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ArkeryStarkery t1_iz1vipf wrote

Reply to comment by thisoneisnotasbad in Molly Gray is being honored by the Vermont Council on World Affairs for...something? by RandolphCarter15

The way I see it, any politician is either independently wealthy or owes some policy debts to their big donors. (And often it's both!)

I was okay with FTX* being the big money behind Balint for one big reason. I didn't send Balint to the Senate for crypto regulation; I expect that to happen via the court system and the various finance regulatory bodies (see footnote.) Any crypto-bro trying to buy congresspeople has a power fantasy of getting a whole BUNCH of laws passed in their favor. It's not gonna happen. I'm happy to get progressive candidates in on their dimes, before all those dimes get fined out from under them. Now FTX is in the shitter and Balint's free to pursue the progressive agenda she campaigned on. It's win-win.

Who were Molly Gray's biggest donors? What policy debts did she owe? I don't actually know, and now I don't have to go researching to find out. I'm sure she owed some, because basically everyone does -- our campaign finance laws have been a godawful mess for so long, you can't get anywhere without SOME big money.

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*Short for 'Futures Exchange', this is the big crypto exchange that you're thinking of, the one that crashed recently. The FTC is the Federal Trade Commission, which collects data on crypto scams but isn't part of the ongoing investigations + prosecutions of FTX. That's the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) along with federal prosecutors from the DoJ. Can't imagine why anyone would get these mixed up. ;)

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VermontRox t1_iz2390y wrote

Fed.gov will tell you what you want to know.

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MntVrt t1_iz234ud wrote

"i am happy to take stolen funds so long as it benefits my party" nice

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ArkeryStarkery t1_iz2aw95 wrote

yeah dude, that's... the whole game lol

I stopped supporting candidates who I saw as morally pure around 2006, 'cause that's when I figured out they literally cannot get anywhere. Welcome to capitalism!

Also on a more specific note, anybody who got grifted by the climate-destroying crypto scams in this year of our lord 2022 absolutely deserved it, I have no moral problems with seeing rich fools parted from their money

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deadowl t1_iz2hlxx wrote

Ethereum recently switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (if you're concerned about cryptocurrency and mining).

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ArkeryStarkery t1_iz359rl wrote

I do not know what that means and I suspect I'm happier for it.

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deadowl t1_iz3h958 wrote

It's basically like the older PGP/GPG technology compared to the more prevalent and high-electricity-consumption solution in the mining of computational complexity.

So basically I believe the dip in BTC and cryptocurrencies in general is because centralized investment went out having been tied directly to electricity prices, amplified by speculation. I'd also think to look into, as a possible cause of previous market fluxes in cryptocurrency, the crackdown on Silk Road, where BTC value was tied in some part to drug market prices.

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_iz2dhf2 wrote

*The iPad decided I meant FTC not FTX and fixed it for me automatically after I typed it. I didn’t even notice. I fixed it.

This is not about Balint or Gray specifically. I appreciate your response. Reddit does not typically reward contentious issues as it is designed to promote groupthink by its very voting mechanism. Just look at the voting for asking a question people don’t like.

It was a general question of, does the source matter. I think the Twitter Biden laptop thing made me think about how so much of politics in the past 2 to 3 years has been about the messenger not the message.

Not to say the Biden laptop thing was right wrong or anything but it seems lately politics has been more about how information is exposed than what the information is.

Does the fact that the LGTBQ pac was 90% financed by a crypto bro somehow diminish its message. Does the scotus leak somehow override the over turning of roe v wade. Does email being hacked by a malicious actor somehow make the content of the emails less impactful.

We live in the Information Age and are now a global community. These things are to be expected but people still act surprised.

I guess I’m more wondering out loud but thank you for engaging in good faith.

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