[anchpop]

True. It made me feel like microanalyzing one of their comments. Here goes:

On:

> What I couldn’t find was a sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is — how it works, who it’s for, what’s at stake, where the battle lines are drawn — along with answers to some of the most common questions it raises.

They left this comment:

> No technology is "sober" or "dispassionate" in its creation, nor is it neutral or apolitical, and thus anyone who is claiming to view it from that perspective is DEFINITELY selling you something.

First of all, no one said anything was sober or dispassionate in its creation. And it's trivial to come up with a sober and dispassionate explanation of many technologies, even political ones. I'm certain I can find a sober and dispassionate explanation of how Israel's Iron Dome functions if I really wanted to. And second, if you have a definition of "political" that's so broad that it includes literally every technology, it's not really a very interesting statement to say that some technology is political, right?

[nonstickcoating]

You can explain on a technical level how the Iron Dome fulfills it's functions. You cannot explain it's social and economic ramifications without talking politics. Most of the arguments in favour of cryptocurrencies and blockchains focus on these economic and social factors (decentralised economy, NFTs for selling ones art). The technical merit of blockchain gets discussed so often, the outcome is always either "existing technologies solve this problem better" (which makes discussing the technical merit outside of a academic context futile) or "look at these economic and social improvements this technology provides" (which puts you squarely back into the political discussion).