the fucking acceleration goes our way and not theirs yeah yeah but I yeah I guess like you know it's me trying to find a light in the darkness you know it's like, well, I guess at least we might see the crypto industry fall apart. Yeah. Well, look, look, they might bring down the first anarcho-capitalist president. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I don't know. Today, Argentina, tomorrow, the world. Yeah. Well, and I think also just like, you know, it's interesting to see this uprising and sort of broad distaste for Millet and everything that he's doing when everything that he's doing is so clearly modeled after Donald Trump and his affection for Elon Musk and so You know to see people sort of turn on that is perhaps a little bit instructive Yeah And I think this is interesting kind of like bounce back thing too because he's like

You know he's someone say he's modeling himself on Trump one Like the first Trump administration, but he got even weirder with it than like Trump one did and now Trump two is like modeling itself back. Yeah, they're like slingshotting, but Yeah, and and and and I don't know hopefully Hopefully the the fucking rebound hits them too, and they also get the backlash to it And we don't all die when they actually set a nuke off because we've driven them out of power already That would be nice Yeah, well Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show and for talking with us about

this unhinged bullshit and also just genuinely thank you thank you for reporting on all of this shit because oh my god it is not easy I don't know how you stay sane I don't pretend I do yeah yeah well thank you for having me yeah and we're gonna be will find your work you can find me at citationneeded.news. I also run Web3 is going just great, which is web3isgoinggreat.com. And then I'm on social media everywhere. You'll find me from either of those websites.

Yeah, we'll put links to all of this in the description. Thank you again. And yeah, I don't know, go make crypto so uncool that these people have a terrible day in panic. I'll do my best. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all-new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi.

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