Tag: Crypto

The Game is Rigged but It needs More Players

In the wild and treacherous jungle of gambling, the house edge is the kingpin, the big shot with a gun in every corner. When it comes to the lottery, you’re staring down the barrel of a gun with a staggering edge—often over 30%. It’s as if the universe itself conspires against you in the most blatant fashion.

In the realm of casino games like blackjack and roulette, the house edge is the dark arithmetic, a cold, calculated certainty, a mathematical beast lurking in every spin and shuffle.

Now, poker, that’s a different beast. The edge here is less about numbers and more about who’s pocketing the cash—how much of your hard-earned buy-in ends up in the casino’s pockets, or those of the site and payment processors.

And then we dive into the abyss of onchain trading, where the house edge is a nightmarish circus of parasites. It’s a mad world where MEV searchers, Jito, validators, stakers, trading bots, and the ever-elusive pump-and-dump artists feast on a grotesque buffet. The fees, the locked liquidity, the grifters, and the inner circle—all clawing and scraping, their insatiable greed having ramped up its efficiency to a nauseating degree over the past year.

The game’s rigged, and the numbers are horrifyingly clear. It needs more players, or the existing ones need to go all-in. But don’t hold your breath for a horde of new suckers to storm the gates. They’re getting mowed down by shoddy launches and a tidal wave of useless tokens. The devs are a dime a dozen, the tokens are a joke, and the KOLs are nothing more than professional value extractors. Liquidity is a mirage in the desert, far too scarce to prop up this grotesque circus.

Welcome to the madness.

influencers, podcasters, crypto scammers, and small-town tyrants

One might approach influencers, podcasters, crypto scammers, and small-town tyrants as figures who occupy different positions within the symbolic order, each representing a distinct mode of desire and the manipulation of the Other.

Influencers are the epitome of the Imaginary, where the ego is constituted through the gaze of the Other. They craft an idealized image, an objet petit a, that their followers endlessly pursue but can never fully obtain. This image functions as a mirror, reflecting not only the influencer’s own narcissism but also the desires of their audience. The influencer becomes the embodiment of the “ideal ego,” a figure who is both desired and envied, sustaining the illusion of wholeness in a fragmented symbolic landscape.

Podcasters operate within the register of the Symbolic, where discourse takes precedence over image. They engage in what Lacan would describe as the “talking cure,” but rather than facilitating the subject’s entry into the symbolic order, they often reinforce the subject’s alienation. The podcaster’s voice, a manifestation of the “big Other,” creates a pseudo-intimacy that masks the subject’s fundamental lack. Their narratives and conversations are structured around the promise of insight or enlightenment, but this is merely a lure, as the true desire lies in the endless consumption of discourse—a jouissance that traps the listener in a cycle of repetition.

Crypto scammers embody the Real in their exploitation of the symbolic order’s gaps and inconsistencies. They operate in a realm where signifiers lose their mooring, where value is untethered from any stable referent. The crypto scam is a masterstroke of the “foreclosed signifier,” a promise of wealth that exists only in the imaginary and whose inevitable collapse reveals the void at the heart of the symbolic. In this sense, the crypto scammer is a figure of radical jouissance, one who derives pleasure from the destabilization of the symbolic order itself.

Small-town tyrants represent a return to the Imaginary, but with a twist. They are figures of paternal authority, standing in for the “Name-of-the-Father,” but their power is not rooted in the symbolic law but in the arbitrary exercise of will. Their authority is a simulacrum, a hollow echo of the real paternal function, and their tyranny is a performance designed to mask their own lack. In the Lacanian sense, they are figures of “phallic jouissance,” deriving pleasure from the subjugation of others, but this pleasure is tainted by the ever-present threat of castration—the recognition of their own impotence within the broader symbolic order.

In sum, these figures—whether influencer, podcaster, crypto scammer, or small-town tyrant—are all caught in the web of desire, each embodying a different facet of Lacan’s triadic structure of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Their actions and personas are strategies for managing the fundamental lack that defines subjectivity, yet in doing so, they reveal the very structures they seek to escape. They are not merely players in a game of power and influence; they are symptoms of the social order’s own inherent contradictions, which they simultaneously exploit and are entrapped by.

Democrats and Tech

In the grand theater of American politics, the Democrats are finding themselves abandoned by their once loyal tech-supporting audience. Picture this: the shimmering beaches of Venice, California, where the promise of a crypto revolution was supposed to bring prosperity. Instead, it’s a ghost town of missed opportunities and empty storefronts. Abbot Kinney, that iconic stretch of bohemian capitalism, gasps for breath as the tech industry, bloated with subsidies, fails to deliver the lifeblood of employment.

Imagine it as a tragicomedy: the tech industry, decked out in its finest attire of R&D tax credits, sales tax exemptions, and California Competes Tax Credits, struts across the stage. It’s a darling of innovation hubs and CAEATFA Sales Tax Exclusions, wooing the audience with the promise of eco-friendly gadgets and futuristic solutions. But behind the curtain, the reality is stark. The industry, despite its glitz and glamour, employs only a handful. Crypto, that much-hyped disruptor, employs just enough to form a small circle of beachgoers, barely a ripple in the ocean of local economies.

The irony is rich. While the film industry, with its comparatively modest tax credits, manages to churn out jobs and support local businesses, the tech sector hoards its wealth. The lavish incentives meant to nurture innovation become gilded cages, trapping prosperity in a bubble that never bursts into widespread economic benefits.

So here we are, in this Vonnegut-esque landscape where the Democrats, despite showering the tech industry with more perks than a Hollywood blockbuster, are left wanting. The local economies languish, the support wanes, and the dream of a tech-fueled renaissance flickers like a dying neon sign on an abandoned boardwalk. The Democrats, once the champions of innovation, now face the sobering reality: all that glitters in the tech world is not gold, and the promise of jobs is as ephemeral as a Venice Beach sunset.

So there you have it, friends and neighbors. The tech industry’s got more money than God and more perks than a rock star, but when it comes to creating jobs, they’re about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle. And that, my dear Earthlings, is why the Democrats are watching their tech support vanish faster than ice cream on a hot sidewalk.

The Red Insurgency

In the flickering underbelly of the Sprawl, where the scent of darknet deals hangs heavy in the recycled air, a dangerous memeplex is spreading. These Chiba-crafted crypto cowboys, particularly the Bitcoin Bishops locked in their shrines of mined wealth, seem to be confusing the fracture and fire sale of ossified megastates – the wet dream of the Gray Party – with a whole new level of emergent order. It’s like mistaking a demolition derby for a revolution, mon and the genesis of a new commons. But these ain’t mirror images, chummer.

One path leads to entropic ruin, a bulldozer crashing through the intricate clockwork of the state, leaving behind a wasteland of privatized power grids and water rights snapped up by vulture capitalists at a fire sale. Decades of accretion, shattered.

A mediocre symphony of evolution, a concerto composed on a new platform – the commons, rewired for a digital age. A metamorphosis, a chrysalis of code spun from the ether itself.

There might be a few glitches in the transition, a touch of static on the line, but this ain’t some fire sale, some bargain-basement auction of our public goods to the highest bidder. This is about leaving behind the rusty mainframes of the past, not downloading chaos. This ain’t some reactionary temper tantrum– this is about evolution, baby. We’re transcending the rusty, legacy systems, not just chucking the whole damn thing in the trash compactor.

The other beckons with the promise of emergent order, a symphony conducted not by the iron fist of Leviathan, but by the million-whispering chorus of the distributed ledger.

Personalized Pricing

In the labyrinthine realm of blockchain, where transactions shimmer with the illusory sheen of transparency, one finds a most curious paradox. Here, amidst the byzantine tangle of code and cryptography, the veil of clarity parts only to reveal an even deeper obfuscation. The very algorithms that dictate the price you pay, those inscrutable arbiters of personalized economics, remain shrouded in a fog thicker than Venusian smog, their machinations as opaque as a Langley funhouse mirror. You stand there, blinking at the screen, a receipt clutched in your sweaty palm, the number an accusatory indictment. 

Why, you ask, are you shelling out twice what Mildred next door coughs up for the same bag of genetically-modified kale chips? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the digital wind – a byzantine equation known only to the silicon priests who maintain this algorithmic cathedral. Double your neighbor’s, it screams. But why? The answer, my friend, is lost in a labyrinthine dance between swirling hash functions and impenetrable smart contracts.

The blockchain, a fever dream of libertarian cypherpunks, promised a financial utopia: every transaction writ large on a celestial ledger, visible to all. Transparency, they crowed, the antidote to the rigged game of legacy finance. But transparency, like a particularly potent hallucinogenic, can warp perception. Here, writ in the shimmering code, was the horrifying truth: the personalized pricing algorithms, those Kafkaesque equations that dictated the cost of your virtual loaf of bread, were shrouded in an ever-denser fog. You could see every transaction, every node, every hash – a cosmic dance of ones and zeros – yet the formula that determined your grotesquely inflated price remained tantalizingly out of reach. A cruel joke, a Schrodinger’s algorithm: both omnipresent and utterly opaque.

Crypto, the supposed revolution, the anarchist’s dream of unshackling finance from the greasy grip of central banks, has instead birthed a new kind of tyranny. It’s the tyranny of the new Jerusalem frictionless exchange insidious serpent – the price discrimination algorithm. Grown more potent with every gigabyte of your meticulously harvested data. It slithers through the ether, a spectral serpent coiling around your digital wallet, its forked tongue whispering sweet nothings about your capacity for ever-increasing expenditure.

These algorithms, oh so adept at parsing your every click and swipe, your meticulously curated social media persona, have become the ultimate predators. They sniff out your vulnerabilities, your deepest financial anxieties, like a truffle pig on a mission. And then, with chilling precision, they extract the maximum pound of flesh, all under the guise of “dynamic pricing.”

Algorithmic overlords would now peer into the abyss of your bank account, ferreting out the very last hidden reserve you might possess. A nightmarish panopticon, not of the state, but of the market, where every purchase was a loyalty test, a dance with an unseen hand that adjusted the price tag based on some unknowable metric – perhaps your browsing history, your credit score, or the astrological alignment of your birth chart. And all cloaked in the comforting illusion of security, powered by the very same blockchain that ensured the anonymity of those who set the ever-escalating price of your digital dollar. It’s a labyrinthine nightmare where freedom and exploitation were two sides of the same bewildering coin.

And yet, there’s a perverse comfort, a Kafkaesque irony in this new order. The very technology that supposedly safeguards your precious data – the blockchain, that unbreakable chain of trust – is the same one that ensures your financial vulnerability. The very technology that enshrines your precious purchase history upon an immutable ledger also ensures its custodians hold the keys to the kingdom of your disposable income. Rest assured, the marketplace, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to entrust the fate of your financial well-being to these unseen architects of the digital bazaar.

So, the next time you marvel at the cryptographic elegance of a blockchain transaction, remember, the only true transparency you’re likely to encounter is the hollowness of your own bank account. It’s a Schrodinger’s box of information security: both transparent and opaque, secure and exploitable, all at the same time. So sleep soundly, consumer, for your data is safe, nestled in the warm embrace of those who hold the key to your digital wallet. After all, who needs transparency when you have efficiency? Who needs fairness when you have… well, whatever it is this new system is supposed to be.

Crypto-Punks

The market a sprawl of tangled circuits, a Burroughs cut-up of rebellion sold in sterile packets. Punks? More like Sid Vicious repackaged, sneer freeze-dried, safety-pinned to a blockchain. Where’s the snarling chaos, the feedback shrieks? All synthesized, a commodified angst echoing hollow in the neon canyons of cyberspace.They brandish pixelated avatars, these so-called “CryptoPunks,” screaming their supposed rebellion. But their cries are hollow echoes, a grotesque parody of the true punk spirit.

These self-styled Sid Viciouses strut and snarl, their mohawks rendered in low-resolution mockery. They gnash plastic teeth, spewing pronouncements of disruption, yet remain shackled to the very system they claim to despise. Their rebellion is a cage of their own making, a gilded prison built on lines of code.

These are the self-proclaimed punks, the Johnny Rotten wannabes with wallets fatter than their ideas. They mainline jargon, snort lines of technical specs, chasing a high that fizzles faster than a sparkler. Their anarchy a keyboard tantrum, impotent rage against a machine they both worship and despise.

Meanwhile, in the shadows, lurk the unseen Strummers and Slits. Heretics of the digital age, they wield their instruments of disruption not in the sterile market, but in the dark corners of the web. They are the architects of chaos, their code the graffiti scrawled across the digital landscape.

The Slits, their code a screeching guitar riff, they tear at the system’s seams, leave gaping holes in the firewalls of control. No safety pins here, just lines of code that prick and prod, a digital middle finger to the Man.

And somewhere, a lone Strummer strums a discordant chord on a keyboard fashioned from scrap metal. His lyrics, manifestoes scrawled in binary, speak of a future unbought, a world unshackled from the chains of cryptocurrency. A ghost in the machine, a digital echo of a rebellion with a cause.

But who controls the servers?

But above them all loom the grinning Cheshire Cats, the Mclarens and Westwoods of this twisted pantomime. The puppet masters, the architects of the Crypto-Ponzi. They co-opt the language, twist the symbols, turn the anthem into an elevator pitch. They peddle snake oil dreams of a decentralized utopia built on sand, a house of cards ready to be swept away by the first digital breeze.

They drape themselves in the silks of revolution, while their unseen strings manipulate the market, fattening their wallets with the dreams of the deluded.

Westwood’s tart critique, a venomous tweet dissipating in the ether. The punks themselves, mere stock photos in a glitching gallery. They clutch their NFTs, digital passports to a promised anarchy that’s just another walled garden, another layer in the control grid.

The Crypto-Junk, a glittering mirage in the digital wastelands. A pale reflection of a rebellion long gone, a hollow echo of a movement sold out to the highest bidder.

The air hangs heavy with the stench of burnt code and broken promises. But somewhere, in the flickering chaos of the circuits, a spark remains.The dream of a decentralized utopia curdles into a dystopian nightmare. Lee Harvey Oswald, his rifle replaced by a digital wallet, lurks in the shadows.

This is the Crypto-Punk Delusion. A cut-up nightmare where rebellion is a commodity, and the only true danger lies not in the system, but in the grifters who manipulate it.

Farcaster

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In the neon-lit sprawl of the crypto-verse, Farcaster shimmered, a new protocol promising a decentralized future. But beneath the chrome veneer, a cold logic hummed – a brutal game where clients and creators locked horns with the very platform they sought to empower. It was like watching a rogue AI birthing its own competitor, a self-fulfilling prophecy coded in blockchain.

Here’s the rub, mon ami. Farcaster craved dominance in the client game, a winner-take-all gladiatorial arena. Clients, on the other hand, dreamt of escaping the clutches of any one platform, a nomadic existence unchained from protocol overlords. It was a dystopian dance, a tango with a cypherpunk soundtrack.

Or to put it another way, the protocol, see, aspired to be kingpin, the ultimate destination for all your digitized ramblings. Yet, its very architecture demanded an open door policy, a teeming bazaar where rival apps could hawk their wares. Clients, those savvy denizens of the fringes, weren’t chumps. They craved dominance too, their tentacles already reaching out to capture users in proprietary nets.

The protocol, oh the protocol, it craved sprawl, a teeming bazaar of competing clients, each vying for dominance in the attention economy. But those very clients, they weren’t building empires to bow before some benevolent protocol. They hungered for the same prize: winner-take-all. It was a cyberpunk ouroboros, a market devouring its own tail in a frenzy of self-cannibalization.

So what’s the endgame, chummer? All roads lead to a single, colossal exchange, a leviathan gorging on user data and network effects. Winner takes all, as they say, leaving the rest with a pile of worthless tokens and a bitter aftertaste of decentralization gone rogue.

This, my friend, is the crypto curse – a schizophrenic nightmare where VC-backed corporations masquerade as bastions of freedom, building empires even as they evangelize the virtues of a borderless web. Here in the shadows, a Delaware C-corp, relic of a bygone era, raises filthy lucre to craft a user-facing playground, all the while laying the foundation for a future teeming with rivals. A future where the true value resides not in the platform itself, but in the ever-volatile token, a digital albatross chained to the protocol’s neck.

Navigating this contradiction, chummer, is a tightrope walk over a pit of vipers. Can Farcaster reconcile these competing forces? Or will it crumble under the weight of its own ambition, a cautionary tale writ large on the blockchain ledger? Only time, that cruelest of croupiers, will tell.