Mastodawn

The FBI case against the Southern Poverty Law Center basically says that if you donate money to the SPLC, then they use some of it to pay informants to infiltrate white nationalist organizations to uncover stuff like this.

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/stephen-miller/

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, also known as family separation, the Muslim ban and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Miller has also “purged” government agencies of civil servants who are not entirely loyal to his extremist agenda, according to a report […]

Southern Poverty Law Center

This is where the people that donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center went to donate, so that their money could be used to infiltrate and uncover white nationalist organizations.

So don't donate here unless you want some of your money to be used to uncover white nationalist organizations.

https://secure.splcenter.org/page/92241/donate/1

Matthew Haughey Apr 24

@mekkaokereke Reading this toot, I was just tricked into remembering I have a charitable giving account and after a few clicks, whoosh, they got my money!

Matthew Haughey Apr 25

@mekkaokereke wait. Holy shit, in six years of having a charitable giving account I’ve never had my request refused by Fidelity. But it just happened. Looks like due to government litigation.

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@mathowie @MissGayle @mekkaokereke And *this* is the kind of bypassing-a-repressive-regime’s-bullshit that the cypherpunks had in mind when they were designing Bitcoin.

The subsequent crypto scamtasia proved to be an extremely effective mechanism for discrediting the idea.

One might be inspired to speculate about which people had what capital / political / intellectual incentives in the drama that we see today.

Bavarian Creampuff Apr 26

@cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle

I wish! But unfortunately, no it's not.

Bitcoin was designed by fashy hyper-capitalist libertarian bros to extract money from vulnerable communities like sex workers, Black people, and refugees fleeing unstable governments, and the financial predators' plan worked.

None of Bitcoin's promises are real. It doesn't hide transactions. It exposes them. It's not less traceable. It's more traceable. It's not separate from the financial system. It's even more tied to it than cash. It's not harder to block than cash or diamond transactions. It's easier. It's not more liquid, it's less. It's not faster, it's slower.

The people that made the most money from Bitcoin, are the exact same hyper capitalist crypto fascist Venture capitalists that made it so that the current financial system doesn't work for sex workers, Black people, or refugees fleeing crisis.

There is no substitute for having a government that actually works for people. There is no viable separate but equal economy at scale. You can't fight nazis by making them all billionaires first, and then using their monkey money and fake banks to try to pay your rent.

I'll stop here, but I could go on.

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yes, I was there and watched the same sequence of events. We came to different conclusions about the motives of the characters involved, with me believing at least a few of them were honestly trying to do something good.

And yes: the moment BTC became something that could be converted to [USD|fiat], all remaining idealism was smothered by the profit motive.

The end result is indisputable - whether or not it was conceived as a tool of liberation, it was rapidly co-opted into the toolbox of our oppressors.

I was among the idealists and yes I am still salty as fuck about it.

Geoff Berner Apr 26

@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle I guess people just sometimes arrive at different conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein's motivations and life's just funny that way. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/09/jeffrey-epstein-crypto

Files cast light on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to cryptocurrency

Newly released documents detail convicted sex offender’s early backing of bitcoin and Coinbase

The Guardian

⚯ Michel de Cryptadamus ⚯Apr 26

@Geoffberner @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle just gonna leave this here

https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/116460806240595256

Red_Shirt_no2 Apr 26

@MissGayle @mathowie @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke

BitCoin smelled of Ponzi from the start; but I think the ZCash crew were (are?) really trying

Jeff Atwood Apr 25

@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle true in my experience. There is no practical not-highly-crime-or-gambling adjacent use for cryptocurrency that I have ever seen to date. And the user experience is beyond abysmal

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yes, the theoretical was so terrifying to incumbents in power that the practical had to be discredited and disabled as quickly as possible.

@cmdrmoto @codinghorror @mathowie @MissGayle

There never was a practical.

There was just the "I promise, it's just around the corner! 🤡" dangling carrot of a practical.

Jeff Atwood Apr 25

@cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle the truly practical inventions are indestructible, inevitable, and unavoidable. What does this tell us after a decade plus of cryptocurrency? 🤔

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle My take? That the story is far from complete.

But it’s definitely going through one of those Dark Forest Of The Soul things.

I don’t trade in cryptocurrencies right now and most likely neither should you.

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@mekkaokereke @codinghorror @mathowie @MissGayle Heh. Dark forest is cosmology, dark night of the soul is what should’ve been said, and yet somehow dark forest of the soul still feels like it works

Joe Vinegar 🏳️‍🌈Apr 25

@codinghorror @cmdrmoto @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle did anyone already quote Stafford Beer? am I the first in this thread?
POSIWID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does

The purpose of a system is what it does - Wikipedia

Fugue State Machine Moto Apr 25

@joe_vinegar @codinghorror @mekkaokereke @mathowie @MissGayle Yeah, it’s significant in my version of bitcoin history that the first place you could exchange the digital asset for fiat currency was MtGOX

Magic the Gathering Online Xchange was founded to global-financialize a game that geeks had been griping about the money component of all through the 1990s.

fan boy 🪭Apr 25

@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle
It was invented as a joke. No one thought it would be taken seriously.

Todd Knarr Apr 26

@mekkaokereke @cmdrmoto @mathowie @MissGayle I was around when it started, and it started as a (rather naive) attempt at essentially a form of check where you could tell that the check was genuine *and* that there was enough money in the account to cover it just by looking at the check, no need to call the issuing bank or waiting for the check to clear.

Then the sales bros got their hands on it and turned it into an unregulated currency you had to buy with real money.