Introduction

If you’ve ever found yourself on Crypto Twitter, you’ll be familiar with the hype machine that keeps the industry’s thousands of projects going. Rallying cries of “WAGMI” — an acronym for We Are All Going To Make It — and “To the Moon!” abound, found in tweets from accounts with colorful, graphic profile pictures and usually a hashtag or two.

But there are always two sides to a coin, and if you’ve come across a Twitter display name featuring the Tulip emoji, you might find a crypto skeptic instead. A reference to the Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s, these figures – technologists, academics and writers among them – are working to counteract crypto’s steady rise to the top with a dose of reality.

Stephen Diehl is a software engineer by trade, a leading crypto skeptic and now co-founder of the recently established Center for Emerging Technology Policy. He joins this episode to break down crypto’s promises of a brighter tomorrow, and when he thinks it might actually be closer to myth.

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