Crypto Cummings is back | Financial Times

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Signal as much as myFT Day by day Digest to be the primary to find out about Cryptocurrencies information.

When Dominic Cummings said again in Might that he had the “solely copy of a vital historic doc” and that he was going to public sale it off as an NFT, we hoped that this was simply going to be a fleeting flirtation with the world of blockchain. A method of displaying off his tech bro credentials, maybe, and even an try and push Brexit and Barnard Fort additional down the strategies record whenever you sort “Dominic Cummings b” into Google.

However alas, it seems our Dom remains to be using that crypto wagon. Right here’s his newest “very very unappreciated” (by us anyway) tweet:

Suppose that is very very unappreciated in coverage circles & there might be many startups fixing authorities issues based mostly on this https://t.co/hai7i7aQbD

— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) August 24, 2021

“This” doing quite a lot of work there isn’t it. What’s “this” in reality? Blockchain? The enabling of automated accounting by one thing crypto-flavoured? And what particular “authorities issues” is he referring to?

As you may see, Cummings was in reality quote-tweeting a quote-tweet by Balaji Srinivasan, a bitcoin-broish VC whose Twitter bio is: “Immutable cash, infinite frontier, everlasting life. #Bitcoin”. Balaji was quoting the next response to his tweet (sure it’s all a bit convoluted sorry):

Sarcastically, nearly all of the world (or a minimum of US) is paid by the hour, a wildly inefficient system for rewarding output/affect.

— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) August 22, 2021

(The “Carry” there’s a VC time period that refers to “carried curiosity”, ie their compensation, to not anybody who has ever been cruelly known as Princess Nut Nut.)

We aren’t positive what crypto-enabled accounting has to do with individuals being paid by the hour, or how “extra complicated fashions for financial alignment” may help resolve authorities issues. Does our Dom suppose complexity ought to be an finish in itself? We guess coverage circles simply very very don’t respect cool techy complicated stuff (and maybe neither will we).

Fortunately, some smart individual on Twitter (sure they do exist) shortly identified to Dom that quite a lot of accounting is already automated and that crypto isn’t very useful on this space, however Dom used actual mathematical chance to win the argument:

Likelihood extra about crypto than Balaji is ~0%

— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) August 24, 2021

We requested our pal Martin Walker —director of banking at finance on the Middle for Proof-Primarily based Administration, who has been advising banks on blockchain for about six years — for his ideas on the matter, and he advised us:

Folks, typically who know nothing about accounting, have been popping out with this c**p for years.

He then thought he’d higher give us a barely politer model, and mentioned:

There’s a nice deal extra to accounting than protecting a ledger of transactions . . . Utilizing some type of blockchain doesn’t in any method make it simpler to mannequin monetary transactions. Arguably, relying on what type of blockchain is used, it could make it significantly extra difficult.

Within the technique of penning this publish, Dom has additionally retweeted the next, on the power of “a coin’s neighborhood” to mainly resolve the issue of the dearth of free speech:

Prediction: a coin’s neighborhood will construct the frontend, backend, and funds for a sufficiently decentralized model over the subsequent 12 months.

The tech stack is prepared, the market is confirmed, exchanges exist, and decentralized social media already works. Simply want the groups. https://t.co/Dd7VxTUJOW

— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) August 20, 2021

We surrender.

Associated hyperlinks:
Cummings swaps Barnard Castle for the blockchain – FT Alphaville